Happy Halloween!

It's not finished yet, but Happy HALLOWEEN!

(I'll eventually post a series that shows the progression of its creation along with the finished product)

What happened to you?!

This month for the 11 Second Club I'm doing an entry set in a hospital. Though it's a competition solely for animation, I like to try to push myself in other areas of CG in my entries (in areas like lighting, TD stuff, rendering, and post work).

Anyway, this month took me a little deeper into the world of After Effects. My entries normally involve some After Effects work but this got me doing things I haven't done before. I made an animated EKG heart monitor and did a DIY rack focus move. Surprisingly, the EKG part was pretty simple and the rack focus turned out to be more difficult. I tried to keyframe the focal point of the Lens Blur I had set up, but it it just turned into a mess. I tried to adjust the white/black points to do a more "manual" form of changing to focal point. Double mess.

Eventually I just had to have two different images with different static focuses and fade between them. Then I just keyed a gaussian blur on the EKG screen (which was a separate object).  I'm sure there's an easier way to achieve all of this but, for now, this works.

Swashbuckler update!

I've done a bit more to tweak the timing, gave him some more life while he's swinging in, and some various other things. The soldier character's been referenced into the scene now, though I'm still not finished outfitting him in his armor.



As you can see in that playblast, I've set up some lights. So here are a few screenshots showing the lighting setup so far.

Everything looks good so far (within reason). The back ground will be tweaked and other things will be tweaked, but it looks ok.

Alright, things are still looking pretty good.

And then the problem rears its head. Oh my god, look at those eyes and teeth. Black and totally dead. I'm going to need to set up some lights linked just for lighting the eyes or bump up the ambient color on their shaders.

Coming up (after I finish the soldier man and lock down animation), fire using fluid effects!

Mad Max... Future Past... Something or Other

So I watched Mad Max the other day. I think the thing that I came away with most was a certain atmosphere that George Miller was able to create. Even when the movie should have been downright odd or lame, it wasn't. He was somehow able to convey an apocalyptic tone (which sort of gave him free reign to create this anything-goes film) without the typical grey skies and bombed out cities. A lot of the film took place in broad daylight.

It inspired me to try to make an image that conveyed the same sort of apocalyptic feel in a pleasant setting (appropriately a day lit desert). Then, of course, the brain train started rolling and I decided to make sister (or brother?) images: one in modern-ish times and one in the Wild West. Both should convey a sort of personal apocalypse for the characters involved and both are going to use the same setting (yay! less background painting) but in one it's horses and the other it's automobiles.

After 20 minutes of roughing I have this.

I'll track the progress.

Swashbuckler Drop Kick WIP

This is a new piece I've been working on for the last day or two. Using a personally modified version of Josh Burton's excellent Morphy release candidate rig. It still needs a bit of polish and facial animation (eyes!) but it's time to get some feedback on this puppy.

New Blog!

This blog will hopefully be a home base for all of my personal endeavors relating to animation. So far it includes my portfolio and reel and other relevant info for employers or those just looking to say hi.

Hopefully I'll actually keep up with the blog portion. We'll see.

-Adam