Mid Term 4 Presentation

"Well the resolution is too poor. It won't help to enhance it." -X Files

In case you're curious what I have been up to, here's my mid-Term 4 presentation. I'm trying to get the first 3 shots done by the end of January, then I'll worry about the characters.

The comp test goes a little quick so here's a still. It needs lots of work, but it gave me a good idea of where I need to put my detail.

And now back to work. Cheers!

Traditional Sculpts and Matte Painting

"Did you think we had forgotten? Did you think we had forgiven? Behold now the terrible vengeance of the Forsaken!" -Wrathgate Cinematic, World of Warcraft


It's a bit of a delayed update, and incomplete at that, but here are some non-3D projects I finished last month. I'm happy with the results of my first matte painting, and even the 3D version is pretty cool. I might try it again some time.

  The Medusa sculpt is waiting for the finishing touches on her paint job, but here's the finished sculpt.

We've also started a human figure in sculpting class that we need to take from skeleton to muscle to skin to create a character of our choice. Yes, I am making a zombie. Big surprise, I know.

That about wraps up the non-demo reel projects (besides the 3D medusa-self, which will get its own page). If I have free time I'll be working on something for the World of Warcraft Student Modeling Competition, so wish me luck with that.

I'm GLaD

"We do what we must;
because we can." -Portal, Still Alive

Lighting classes are over, but my lighting work is not. I'm still revisiting some of my previous assignments to make the changes from class critique (or just to give them more time). It's looking like I should spend more time doing lighting tests for my demo reel, though.... and speaking of which...

The timing and camera has been adjusted slightly since this was compiled, but it gives the general idea of my demo reel concept. Or I could just say "Atlantis". Either would work.
 

 And, of course, there's also regular modeling class assignments to work on. The poly flow still needs work, and I need to figure out how and where I'll connect the snake hair, and the body still hasn't been touched as far as retoppo. *sigh* I'll never be on track.

Finally, I have the second draft of my matte painting. I've been advised to amp up my color saturation a bit, and try the painting without god rays. Any other suggestions?

Portal, Hockey, Tacos, and Light Testing. Can a Thursday night get any better?

-Anne

PS: The answer is "no", in case you were wondering.

Demo Reel Beginnings

"Poor lumpy Medusa." -Jordan

I'm now about two and a half weeks into Term 3 and I've finally got some stuff to show for my demo reel. Above are the style sheets for three of the main pieces of my reel. It may not look like much now, but after drawing up my asset list I'm confident that I'll be busy until the last minute of Term 6. I'll also post my animatic here once I compress it to a reasonable size.

I'm also working on a matte painting based on the thrown-together thumbnail above, and a "super hero sculpt" of myself as Medusa (based on the Aaron Sims version of Medusa in Clash of the Titans). I think it's best that I retoppo the sculpt for now to get rid of her "lumpiness" before I try to add detail.

Cheers all, I'm off to class!

-Anne

Holy Nuts, FOLLOWERS!!

"That doesn't make sense to me. But, then again, you are very small." -Treebeard, The Two Towers

All of a sudden I have 8 followers. Welcome all, and thanks for watching!

In other news, holy nuggets! That was a brutal term 2! Even working weekends I barely got everything done, and very little of it done as well as I would have liked.  Regardless, here's a look at what I've been up to.

Also check out my YouTube page for some turnarounds: My Youtube Channel
Animations soon to come, along with my passport reel.

Term 3 means I will be starting on my demo reel: an underwater city scene. I'm really looking forward to doing lighting tests, and will be posting progress as it comes along.

More Insects

"If you ever find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin'." -John Marston, RDR

 When in doubt, I usually default to drawing insects or centipedes. One of these days I'll probably end up with a beetle farm or a couple of millipedes, which I'm sure will just thrill my cat. I used the "painting" brushes in CS5 for most of this, but it really needs more specular in the reds.

We also had to draw up some "paint overs" for our food cart and city in design class. I figure I may as well post them for giggles. The city buildings were created by my six-person team, but the food cart and character are my own design.

 

Bot-boy and Toaster-cuum

 "CHAIR FIGHT!" -The Simpsons

I'm just posting my character details for giggles. And now I've seen them so much in the past couple weeks, they've started invading my head outside of class, especially toaster-cuum. Possibly more sketches coming later tonight as I have to draw all of the characters in "my style" for tomorrow

VFS Modeling Project: Stingray Bike

 "Omlette du fromage!" -Dexter's Lab

I can already tell I'm learning something; this is the most intense modeling I've done since my 3D Modeling and Lighting class at Purdue. Here are some of the shots with and without the mesh, and some generic mia shading for the various materials. Just don't mention bikes around me for a couple weeks.

I'd love to hear some feedback on the modeling, since I know I didn't put a huge amount of detail into parts like the nuts and bolts. How's my polyflow? -wink- Haha!

-Anne

Orientation to Photoshop, Take 652

"As your mother tells you, and my mother certainly told me, it is important, she always used to say, always to try new things." -Hannibal Lecter

I am by no means new to Photoshop, and at this point I must have had at least ten orientation to Photoshop classes. Yet each time around I find myself learning something completely obvious that I have overlooked for years. This time around it was the warp tool within Transform, along with the million and one semi-useless preferences in CS5. At least some of it was important, like RAM allocation.

I also got a chance to practice my speed sketching, this time featuring Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. The eyes and forehead look okay, but everything from the nostrils down needs work.  I used this photo for the reference.

Modeling and animation tomorrow! Good night all!

-Anne

Week 2 of VFS

"No more for me, thanks, I'm driving. -whump!-" -Daffy Duck

A few of us were sitting around in the common room and discussing classes. We came up with this list of homework: written scene breakdown and evaluation of a movie, acquire two movie trailers for Editing, 3D pendulum animation, 2D bouncing ball keys and breakdowns, detailed character designs, generic sketching, 5 object multiview clean ups, 5 object measurement document, 3D bike model, 3D shader exercise, and day and night scene lighting. I have a feeling I'm still forgetting some things, but you get the idea.


That being said, I'm looking for some critique on my daylight scene. This scene is not textured with a few exceptions, but do let me know if there is a distracting texture.

I've also got some sketches from Design 1. The class is currently working on project Snack Shack where we have to use urban vinyl and a style guide set by our teams to create one human and one robot character, one of which is the owner of a street food cart. Here are just a few of my preliminary designs for each character.

More developed versions are due for both next week, so I'll be uploading those as I finish them.

I also finally got a chance to composite my last render of the Desert Helmet scene. While the "finished" product isn't something I'm satisfied with, I find it interesting to look at the huge difference between my first version of the project and take 2 and 3. Check it out.

I already have problems with my latest version, but alas, my license has expired again and I have yet to take care of that. The good news is, I learned a lot in my Shader class today and already have ideas for how to fix this.

It's time now to sleep so I can get up early and start on that homework. Good night to everyone and GO CANUCKS!

-Anne

New Beginning: Vancouver Film School

"Results Matter." -VFS Motto


It's been a few weeks since I last had internet access on a real computer due to my relocation to Vancouver, Canada to attend Vancouver Film School (VFS). And we can't forget the subsequent issues with the moving company that has extended my lack of internet access, seemingly indefinitely. So, I can't show off my lovely pictures of the city or upload my nearly completed TotBS render, but I can talk about relocating and he city itself.

To anyone thinking of relocating to Vancouver from the US: it's expensive, but worth it!

It's amazing how much moving across country costs. Moving your stuff (in my case a small apartment equivalent of stuff) costs around $3,000. You can also expect to pay about double for rent if you want to live in a safe neighborhood downtown, or pay $100-200 for transportation if you commute. In fact, you will pay more for just about everything, even toilet paper. And never underestimate the cost of the little things: pots, pans, new trash bins, a rain coat, soap, household cleaners... the list goes on and on.

So what's the upside? People, especially store clerks and commercial employees, are unbelievably friendly. Traffic functions even when it's crowded because people let each other in. The spring weather is absolutely gorgeous! There are a million-and-one restaurants and all of them are delicious, and there is no shortage of things to do. Buses run on time, people are dependable, and you can find just about anything you need. And after living here for three months, you qualify for BC health insurance! Just root for the Canucks in public and everything will be fine.

Granted this can still be considered my first impression of the city since I have only been here for three weeks, but I don't see myself hating this city any time soon. I will have pictures of the city in bloom as soon as the opportunity arises, but until then, "GO CANUCKS!"

-Anne

Busy or Absent Minded? You be the judge!

"I've been in captivity for three months. There are two things I want to do. One, I want an American cheeseburger, and the other... " -Iron Man

Overdue update on that commission that I finished two weeks ago! It's done!

Check it out on my DA account.

I blame the "discussions" on "a forum" that I visit for distracting me. I've actually been drawing a lot more recently thanks to joining a Daily Sketch guild on said forums. Here's yesterday's piece for the topic "portrait":


This is one of the few I was inspired to put time into and try something different with. No lines! OMG! I really like how the face turned out, although the ear still bothers me. The rest of my sketches are on my DA account in the scraps section. I may just start posting them here though.

Or I might start posting stuff for this: Illustration Friday.

What else? Oh, I finally figured out how to make Maya export OBJs and FBXs again. Apparently it will sometimes turn off that feature in the plug-ins section at random. Either that or Loki (that's my PC's name) is screwing with my head.

I'm working on a redesign of an old project of mine, Tales from the Broken Stone. I had a friend/awesome alumni who works at Dreamworks give me a little critique, and now I'm trying to make some of the corrections. One being that he couldn't tell what the helmet was supposed to be made of. Here's a shot of what I've got so far. (BTW extra critique is always welcome!)


Textured with Mudbox 2010 for once! I may need to up my actual poly count for this scene, though, since the normal mapping gets a little lost in the low poly version. Now I just need to make touch ups in Photoshop and tweak the reflectivity of everything. Then it's on to the rest of the scene.

And now I have to touch up 34 pictures of a cat for my roommate. T____T I miss Timon so much!

-Anne

Deadline Bump

"Madame e Monsieur, bonsoir. Those who forge their own destiny. Those who balk at their own destiny. Time visits all men equally and imposes on them a choice for the future. When the final letter entrusted to the young man is read, what future will that bring about for us?"

I'd say I have definitely been watching too much Count of Monte Cristo: Gankutsuou, but I just finished it and no longer have to worry about being sucked in. I would say this piece restores my faith in anime's potential. I would, but it's just a retelling of a French classic. It just goes to show you, some of the classics are pretty bad-ass!

Anyway, I have another WIP version of the penguin-zombie piece.


He wanted to be sure I attempted the plaid early on, and I wanted to get the color blocking done. The shading and detail work, along with some blending and adjustment are next.... and eventually I'll have to figure out what to do with the different white tones. T_T

That being said, I finally have a solid deadline: Valentine's Day. Good thing I don't have other plans, because this might just eat all my time. Om nom nom nom!

-Anne

Final Presentation Finally

It took us a long time to get this huge file down to a reasonable size, but thanks to Larry, we finally have the final presentation to show off. The lighting was pretty dark during our presentation, and some of the words are hard to read, but it's the content that counts, right?

Pt. 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqQ77yblQHU
Pt. 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7E9sBfbQJU
Pt. 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5B2UikOvYjU
Pt. 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdPGNl8oARg

My portion of the presentation was the statistics and experiment design. It was a lot harder to make understandable than I thought.

-Anne

The very next day...

"On the first day, God said, 'Let there be light' and there was duck. God was slightly confused, but decided it was good."

I guess, I sorta forgot to mention yesterday that I went to Ohayocon last week, even though the title of the post suggested it. Twas a lot of fun, but next time I definitely need to have a costume worked out. And after that I barely made it back before the snow storm hit. So lucky!


Another speed paint for practice... of someone.... who I happen to have pictures of. -shifty eyes- Green hair is pretty sweet.


Updated WIP of the commission for my friend. I'm still not sure how I feel about the background or the aurora, but we'll see what he says. Penguins!

-Anne

Of Cons and Snow Storms

Yeah, I know. Another span of no updates. I'm working on stuff, I swear, though much of it is pencil/pen and paper. And I have this nasty habit of not thinking of scanning it until after everyone in the house has gone to bed. T___T

However, I started following this blog and I've decided that I definitely don't draw enough. This guy creates amazing "speed paints" by the hour while I'm sitting around wasting my day, getting distracted by Facebook, DA, TV, etc. Well, that is, I need to find a balance that includes more drawing, while also maintaining my exercise and cooking time.


That.... is totally not me.
>.> <.< >.>
Totally.

I'll have an update on that penguin sketch thing soon--I totally promise. I finished the digital line art already, but I'm really want to have more done before I post.

Back to "Work"

This is why I will never work from home.

One month after saying I was going to start posting weekly I've finally returned with art to post. Sure, I could blame spending 3 weeks at home/on vacation, but that really wouldn't be true. I'm just terrible at focusing on work outside of a workspace. Thankfully I was finally able to kick my own butt and get cooking on some projects, but I never want to do this again.


First of all, this is a drawing of another person's work of art! I found this picture on DeviantArt, and was inspired to practice drawing with texture. Makeup fascinates me, especially textured makeup, and I would really like to draw some more interesting faces covered in... stuff. Maybe I should have a mini-Halloween celebration and get "dolled" up to draw some self portraits.


A friend of mine, after seeing my first comic page, decided he would like me to make a present for a friend of his. After some discussion and some doodling on my part, this first draft came to life. Oh, and this just in via text message: he likes it!

I never thought drawing on a request basis would be difficult, but did I ever underestimate the pressure level. You want to make people happy, but inspiration is a fickle jerk that comes and goes as it pleases.

Time to make some adjustments and figure out some details! Ta!

-Anne