CAN1 Final Animation

Month 11
Character Animation 1

This is our final project for CAN1. It's basically an animation of a character starting out with a pose, then walking a few steps towards a button, turns around to face the button, pushes it, and finally settles down to a last pose. Above are examples of the pre-pro that I drew for this animation. I started out with some ideas for initial poses followed by a basic storyboard of the character approaching the button and pressing it, and then some thumbnails of how I planned to break down the poses.

Above is the playblast of the final project.

The tools that I learned to use during this month were the graph editor, MEL buttons, and the attribute editor (keying specific attributes).

Strong Poses

Month 11
Character Animation 1

For this project, we had to come up with some strong poses. Above are pictures of the pre-pro (all hand-drawn) that organized my ideas for those poses.

We then took those ideas and posed the character rig. We enabled silhouette mode so we can determine whether or not the poses are strong.

Leggy Walk

Month 11
Character Animation 1


For the first half of the month we focused on the Leggy Walk scene. The video above is the blockout in stepped. The focus was to show the main contact poses.

The playblast above shows the final version of the walk animation in auto tangent. It includes the contacts, passes, ups and downs, and foot rolls.

Layout Rig

Month 10
Character Rigging 1

This was the final version of our character rig that we worked on for the first half of the month. With the exception of the face and ears, the body was totally rigged, including the fingers and feet.

PRM Final

Month 10
Production Modeling

This was my final project for PRM. It was a little girl that I modeled based off of Ryan Lang's Gretel. The style is supposed to be Disney/Pixar-like. I still feel like I could've fixed up the proportions a bit, and I know that the face and hair could've been improved even further to match the reference more closely. But otherwise, I think I did a decent job.

Hand Sculpt

Month 10
Production Modeling

This was a hand sculpt that I did for PRM. It was all done in ZBrush. At the time I thought it looked pretty good, but looking back on it now I feel that I can definitely improve on it to make it look even better.

CFM Compositing Final

Month 9
Compositing Fundamental

This was our compositing final. Many thanks to Fred, Justin, Tripp, Julian, and Larry.

Stereoscopy

Month 9
Compositing Fundamentals

This is an example of our stereoscopy project. Again, the assets were provide to us. Our task was to make a stereoscopy effect on the still image so that if you wore 3D glasses you could see the effect.

Using Nuke's 3D System

Month 9
Compositing Fundamentals

For this project, we learned how to use Nuke's 3D system.

Learning How to Use Nuke

Month 9
Compositing Fundamentals

These are just a couple of examples of our earlier compositing projects. We learned how to use Nuke by utilizing the assets that were provided to us. For these examples, we dealt with the layering system and color correction.

FOA Final Animation

Month 9
Fundamentals of Animation

This was my final animation scene. It consisted of doing a few steps approaching a ball, then kicking it, and then animating the path of where the ball bounces. We also had to utilize the graph editor to make the proper inbetweens. Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to make this scene turn out as well as I wanted to. I'm sure that I would be able to make a better animation now that I know more about animation.

2D Animations

Month 8

2D Animation

These are just some of the hand-drawn animations that I did in class. Our goal was to demonstrate our understanding of the principles of animation, such as slow-in-slow-out, follow-through, etc.

CDC Final

Month 7
Character Design and Creation

During this month, we delved into ZBrush and learned how to model organic figures. Some of our initial projects dealt with modeling heads and resurfacing. For our final, we had to sculpt a muscular arm while emphasizing primary, secondary, and tertiary forms.

Character Sheets

Month 6
Methods of Design

One of our final projects was to design turnaround sheets for two characters from the Grimm Brothers tale called The Juniper Tree. In this case, I went with the stepmother and the son. We could pick a theme, such as futuristic, fantasy, western, etc. I chose futuristic, in particular, a Neo-Victorian era of sorts. I drew everything out using pencils and then made the final renders using markers.

Aesthetics

Month 6
Methods of Design

For this project, we took an original artwork done by an artist, identify the reasons why we didn't like that particular artwork, and then recreate our own version of it. We could use some, all, or mostly none of the elements from the original artwork. Our method of redesigning the piece was also up to us. In my case, I chose to do Fernand Leger's pochoir "Tete de Femme". I used pencils to draw out the basic outline of the character, and then rendered the entire image using markers.

Redesigning

Month 6
Methods of Design

For this project, we needed to take a small object and look at it from an interesting view or angle. We then needed to draw it out and apply some unique colors and artistic choices to further enhance the redesign of the object. I used pencils to lightly draw out my object, which was an iPhone car charger, and then I used markers to make the final render.

Character Design for Maquette

Month 5
Fundamentals of Art 2

This was a character sheet that I did for Fundamentals of Art 2. The purpose was to design a character that would eventually be used as the basis for our maquette project. I decided to make my own rendition of the Hindu goddess, Kali. While I was able to successfully complete the character sheet, I couldn't say the same for the maquette. I was able to shape the body and even the head, but I struggled with the face and the long strands of hair. The maquette unfortunately didn't turn out as well as I had hoped for, hence why I don't have a photo of it.

Figure Drawings

Month 5
Fundamentals of Art 2

Some figure drawings.

Exterior Rendering

Month 5
Shading and Lighting

We were provided a scene where we had to apply all the shading, lighting, and rendering techniques that we learned. For this project, we also had to show that we knew how to apply image projection. This technique was used for the wine bottle's label.

Interior Rendering

Month 5
Shading and Lighting

When we were assigned to this project, we had already understood the basics of shading, lighting, and rendering in Maya. Keeping in mind the techniques that we already learned, we also delved into tile textures and bump maps, etc. With this project, we had to apply all those things into the scene.

Line Art of a Pharaoh

Month 4

Fundamentals of Art 1

This was a line art project that I did for Fundamentals of Art 1. The image depicts a profile view of a fictional Egyptian pharaoh. Initially I wanted to use markers to make the lines bolder and to fill in the shading completely, but at the time I wasn't comfortable with just using markers so I chose to use pencils instead.

Bathroom Scene

Month 4
Model Creation

This was my final project for Model Creation. I chose to do a bathroom scene. I was provided with an photo where I had to use Maya to model basically everything that I saw in that image. It was a little difficult because the photo wasn't large, and it didn't have the best definition and resolution, so I had to improvise a little on some of the objects.

Cafe Scene

Month 4
Model Creation

This is one of our earliest projects. We were given a scene, which was a cafe, and our task was to populate it with prop assets that would belong in this particular environment, such as tables, umbrellas, chairs, cups, plates, etc. I used Maya to model these objects.

3DF Final Animation

Month 3
3D Foundations

This class taught us the essentials to using Autodesk Maya. It was also the first time I learned to model and animate using a 3D program. The scene depicts a lone viking warrior who manages to avoid a series of falling rocks, but his luck doesn't last very long.

Visual Storytelling in Your Field

Month 2
Overview of Design Technologies

One of our projects for this class was to create a visual presentation of what a day in our dream job would be like. In my case, I want to be a digital modeler so my task was to show what I thought was the pipeline process of modeling an asset and putting it into production. I hand-drew the images which then got scanned and imported into a PowerPoint presentation. For the sake of this blog, I converted the slides into a movie file.

Digital Identity UPDATE

Month 1
Digital Literacy

Later in the month, we had to update our digital identity. We were given the option to change it to something else or to keep what we originally had. I decided to go with the latter. I used the web app at tagxedo.com to create the image as well as manually supplied the words and text that made up the collage.

Digital Identity

Month 1
Digital Literacy

Back in Digital Literacy, we had to establish our personal digital identity. I decided to go with "Digitally Adept" because I felt like I could adapt to any kind of tech or app. I took a picture of my Macbook's keyboard and imported it to Photoshop where I did some heavy image manipulation to it to create this poster-like image.