OH YEAH!

Here is how that Wet Republic Computer Animation Studio piece turned out...It always makes me laugh.

INEVITABILITY

YO. Here is a little taste of what I've been doing lately. My Adv. 3D Animation final was to script a moving escalator. It works for a bit after it gets going, but I have found other better methods that are in the processes...I went to the Life Drawing Workshop on the 25th and I drew almost all of the poses...I broke out before the last 30 minute one though. I didn't have very many materials on me so I made due with crappy ink, random markers and a couple of weird pieces of paper that Rick gave me. Now that I'm on break from school (!) I have some more time! So I also did a little bit of work on an old Finnick piece. I'm thinking of revamping the whole pose...so...we'll have to wait and see how that ends up...

Anyway! I've also been doing a lot of recording/mixing/working on my own music and other songs I recorded with random musicians. Hopefully I can figure out a cool way to post songs on my website or maybe I will just keep abusing Youtube to get embed my own songs on my blog.

RIDE THE LIGHTNING!

SO yo. Here is what my lightning is looking like now. I still have some problems. Such as baking the scene so my final comp looks dope, and getting the light from a flash to appear near the struck location on a ground plane. Oh well, Baker still helped me make some good progress but then he just kind of left me to go solo. Something about the lighting on the clouds was messing me up but Baker noticed a mistake I made then I started to understand what the hell I was supposed to do. But now I have some more questions to ask him unless I can figure it out by myself. Hopefully this ends up really sick and I can put it in my reel. So far I have used scripting and dynamic fluid effects. Getting the clouds to roll was sort of weird too...I think I messed with the Texture Time attribute or something. But I had to script the Lightning End attribute to turn bolts on and off and move some invisible spheres around to randomize it. It's pretty dope. Complex, yet simple at the same time.

New 3D Looney Tunes

Yo. My homie Casey told me about this awesome little short that was posted online recently. 3D Coyote and Roadrunner! I could only find a bit of info...but I can't believe how bad ass every little aspect of this scene is. The timing, the dynamics, the textures, emotions...the spirit of the original is definitely there. Very cool. I told Randolf about it because Casey said I should spread the word at the school. It's funny because I know Randolf only posts or talks about really awesome stuff at school and on his blog, and he posted this animation! Since Randolf is such a huge inspiration to me, I figured I should probably do the same just to document the moment of discovering it and to inspire myself to keep working hard.

Samiches

Yo. In my Adv. 3d Animation class I got an assignment to script some randomized lightning. Well after I taught myself how to do lightning I actually pulled it off. I don't have a video render yet though but I decided to add clouds and try to get a nice mental ray picture. I also did some more work on the In-N-Out piece and I think it's just about done! Don't forget to check out my website and tell me what you think now that it's up and running. I still need to set up my reel on Vimeo and get the legit professional info up on there.
http://dtanimation.com/

What Do You Think?

I did another lip-sync in Maya. Check it. It didn't take too long, and it isn't too long. So...bam.

BLAMMO!

Tweaked an old assignment for my demo reel. I wanted to add a couple more moving holds to it. They still feel a little funny...not as good as the first ones for some reason. I must have just been bad ass that day. The main reason I did this was to extend the syncopated music-animation action in the beginning of my demo reel. Le sigh...there is less Flash(it's just not good enough I guess...), less illustration, less 2d and more 3d and motion graphics. Oh well, at least I could totally get a job if people know I can rock Maya & Aftereffects. Then they will look at my site and be like, "He knows Flash too?! GET HIM!" Or at least that's what I hope. Damn, I do a lot of stuff! It sucks that I need to try and sell just ONE skill to graduate. I still want to try and do some really awesome Flash animations that hopefully someone will say I should throw in there. Too much work to do, but now that I know how to use the render farm, things will be much easier. If only I figured that out on week 1! It's already week 4 and it's practically week 5. And I have a show coming up! Weezer covers! Ahahah!
http://www.myspace.com/imyourdaddyband


*Edit: I rendered out some different lighting on the render farm. It looks alright but I noticed a bit of clipping on a few of the poses. There is some weird shadow I didn't really want in the back corner of there too. I might have to try and use some render passes to get rid of the background so he can just be in that white Matrix-y place.

Reel Edit From 7-30-10

Yo. This is what it's looking like now. Of course, there is a lot of strangeness going on in my mind. Renders I have to re-do, animations to tweak, animations to FINISH, lights to mess with, photos to take, things to scan...blah blah blah. I will probably change the song too because I've got something else in mind. Basically this just sort of cements the fact that I am still not satisfied because I feel like it isn't representative of my true potential. Fuck...At least I finally put some of those other pieces in there so I can feel out the overall groove.

Rex Kwon Do!

Yo. I was re-visiting my final from Randolf's Intermediate 3D Animation class. I taught myself how to transfer animations from one rig to another by using this script called dkAnim. It took me a bit to figure out what the hell was going on, but luckily I found some good websites to help me out. So once I fixed that polygon problem, I started to think about the final render for my demo reel. I changed my settings to HD720 but then I was wondering all types of shit. Is it better to use Maya Software, Maya Hardware or Mental Ray for this type of piece? What types of lights and shadows do I use? Raytracing is usually better, but I had to figure out which variables to tweak to get the desired effect. I refreshed my brain on the 3 point lighting system and I went for it.

This is what I came up with. Some of the shadows are still pretty hard and I am wondering if I should attempt to put him into some type of environment. I know I will probably be making more animation changes and will have to render it again anyway, but it looks like you end up re-rendering lots of projects if you give a shit about it. I haven't shown my reel to enough people but I also feel like it doesn't tell them what I have learned in the past few months. Once it better represents the direction I am going in, I will have to start bothering every teacher and student I can. So give me some crits!

Puppy Cat

Yo. Had some free time. Decided to try to do another quadruped cycle. I only worked on it for like an hour so I feel pretty good about it so far. I didn't really do any minute tweaking and there are a few controls on his feet that will help him look like he's launching off the ground so I need to add those values sometime.

And I posted my stick fights onto Newgrounds.
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/539933

Hip Hop!

The final for Rocky's Character Animation...I picked a tough one. Old school break dancing has some wild traits to it. Dancers want to do unrealistic things. They try to make it look like they are floating and sliding you know...the moonwalk and all that. But when it comes to animation it helps to exaggerate things and plus real life goes by QUICK! I got some good critiques from the few other students in the class and from Rocky and I know I can make this look a lot better if I amplify the weight how I did in the beginning throughout the piece. Consistency! 'Floaty' is the word I want to avoid.

THE FOOKIN' FURY!

Waiting for the bus! This piece is sort of boring man! Randolf filmed us acting out waiting for a bus...I showed my brother Rudy and he said it looks like an impatient wait. More like waiting for a cab you called or something. It was all about the subtle, moving holds.


Here is my final for Randolf's Intermediate 3D Animation class. I love this piece but something weird happened where I accidentally deleted the faces on his right arm and right eye! So wtf! How do I fix that? I need to transfer the animation to a clean rig and I was looking up how to do that and people have made scripts for it but I was going to try and use the Trax Editor...but I couldn't figure it out!


Here is a walk cycle I was working on in Rocky's Character Animation. I messed up the first one so I started over. I still see some weird stuff with that I could do much better. But again...it appears it would be easier to start fresh.

Here is my midterm from Character Animation. I took a scene from the intro of Aladdin. The little dude gets off the camel and starts talking about the story after he sings Arabian Nights. That is what these movements are based off of. I think it turned out okay but it would be cooler if I added the audio and went back to do the lip-syncing.


One of my favorites. This was super fun. Everyone had to do a different kung fu move for the Character Animation midterm. I told Rudy what I had to do and he decided to help me out by letting me film him doing some combative maneuvers. He did a pretty high kick towards the end that seriously was like the highest kick I have ever seen him do so I decided to animate that one.

UNLEASH THE FURY!

This is the first assignment that I did for Randolf's Intermediate 3D Animation. For some reason I didn't post this stuff...some of it I still need to compress before it will fit but hopefully I can get all my good 3d up here for people to check out.


This was the second one from Int. 3D. The walk cycle. I didn't really "finish" this one because I never added animations to the ENTIRE body but I know that I should probably just start a new one and it would go by smoother and faster. I have learned a lot about 3d animation in the last 11 weeks...


Here is the run cycle I tried to do but didn't really finish this one either! Dammit! The Caged Tiger...


The Quadruped! Here is one of my favorites because I got pretty damn close to being satisfied with it. (For my current amount of knowledge anyway...) I know I could do some more work on the tail and stuff but I think it's not far off!


POSING! POSING IN THE DISTANCE! POSING FOR A PORTRAIT! POSING A THREAT! This one was fun. I went and got five different reference pics then I put Norman, one of my favorite rigs so far obviously, into the poses and added some moving holds. Word! This was the pre-cursor to our "Waiting At The Bus" piece.