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.