I Love You Maya

I got up at stupid o'clock this morning, ready to crack on to what I thought would be a very productive day!
So, I sit down with a cup of tea, and start up my computer - Today, texturing is on the menu!
I load up the flower scene I'm going to work on in Maya, and the UVs in Photoshop. All good so far... I've done about two of the flowers attached to the plant when I decide that yeah, I should check out what this looks like when rendered... Nothing happens. Awesome! Nothing works, and nor my helpful course mate or Autodesks help forum has anything that is working... And to put the cherry on top - now Photoshop wont let me re-save the Uvs I'm working on, and Maya wont reload the textures.

As I have little patience when it comes to technology failing on me, and even less patience for failing technology without any solution on how to fix the problem, I got angry.
So after punching the wall and trying and failing several times, I figured it was better to get my frustration out via Photoshop.



I would like to dedicate this drawing to Autodesk Maya, and the amount of times it has driven me to madness.



_{Faen ta deg}

To the millions of readers out there...

I just want to apologise for the extreme lack of 'blog-updating'!
I have been drowning myself in dissertation work, and neglecting my blog for far to long now.

Right, so what have I been doing other than working on my dissertation?
For the third year, I am currently working on three projects; Kernel, The Dark Decent, and Hole. Kernel is the only CG short film that made it through this year, so I thought 'better get in on that!' and The Dark Decent and Hole are both 2D animated shorts.

So, for Kernel I've been doing some concept art for the desk area, and for the dome. Here you have the concept art for the desk. (I can't find the one for the dome so stay tuned for that one)

And now as the project moves on I am working as a texture painter. Currently freshening up those old texture skills.
Look at this amazing suitcase, which has been unwrapped amazingly. YEAH!

For Hole, I am working as a line cleaner, so on that front not much has been done. I have just been practicing in specialising on Sian's style, so that when the linecleaning kicks off, it will be easier and faster to do the work needed.

For The Dark Decent, I am... responsible of all the colouring! Everything from backgrounds, filling in colour to the characters and so on is what I'm doing.
Did some style tests of the old man and the dog:

Speed Painting \o/

As this week is going a bit slow on the work front, I thought I'd freshen up my speed painting skills :p
30 min give/take a little pr drawing.

Pitchin' Escaping Reality

Escaping Reality
For my final year project I wanted to do a 2D short film about a girl named Heather who got too involved in videogames. Heather struggles with bills, an unrewarding job and lack of friends, and to cope with all of this she finds comfort in videogames.

I wanted to go for the more comic-looking style, but I was advised to make it more stylized.
So I went from this

To this

The changes aren't massive, but it was as much I was willing to change it without losing my own style completely. The last picture is done so you can see the contrast between her world in the real world contra the word inside the videogame.The pictures further down is just to show the style I was going for, and what Heather and her avatar would look like.

Swing Heil!

Tørken er over! Or the drought is over as you would say in english...

I haven't had any colouring to do for the crew assignment in ages.
I did colour one of the backgrounds over easter
Tadaaa!

But after a while, I got some frames to colour yaaaay \o/
One shot is when Marielle is looking around the door, and the other one is the bridge shoot.
I love work like this. I find colouring much more amusing than 'doing the actual animating'.
Kat has been an angel giving me a colour and brush panel to use, which is making my work go twice as fast. However, the brushes are a pit of a pain in the butt, because when you need to zoom in to do the details it's impossible to make it look clean. But I made it work.
So, here are what I'vwe done so far.

Post Production

The hand in for our post-production project was today, and we actually managed to finish it in time.

This project was a lot of fun to work on because it gave me the opportunity to learn some new stuff.
I got to make a rig, and yes, it is a really simple one, but it thaught me the 'basics' of how to do it.
I found rigging to be quite fun (even though I wanted to pull my hair out at times) and it's something I want to learn properly so I will be practicing to get better at it.

I also did some of the compositing.
For this part, I put a mask around the laptop, making it overlay Dave so it looks like he is behind it.
To make the coke dissapear as Dave sweeped over it I took one still from the real life footage in to Photoshop and edited out the coke. Then Miguel made the coke as a seperate layer, and in Composite I put a mask over the coke to make it look like Dave was sweeping it up.

I also worked on putting the footage together, and making it look 'real'. It was a bit hard to make it look right (I'm still not a 100% happy with it)
Because the P2 cameras are of excedingly poor quality Dave looked hyper-real compared to the real life footage.


And then, just for funsies, I put some sounds on it!
Enjoy \o/

Post Production wip

Allrighty!
For our post-production project I've been working on rigging Dave. Seeing that this is the first time I've rigged something, I'm a little bit proud to say he is now done.

I've made to different ones. I made one with an IK handle, and one without. Jake wanted to see if it would make it easier and faster for him to animate Dave with the Ik. I'm not sure if it'll look 'real' enough but we'll just have to try.


Here he is! The Dave text isnt up yet but that's no hurry. (Jake sorted out a nice texture for the nose)




Did a test just to see that it worked.