Tommy - "The Batman"

Cycle Test (WIP)

I've been trying my hand at creating cycles using the "Something" rig, courteously provided by the multi-talented Rodney Brett. Seriously, that's it's name. The "Something." Whatever it is, the only thing that's certain is that it is a huge derp. 

If this creature were in an RPG, it would be one of those laughably weak monsters that are inexplicably fun to beat to a pulp. I really wanted to incorporate this into my animations for this character. Everything it does looks stupid from the lagging tongue to his floppy eyes that can't keep up with his head.

What we have here are four animation cycles (idle, idle action, walk and run) combined and blended together using Maya's Trax Editor. The run is not complete, but the other three are pretty much done. I may create some transitional animations as well for certain connections. Each cycle took about a day, though I'm confident I could do all four of them again in one.

Cycle Test from Michael DiNocco on Vimeo.

Sañ the Saguaro Cactoid

It has been a while since my last post, but I assure you new things are in the works. I've been putting more time into developing my Cactoid story and the main character, Sañ. The name is based off the O’odham word for saguaro cactus (O'odham is the Uto-Aztecan language of southern Arizona and northern Sonora).

I'll release more details on the story in the future, but for now I'll leave you with some quick character design sketches and a turnaround for Sañ, which is being used to create a 3D model which I plan on having rigged for animation.

Tommy - Crying Wolf

Onami Dialogue Test [WIP]

Here's a piece I started working on about two months ago. It is a dialogue test using audio from Karate Kid 2. I ended up taking a break for a while to focus on applying for jobs before starting up on it again about 2 1/2 weeks ago. I ended up redoing a large portion of it from what might as well have been from scratch, but I'm happy to say that the quality has really grown exponentially because of that. I'm just about done with it sans lip-sync, which still needs a fair bit of work. I'd like to have this done and on my reel by tomorrow, so be looking for an updated demo reel (finally) very soon.

I'm exited to try a new workflow used by Michael Makarewicz, a Pixar animator who recently came to Ex'pression to give a lecture/demo on animating. His workflow really seems in tune with the way I'd like to work, but I was never sure how to go about efficiently. I'm hoping that will help really overhaul the speed at which I work. My goal is to be able to finish something like this within a week of 8-10 hour work days and this new workflow might be just the ticket I need to meet that goal.

Da'mu

Da'mu is a character I created and modeled for the "Creative Pre-Production" class at Ex'pression. The class entailed creating armatures for our models, sculpting them with super sculpy clay, baking them, and finally painting them. Additionally, we had to create a short animatic that told a story about the character, which I will post later once it's uploaded to Vimeo.

"Olympic Whispers"

I worked alongside over a dozen fellow students at Ex'pression College for Digital Art to create this short film from scratch in 2 weeks for presentation in the Cinemagic International Film Festival for Young People.

The project is part 2 of 3 in a series of films, where each segment was required to begin with the last frame of the one that preceeded it. Instructors were not allowed to offer any help beyond introducing us to the project. 

My roles on the project included animation, painting skin weights on rigs, and providing troubleshooting help.

A part of "Olympic Whispers" from Cinemagic's International Film Festival for Young People from Michael DiNocco on Vimeo.

New "Tommy"

Second strip done for Firecracker Weekly, a print/digital newspaper aimed at children in the 6-14 age range.

Piano Turntable

This is a piano I modeled in a week in Maya. This was for a 2-week modeling and shading workshop (we didn't quite get through the entirety of the shading part...modeling ran longer than expected I think) taught at Ex'pression by Pixar veterans, Andrew Dayton and Josh Qualtieri. Both are modelers there, with Andrew being a hard-surface guy and Josh creating ground-planes and shaders.

During the workshop, we learned about critical elements for model construction, such as proper edge-flow, polygon efficiency/optimization, how UVs are layed out for film as opposed to games (though UVs in film are well on their way out the door), how to use Pixar's Renderman for shading, and why it is important to distinguish texturing from shading in the film world.

We also learned how to make our models feel more realistic by utilizing "wear" passes to make the object feel like it has been used. If you look around, you'll notice how there is rarely a perfectly straight line on any hard-surface. By doing this, you'll end up with fantastic and subtle occlusion in your AO passes and give your model that extra, "Oomph."

This model is sort of a hyrbid between game and film quality. In a film, this could get away with being a medium-to-long-distance object. In a film, the flat panels would have edge-loops running through them to create even quads, but in a game they would devoid of these extra loops to save polys as seen here. Of course, at roughly 35,000 tris, this would be never really be acceptable in a game unless it a realllly important piano...maybe not even then :P

The Starfish Ninja Teaser Trailer is Finally Here!

The Starfish Ninja teaser trailer is finally here! Directed by Joe Daniels, with music done by Emmy award-winning composer Eric Arvai, the road to completion has been a long one. Hundreds of hours of work from dozens of talented artists went into this project. Starfish Ninja has been the brain child of Joe Daniels since 2005 and it has been an honor to contribute in finalizing the first step toward his dream of making SFN a television series for children and adults of all ages. The story revolves around our reluctant hero, a Starfish with a dream of becoming a ninja, who finds himself forced to take on the responsibility of saving the ocean from a variety of nefarious sea creatures and villains.

The rendering was done using Maya 2012's new Viewport 2.0 Hardware rendering, allowing renders to be pumped out at 1-2 seconds a frame (compared to ~10 sec/f when using Mental Ray). The compositors and lighters, Asif Haque, Janine LaBar and Curtis Cheung, did an amazing job here considering the unusual workflow. Shout-outs to my fellow animators, Kimberlee Allyn, Gillian Mantchev, Elissa Peterson and Zsuzi Czompo, whom I worked side-by-side with for months to bring the diverse cast to life. To Peter Whiteside, Abraham Rodriguez, and Jenna Kind, our dynamics crew. Without their contributions we'd of had no bubbles, sand poofs, chains, or billowing sand clouds to take each shot to the next level. And, to Claire Bussell, Jared Newkirk, and Robert Garcia, our modelers, who created epic environments and set-pieces for the characters to live in. I apologize if I've missed anyone here (let me know so I can add you!). Just know that your hard work and dedication certainly have not gone unnoticed.

Anyhow, without further ado, here it is: the one and only Starfish Ninja!

SFN Audio Storyboards

Storyboards I did for a Starfish Ninja dialogue test using audio from Karate Kid 2. The timing is too fast in a few places, but this was just meant to give the animators a quick read of the idea/scope (rather than being an actual animatic) of the project.

Tommy

Tommy is a character I came up with several years ago. The tone and style of the comic is heavily inspired by Calvin & Hobbes with a good dose of Lio thrown in the mix (which in and of itself is heavily C&H inspired).

Pencil & Paper

Having been in front of a computer using software like Maya and Photoshop for so long, it's easy to forget about life drawing. For the past few weeks I've been attending my school's Saturday figure drawing sessions. My gesture drawings really need work; I'd forgotten how difficult it is to draw a figure in 2 min or less.

Here are some 10 min drawings from a couple weeks ago:

The Art of Rigging

Above: Me attempting to learn how to rig today.

Today I spent the better part of my morning and afternoon following an excellent tutorial that takes you step-by-step through the entire production pipeline in order to create a transforming robot. While much of the pipeline, especially the concept art and modeling stages, greatly interest me, I've felt for a while now that, as an animator, one of the most valuable skill-sets I can learn to compliment my focus is rigging.

For anyone who doesn't know, rigging is a highly structured process that involves creating a skeleton out of joints, creating controls that drive these joints, skinning a mesh (3d model) to the skeleton, painting the skin weights (how the skin deforms when flexed, relaxed, or tensed), and a whole other host of additional processes (dynamics, skin clusters, GUIs, etc.).

I have always wanted to create my own character for my animation reel, namely one of my Cactoid creatures some of you may have seen. While this is a large reason for my desire to learn this new skill-set, there is much more to it than that.

Whereas animation is a somewhat structured, but mostly free-flowing and pure form of art, rigging is rigid, unforgiving, and requires a whole different mentality when approached compared to animation. One could say that animation is like water-bending, while rigging is akin to earth-bending (by the way, I'm an "Avatard" if you didn't already know). A great advantage to being an animator and rigger is that you know exactly what sorts of tools you want and how to lay them out intuitively for other animators.

What I hope to get out of rigging is an improved ability to think more technically when problem-solving and recognize where I can use clever tricks and techniques to speed up my workflow in animation. Forcing myself to try and understand the more of the technical aspects of Maya will be a challenge, but the reward will be sweet.

Cactoid sketches!

Some sketches I drew of my Cactoid creature recently. I've been playing around with a few ideas, like what they look like as they get older (beards made of spines), how a forked tongue might look, and how they decompose when nearing death. The bats, which live alongside the Cactoids for life and pollinate their female partners, clearly don't mind feeding on the last remaining nutrients of their Cactoid buddies' decomposing body. The circle of life sure is morbid.

Demo Reel Update

Crank that baby up to 1080p!

Squid Shot Comped!

The squid I animated has now been composited by director Joe Daniels, amplifying its awesome-ness levels ten-fold. 





All Starfish Ninja work is copyrighted by Joseph Daniels. I do not own any of the characters, assets, or story.

Demo Reel Update: Squid Shot

Here's an animation update on the squid shot from my demo reel. The director had told me there wasn't enough weight behind the squid in the previous version, so I ended up deleting a bunch of keys and redoing most of it. The first time around took me about 1 1/2 weeks, whereas this took me about 5 days. It feels good to see the speed of my workflow steadily rising.

Old version:


New version:


Update 2/15: After repositioning the tentacles, adding more offset and overlap to tentacles, adjusting the beak, mantle, and fins, and fine-tuning the timing all around, this shot has finally been approved!



Man this squid was a pain in the neck, but I learned a lot from it. Creatures are no easy task, but with the help of Joe Daniels, the director, I was able to really push my animation farther. With that said, I hope I never have to work with tentacles again.

All Starfish Ninja work is copyrighted by Joseph Daniels. I do not own any of the characters, assets, or story.

Graduation

First post of the new year. Can't believe how long it has been since my last one. I'll definitely try to remember to update more often this year.

Well, I finally graduated from Expression College for Digital Arts this last Thursday. After 2 1/2 years being in the same place, around the same friends every day, it sort of feels surreal knowing I am done with school for what is hopefully the rest of my life. The only way to get better is to keep practicing your craft, so my primary goal right now is to simply stay busy. With Starfish Ninja, the Cinemagic "Olympics" project, personal work, and an upcoming interview, it seems I'll be doing just that.