Dangerously Drawn

Art dump

2011-10-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

So it's been a while since I put pencil to paper, or did anything creative in general. For the last few weeks I've been endeavouring to change this.

I picked up an issue of 3D Artist because it had this wicked tutorial on how to model this stylised woman by this awesome modeler named Andy Hickinbottom and this totally inspired. Initially I was going to create my own design and try to walk through Andy's tutorial but as I spoke with some people at work this thing sort of evolved into my first zbrush sculpt project. Rather than go through some oldschool modelling techniques pushing verts and edges around I'm going to dive right in to zbrush.

Initially the design started off as a saucy witch. I spent a lot of time looking at pop culture (the Disney rogues gallery most prominently) and 40's pin up references, even cheesy Halloween costumes.

Nothing seemed to stick until I landed on Yzma from Emperor's New Groove but even then the design was missing something. So I started straying further afield and began looking at haute couture in the hopes of seeing something strange and wonderful that simply worked. Besides Yzma was more of a flapper girl from the 20's and 30's than your archetypal witch. Seemed like the right path to follow.

Nothing seemed to pop out, all of them had elements that I liked but none of them were the one. Until I went off on a bit of a tangent..

Now I'm just quickly blocking this in with primitives in Maya that I'll import into zbrush. And if this doesn't work I can try to use the zbrush mannequin.

Going to be bugging the crap out of the character guys for pointers for the next little while.

Dangerous cat-like reflexes

2011-05-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

Feel free to offer any feedback or criticism. This is the first bit of genuine animation I think I've done in two years. No mocap tweaking, no facefx, no rotoscoped facial data.

Heavy skip cycle

2011-04-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

The goal is an exercise a day

2011-03-14T16:36:00.001-07:00

To work off the rust and work my way up to something bigger. I think I'll do two more quick exercises and then work on something more elaborate. A dialogue or two character interaction.

And now for something completely different...

2011-03-08T14:55:00.000-08:00

Trying to work off the rust with some asic animation exercises. Here's a Preston Blair style walk cycle with the Scout from TF2.

2011-03-04T15:31:00.000-08:00

Moving forward...sort of.

2011-03-04T12:45:00.000-08:00

So my rigging, modeling and weighting changes have carried over in the over-written reference file the rig file is pointing to, now on to grafting controls, set driven keys and blend shapes. After all the time I spend skin weighting and animating the joints to various visemes I think I'm going to try my hand at blend shapes. There just needs to be more information in the topology and more bones and more skin weighting done to improve the deformations and I could probably get with not doing that by creating blend shapes. Also I get to learn about blend shapes work in Maya.

Giving it 110%

2011-03-01T12:11:00.000-08:00

Sporting metaphors really shouldn't apply to skin weighting but they seem to with Maya's weight painting brush. With the weight brush you can add more than 100% of value to a given vert. I've spent the last few days in the component editor correcting the values assigned to pretty much every vertice in the face. After a littler more tuning to the cheeks/checck bones and nasal folds I'll be ready to overwrite the Heavy_Reference file and move on to the Heavy_Rig file. I'm going to be grafting on rig controls for the face, set driven keys for the visemes and some blend shapes for visemes that are difficult to hit rather than adjusting the topology further and adding more bones.

All in all it's coming along well, perhaps not as quickly as it would in Max, but it's getting there. By the end of the week it should be ready to animate with. Now it's just a matter of deciding which bit of dialogue I want to animate to...

Austrian Death Machine - Double Ahnuld

Austrian Death Machine - Intro to the Intro

Conan the Barbarian - The Musical

Predator - The Musical

I love the idea of animating one of the musicals but that's a pretty massive project, even just the Austrian Death Machine dialogues are kinda lengthy. Got time to think about it while I rig the face.

BWAH

2011-02-24T17:36:00.000-08:00

The slow and dull journey of editing the weight values by component mode continues.

Weighting the jaw and the lips always takes the most time. Hopefully I can put in a good days slog tomorrow and get the weighting done, leaving just the set driven keys for the visemes and some basic controls.

Local rotation axes fun times!

2011-02-16T14:38:00.001-08:00

Got a little ahead of myself with the weighting and forget to adjust the local rotation axes of the joints of the face rig. I didn't touch the local rotation axes of the joints on Valve's body rig, just what I'm totally hacking in.

Before:

After:

I'm not certain if it's wise to have the local rotation axes the same as the world or if I should have the y axis pointing towards the parent bone. I'm sure I'll find out when this explodes when I try to animate it. In my defence it's not an entirely uneducated decision, through my work I've had the chance to look at some professional face rigs and the local rotatin axes were the same as the world...

On to the weighting.

Progress update

2011-02-13T00:17:00.000-08:00

Probably digging myself a hole, but the joints are in place and some minor modeling has been done so it has eyes and eyelids. I may add in a few more edge loops around the mouth so it deforms a bit better. The mouth sack will definitely need an edge loop or two. It's just one poly from lip to top or bottom.

I think with the way Valve structured the files, I',=m going to have to add the nurbs curve controls and possibly the set driven keys for the face rig in the other file. But I'm getting ahead of myself, still have the weighting to do. Wee!

One of the many reasons why Valve is awesome

2011-02-11T18:30:00.000-08:00

They provide you with Maya files of their nearly fully rigged characters in your Steam Source SDK dir.

I say nearly fully rigged because the model doesn't include a face rig, but that should be simple enough to take care of.

After some quick rigging and slight modeling changes--eyelids and eyes, maybe a few more edgeloops around the mouth--I'll be able to start doing some animation. Woo!

Ibuki's on hold, for the moment

2009-07-11T10:40:00.000-07:00

So I lucked out and have finally managed to make my way into the world of the gainfully employed, at a game studio no less (woo!). Sadly that means I have to put this project on hold until I can get Maya up and running at home but first, as part of Operation Continued Employment, I need to start learning my way around 3D Studio Max.

3 steps back, 1 step forward

2009-06-19T17:26:00.001-07:00

I don't know if I'm stubborn or stupid, probably a bit of both, but I've decided not only to get rid of my old weight map but my rig and constraints as well. The old weight map was simply too far gone and the old rig and constraints were simply too limited. I also took the opportunity to improve the edge flow of certain areas of my base mesh, add edge loops in others to help improve how the character deforms as well as some quick modeling touch ups. The new rig, as pictured below, has more Joints that will require more work with the weight painting but in the end it will deform better. Hopefully.

A thoughtful friend emailed me a link where I could download some mel scripts for custom skinning tools, thanks Brendan. I was able to addthe script and play around with it a bit today, the mel appears to combine the component editor and weight painting tools in one easy to access menu. We'll see how the weight painting goes tomorrow. When I skin I'll make sure to remove the unnecessary influences--like Ankle Joints from the Pants geo--and hold bones when painting values and smoothing. If there are any anomalies, which I suspect there will be when I smooth, I'll just have to delve into the component editor and manually remove the aberrant values.

I'm not certain if this is the best hierarchy I could have come up with, I couldn't figure out exactly how I wanted the shoulder blades and collar bones connected. I ended up going with having the collar bones seperate from the shoulder blades and arms, we'll see if I come to regret that later. Given that this will probably just be posed I'm not too worried about the hierarchy, it would probably suck to animate though.

Also I took this opportunity to add in the secondary action you were asking for Singh.

I did have even more joints in the thigh, calf, and rib cage but I figured that was going a bit overkill and probably into territory where the muscle system should be used to maintain volumes. Once I have some more experience with rigging I might try some more complicated rigs involving even more Joints to maintain volumes and deform better.

The process should go by quicker given that it's not exactly my first time doing it now. I was able to do my quick fixes and recreate the rig in about half the time it took me on my first attempt. Today was a much better day than the last few.

Ibuki WIP, update 8

2009-06-17T15:42:00.001-07:00

I am frustrated beyond belief with Maya's weighting tools, my understanding of them is clearly lacking and I simply cannot get the kind of deformation that I want with this character. I keep getting these anomalous values and I don't know how to make Maya stop doing that. I need to watch some more tutorials and figure this out since it's supposed to be a part of my new demo reel.

Here's the rough pose I'm going to end up rendering the character off in. At this juncture I'm unsure if I want to attempt to do some basic animations with this character, the rig is really basic. I also want to get on to simply doing some animation, no more modeling or rigging or dealing with issues that arise because of either.

Today I learned an important lesson

2009-06-16T16:46:00.000-07:00

And that's the difference between Delete All By Type > History and Delete All By Type > Non-Deformer History and what it means to and does to your rig. One option deletes your modeling history, the other sodomizes your rig. Normally I'm pretty good about iterating saves and testing out major changes but yesterday that wasn't the case. I pushed the sodomize rig button, didn't test out any of the changes, saved, closed the program and today I discovered I lost about half a days work when I showed a friend what I was working on.

Well, I'll never make that mistake again.

Also I'd like to add that the Smooth Brush in the Paint Skin Weights Tool is a terrible, terrible tool. Even if I remove Joints influence from a particular piece of geometry, like how the ankle Joints have no business influencing the pants, or if I lock/hold the Joints in the Paint Skin Weight Tool option the Smooth Brush STILL adds value anomalies and gives me this ridiculous deformations that simply should not be happening. The Smooth Brush doesn't logically spread the value between the only two unlocked/unheld Joints that should be influencing the geometry it gives value to random joints in the hierarchy. I've spent so much time trying to make Smooth Brush not suck, I could have spent the same time just manually painting in the values with the Replace Brush, which is what I'm going to do now. I'll manually paint in the values on one side and mirror everything.

Ibuki WIP, update 7 - Weight Painting Fun Times!

2009-06-15T17:03:00.000-07:00

Weight painting has been a bit of an exercise in frustration, partially because I'm learning how to do it in a new program and I always seem to struggle with achieve the level of deformation that I want but I've also been encountering this weird issue with the smoothing brush. Every time I try to smooth the values between two joints I get this anomaly where a small percentage of deformation value is assigned to what seems to be a really random joint far, far down in the hierarchy. Like the ball of the foot joint will somehow control some small percentage of the values of a bit of geometry that should be entirely controlled by the C.O.G. or hip joint. It's been kind of maddening trying to fix all of these little weird niggling issues.

The weight painting is done, for now, I'm fairly certain that once I start to animate or pose the character I'll encounter some hideous issues. That always seems to happen. At least I can finally move on to texturing and normal mapping. I may have to come up with some basic eye constraints, or I could just get by with simply rotating her eyes when I pose her.

I can see the light is at the end of the tunnel.

Here are my (likely less than impressive) UV's. I have no aspirations to be a texture artist so my UV maps probably aren't organized as effeciently as they could be, there's probably some space I could maximiaze a bit better, but whatever. There's no overlapping UV's, which I understand would be my largest cause for concern when normal mapping.

Ibuki WIP, update 6

2009-06-03T19:44:00.000-07:00

Ibuki WIP, update 5

2009-06-02T19:57:00.001-07:00

I've begun learning how to rig in Maya. maya's joint system seems to be a bit more flexible than XSI's bones while setting up constraints in Maya is...different. I have fixed the orientation of all my joints, making sure their axis' are facing the correct way so things do go snakey with additive rotation. I've got the IK set up on both the legs and arms, the feet/leg IK have successfully been constrained, everything's been appropriately named and labeled so the initial weighting will work out well, the COG and upper torso have both been constrained to allow for independent upper body movement. All I have left are the hands IK constraints and some curve constraints for the ponytails. Then weight painting fun times can begin.

Ibuki WIP, update 4

2009-05-29T17:15:00.001-07:00

I ended up nuking a lot of the detail I had modeled in the previous week. I deleted all of the volumes the clothing had, basically converting almost every article of clothing to a poly plane because it was simply a nightmare to UV unwrap everything, especially the torn Gi sleeves. I could have left the UV's a mess, gone with little to no detail, relying largely on shaders, lighting and AO to fill in the blanks or used automatic UV's in zbrush but the point of this exercise is to learn other programs and techniques, like normal mapping, that I currently don't know. I also deleted the base mesh and reworked an older iteration because there was too much unneeded complexity, RoadKill was eating up over 50% of my computers physical memory, selecting a single edge had a delay of a few seconds, it was just unworkable.

The good news is it only took me two days to fix everything and make it as painless and simple as possible to UV everything.

I don't know how I would UV anything if it wasn't for RoadKill.

Now I can finally apply what I've been learning about rigging and skinning in Maya. By Wednesday I should have Ibuki fully rigged and skinned leaving just the texturing and normal mapping. The project's going a little slower than I would like but 3d always seems to take more time than you initially imagine.

Ibuki WIP, update 3

2009-05-25T09:25:00.001-07:00

Edge flow was fixed, volume was added to most of the clothing, muscle system was used to shrink wrap various bits of the clothing better to the model, the ripped sleeves, hair strands, belt and head wrap ties were modeled and instances have been merged. Now I'm ready to UV and start to learn maya's rigging system.

I ganked XSI man's eyes and discovered I just have to do some quick resphaping with the head. The sockets aren't quite the right shape.

Ibuki WIP update 2

2009-05-19T15:28:00.000-07:00

I've taken the base mesh of the character and the clothing out of zbrush back into, added volume to most of the clothing, fixed some of the edge flow and started making the details in maya that I couldn't in zbrush (the gloves and torn gi sleeves).

I re-exported the base mesh back into zbrush, increased the geometry by one subdivision and brought it back to maya and then used maya's muscle system to shrink wrap some of the clothing on to the base mesh.

I imagine that I'll have one more day of modeling details (hair and a few more bits of clothing) and merging the instances together and then I can move on to UV'ing and rigging. I'd probably be further along with this if I wasn't having to split up my time between school and looking for a new place to live. This project is going a little slower than I would like. But it's necessary to learn the ins and outs of the hyper shader and rigging in maya.

Ibuki WIP, update 1

2009-05-12T17:49:00.000-07:00

I've been mucking about with Zbrush for the last two days, I have become more accustomed to the interface and more familiar with the various brushes. It's such a powerful tool. I was able to make the clothing pretty painlessly through re-topology. once I finish off the arm bands I'll have the base meshes done. Then I can import all of the items as objs into Maya, clean up the topology a bit, make a few detail items (ripped sleeves, hair, etc.) and UV everything so I can normal map the character. If I decide to go that route.

Ibuki, a work in progress

2009-05-08T17:18:00.001-07:00

While searching for a job I've come up with a make work project to help teach myself more of Maya (specifically rigging and using the hyper shader), to have better understanding of Zbrush and normal mapping as well as having something worth posting on CGTalk.

A classmate of mine made a pretty kick ass Chun-Li and that inspired myself and a some of my classmates to try our hand at making our own Street Fighter characters. I've chosen Ibuki, the ninja girl from Street Fighter 3.

Since I'm not too comfortable using ZSpheres I started modeling the base mesh for the characcter in Maya 2009. This is the seventh thing, I believe, that I've modeled thus far and the first attempt at modeling a woman. I used this tutorial as a jumping off point because it showed a fair bit of process.

I kind of skirted the line between the reference and the artwork.

The torso was based off of a cylinder as were the arms and the legs. Since I'm not too worried about the topology I just boolean'd the cylinders together with spheres to get the shape of the shoulders and the butt and cleaned up the mess as I went along. I didn't want to spend too much time manipulating vertices and what not since I was going to fix it in Zbrush.

I ganked the hands, feet and ears off of xsi man, the head started off as the simple woman's head you can generate from primitive>characters in xsi took them into Maya as obj's and frankenstien'd everything together. The hands, feet and ears are largely the same but the head had to be modified quite a bit. this is what I ended up with this.

I dubbed the base mesh He-Ra Princess of Power. The shoulders were way too large, the neck was too thick from the front view and the head was too long and tall, but that's what Zbrush is for.

After working on the character in Zbrush for a while I ended up having to export my base mesh back into Maya from Zbrush to clean up some of the geo and fix some of the vertices. They weren't quite center and the symmetrical sculpting in Zbrush was getting thrown off. Here's what I have to take back into ZBrush.

Definitely looking a bit more feminine and stylised but the neck looks a little too long, as does the lower half of her body. Nothing I can't fix in ZBrush. Once I get the proportions and the shape exactly where I want them to be I'll take the base mesh back into Maya, fix whatever topology issues the mesh has, create the base mesh for her costume and UV everything so I can normal map it all. I think most of the normal mapping will be done on her clothing but her body will definitely need at least one higher level of subdivision to smooth it all out.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the project up to this point, I've finally started to wrap my head around ZBrush's interface and modeling with ZBrush is so much more fun, artistic even, than the ol' extrude, point/face/edge manipulation.

By the end of next week I hope to have Ibuki ready to be textured and rigged. Then I can move on to learning how to animate in Maya. I can start off with some simple animated poses with Ibuki and then segue into doing full on animation with some downloadable rigs. I want to have an entirely new portfolio and demo reel to take around to all of the studios I've just applied to.

Next week I hope to have a complete or nearly complete modeled/normal mapped character to post.

Dan Lindberg 09 Demo Reel 1.0

2009-04-23T17:02:00.000-07:00

Disposable portfolio pages

2009-04-23T16:16:00.000-07:00

Cloney Island Animatic.

2009-03-20T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here's the animatic for my Cloney Island demo reel short.

I definitely need to re-record the dialogue to improve its sound quality and get rid of the background sounds from the show. I also need to combine a baby crying with a T-Rex roar for when Super Atomic baby Abe punches through and ganks the mad scientist type guy.

Demo Reel Storyboard

2009-03-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

Here's the story board for my (apparently bizarre) demo reel film idea.

I'm using a line of dialogue from the twelfth episode of Clone High, which at this point I think I'm going to re-record for the sake of changing a word and increasing the sound quality. The clip I currently have is mono and ganked off of Youtube. It's a line of dialogue by Principal Scudsworth.

"I first came up with the idea for Cloney Island after watching the movie Jurassic Park 3. But my ill-conceived amusement park will be filled with human clones instead of zoo animals. It's as fool proof as the amusement park in the movie itself."

I want to change the words zoo animals to dinosaurs and I'm tempted to shoe horn in the words super atomic before human clones, although that might be a bit much. I already have an animatic done and just need to convert it to an avi or quicktime from a swf so I can host it on youtube.

Wow, two months has gone by.

2008-11-08T23:57:00.001-08:00

I feel like I've blinked and two months has just flown by. It just seems like just the other day I was first learning how to model a hand and now I now how to rig, paint weight maps, model characters and environments, face shapes, constrain, create basic ICE trees, etc. I really should post some of my cg stuff, I've got some renders and captures.

After listening to Craig rant, I mean lecture, lecture us about what we should do for our demo reels, the scope we should aim for, what we intend to convey with it, who we're targeting with it and, perhaps mopst important of all, what we shouldn't do I've come up with a new idea for my demo reel. The Metalocalypse styled short film still appeals to me, but I don't think that it's something I could do and do well within the next semester.

I'll keep working on the designs for it, if only to have more things for my demo reel and grad pages.

I'm going to model, texture, rig, weight map and face shape this--the summoned minion from the Metalocalypse short idea--for grad page material and not worry about how well it can animate, just how well I can pose it. Have some cool looking stuff for grad.

The new idea for my demo reel involves relying more on a piece of acting to dialogfue rather than trying to mmake a short film. I'll be revisiting a bit of dialogue I used for a piece of animation from fourth semester in the commercial animation program. It's a line from the 11th episode of Clone High spoken by Principle Scudworth, right before the phone call from John Stamos (STAMOS!).

"I first got the idea for Cloney Island after watching the movie Jurasic Park 3. But my ill-conceived amusement park will be filled with human clones instead of zoo animsls. It's as fool proof as the amusement park in the film itself! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

A simple but expressive character. James Bond villain-ish. The interior environment will be pretty minimalist, just a few plains, the 60's style desk and an implied window via the lighting. I need to come up with some sort of juxtaposition to the dialogue and acting. Right now I'm leaning towards a 60 foot tall, atomic, super baby Abe Lincoln clone--with chin-strap beard and stove top--punch through the window, grab the mad scientist villain dude mid-cackle, pull him outside and roar as laser beams shoot from his eyes. I have no idea what the exterior environment will look like.

Soooo...an update of sorts.

2008-09-03T20:21:00.000-07:00

I am trying to come up with the idea for my final project for digital animation the first week in. The impetus being lessons learned from struggling to come up with my final project for commercial animation in the fourth semester, not really succeeding at that and one demo reel I saw as a first year volunteer at the Digital and Commercial animation grad show that really left an impression on me. I really want to focus on what I need to make a kick ass demo reel, really hit it out of the park and I think I've got the concept.

A 20-30 second short film that's like a music video to a Metalocalypse song.

I want to have the semblance of a narrative, some physical acting, some facial expressions, a bit of dialogue, and a scantily clad barbarian chick hacking her way through some minions to get to some troll warlock.

I want to do some kick ass models in z brush.

Spider Jerusalem's mug

2008-05-06T15:23:00.001-07:00

This is a drawing I did of Warren Ellis' Spider Jerusalem a while back that I've wanted to color for a few months. Finally had the free time to do so.

My demo reel

2008-04-27T09:36:00.001-07:00

Weekly sketches

2008-04-07T22:37:00.000-07:00

Robot Pirates

And my reaction to the topic being Cute and Fluffy

WS - Warrior - The Immortal Iron Fist

2008-03-24T22:40:00.000-07:00

Three Deeee Animatings!

2008-03-18T17:16:00.000-07:00

We got to choose what we wanted to do for our final assignment right before Grad Show--traditional, flash or digital--and since I'm planning on entering the digital animation program next year I went with the 3D assignment. We got a basic rundown of 3D Studio Max, got to play around with a basic bi-ped rig, mess around with its proportions, and then had to do a walk cycle with some character. We also got to add some simple but effective lighting to it. It was pretty fun and turned out well:

Three scene cut

2008-03-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

Even with all of the extra time spent on this I'm still not happy with it. Whatever, time to move on.

WS - _ Vs __ or Wolverine Vs Hulk

2008-03-17T23:02:00.001-07:00

WS - Explorers - The Ultimate Fantastic Four

2008-03-10T17:32:00.000-07:00

This one is for fun

2008-03-05T00:05:00.001-08:00

Weekly sketch - Medieval

2008-03-03T23:26:00.001-08:00

Behold the Mighty Thor! He's medieval, kind of.

Weekly Sketch (late) Retro

2008-03-03T23:25:00.001-08:00

A few pieces from Color & Media

2008-02-28T19:00:00.000-08:00

Sketch of the week: Robot

2008-02-18T19:54:00.001-08:00

I used to create my own Mega Man games when I was a kid, and here are two of the Mega Man villains I created back in the day.

(Rough) Two Person dialogue

2008-02-09T20:09:00.000-08:00

Weekly sketch - funny

2008-02-09T15:37:00.001-08:00

When I tried to think of something funny the only thing that easily came to mind were Jeff, Singh and Greg.

(Late) Weekly sketch - Steampunk

2008-02-09T15:04:00.001-08:00

I wish I could take credit for the idea but I found this poster online someone had made. It had a picture of Abe Lincoln with a gattling gun photoshopped on to his right arm. The caption underneath read "Steampunk - It's kinda like that"

Sketch of the Week - Circus Freak

2008-01-27T17:54:00.001-08:00

Weekly sketch - Flying Machine

2008-01-21T22:35:00.000-08:00

The Manhunters
First appearance: Justice League Volume 1 #140

Bio: The Guardians of the Universe created the Manhunters three billion years ago, designing them to police ay and all worlds that held sentient lifeforms. Lacking emotion or empathy, they rebelled against their programming and came to oppose the Guardians believing that the only way to achieve true order in the universe was to eliminate all life. After aqn unsuccessful attrack on Oa, the Manhunters were to the far corners of the universe.

Excrept from Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps: Secret Origin Files #1

Kinky Christmas

2008-01-14T23:49:00.000-08:00

The first good piece of animation I've done since my half-pipe assignment from last semester.

Although I'm really annoyed that Dr Orpheus' line gets cut off a little too early. I thought I had it perfectly timed out in flipbook. Oh well, I can re-shoot it later.

When ____________ Attacks

2008-01-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

When cute/chibi/anime/you-take-your-pick attacks.

And yes a piece of my soul died as I drew that.

Sketch of the Week - Crowley

2007-11-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

Studies for the weekly sketch

2007-11-24T11:03:00.001-08:00

Sketch o' the week - Panic

2007-11-20T12:24:00.001-08:00

Weekly sketch

2007-11-11T21:07:00.001-08:00

A character done in the style of The Triplets of Belleville.

Weekly sketch - Fear - Sinestro

2007-11-04T16:20:00.000-08:00

Sketch O' The Weak - Sporting Mishap - Bobby Clark & Performance Art

2007-10-30T00:36:00.001-07:00

Half-pipe assignment happy fun times!

2007-10-29T23:19:00.000-07:00

Nearly went crazy doing this but it was worth it...I guess. The ending needs some better timing and...well, a better ending, but it's finished!

Sketch of the week - (Awkward) Sexy Beach Party

2007-10-21T19:38:00.000-07:00

Weekly Sketch - Rejected Toy Idea - It Burns When I Pee Elmo

2007-10-14T18:57:00.000-07:00

Weekly Sketch: Greed - Lord of the Bling

2007-10-08T17:59:00.000-07:00

"Watch out for my medallion, the diamonds are wreckless, feels like a midget is hangin' from my necklace..."

Weekly Sketch #3 - Draw a classmate as an animal

2007-09-27T21:38:00.001-07:00

Weekly Sketch #2 - Creepy

2007-09-25T09:31:00.001-07:00

This is Caketown!

2007-09-25T00:11:00.000-07:00

Such a topical title I know. Anyhow finally got the first animation assignment out of the way, it felt like such a struggle to complete it. Quitting smoking (HA HA! HA! Brillaint timing!), not animating at all or drawing much over the summer made it kind of difficult to get my legs back. Even the work ethic was kind of lacking, mainly due to a lack of ability to focus (up until this Friday), but it is done! Done the night before it's due but done none the less.

Weekly Sketch #1 - The Fast Food Junky

2007-09-16T12:09:00.001-07:00

And so it begins, I'm updating the blog again...

Tried putting my shiny new tablet to use with some mixed results, it's no Rembrandt but it'll do for now. My plan is to colour every weekly sketch assignment in photoshop using my tablet as I need to get better at shop art in general. If only to crush Kadi and Emily! I'm joking...only not...

I haven't been drawing much.

2007-06-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

Outside of idly sketching stuff for the weekly design blog assignments I really haven't been drawing much when I should be. Kind of hard to do with a part-time summer time job with full-time hours.

Character design of the week

2007-05-22T18:39:00.001-07:00

ARR I'M A PIRATE

Design blog assignment

2007-05-08T19:36:00.000-07:00

A couple of classmates have gotten together to create a class blog for character design since we won't be having a character design class past the first year and it's just started up this summer break. The first assignment being to create a character in Tim Burton's style, a monster or a monster Tim Burton style.

I'm a huge fan of Tim Burton's style and movies but have never really attempted to emulate either in any capacity until now. I hopped online and sketched out a few quick references...

And ended up with this...

I dunno if this is what I'll end up submitting for the blog but it's a start.

Pan layout

2007-05-02T15:37:00.000-07:00

The assignment was to create a three 12 field panning layout of anything we wanted. This doodle I did a year back was the genesis of my idea for this assignment...

Here's the rough...

Here's the clean up...

In the next day or so I hope to do a coloured version of the cleaned up drawing.

Layout madness!

2007-05-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the earlier layouts I did in John Delaney's layout class in the second semester. I don't even think the first, Buzzard Gulch, wasn't even a marked assignment.
Here's a rough of my Metropolis layout...

Here's the clean up...

Fat cat gangsters, bulldog goons and boxcar hopping hobos, oh my!

2007-05-01T17:01:00.000-07:00

I came up with this wolf character while being inundated with Warner Bros cartoons inmy Animation history classin the first semester. He's some 1920-30's, boxcar-hopping , grifter, hobo wolf--what relevance this character may have today, I have no idea.

The thing is I've just kept drawing this character...

And now others are starting to grow out of the 1920-30's theme...

A fat cat gangster (hyuck, original I know) and his bulldog goon.

Like I said, I'm not exactly certain of where I'm going with it.

Some life drawing

2007-05-01T16:01:00.000-07:00

Here's some of the life drawings I did in the 2nd semester that I included in my submission for the Bardel scholarship...

Mining for gold

2007-05-01T13:34:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting here digging through the rather sizeable box of stuff I brought home from school to find stuff to scan and post on my blog as well as potentially use for my submission portfolio's for a summer time job. The layout's are proving to be kind of a pain in the ass since I have to scan a portion of each one because of how small both of my scanners are, and then I'll have to whack 'em together in photoshop.

So in lue of anything substantial, here's an old painting of mine...

JES, GREAT SUCCESS!

2007-04-30T20:02:00.000-07:00

You know the day is going to get off to an auspicious beginning when you wake up well rested and of your own accord just in time to hear your radio alarm clock go off and play Bob Marley's "Don't worry, be happy". It just sets a general tone for the day.

Anyhow, I went into town, bought some dvd-r's to put demo reel on, got home and got down to business. I downloaded Audacity, and in conjunction with Windows Movie Maker I was able to cobble together this...

MAH DEMO REEL! Yay, and there was much rejoicing!

I couldn't get the final video on to one of the dvd-r's I bought because that wasn't an option I could find in Window's Movie Maker (weird) and Nero wouldn't make a Video DVD with a wmv file. Luckily it fit just fine on to a cd-r I had.

Tomorrow the real work begins as I have to go through all of the assignments I did over the last semester, creating digital copies of them, going through all of the local studios sites to find out what they want in an applicants submission portfolio, putting together said portfolio and hitting up all the HR people.

Final Animation

2007-04-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

For some reason I can't upload my final animation in its complete form on to youtube. I was able to upload the avi's for the seperate scenes, but I'd feel pretty goofy embedding several youtube clips in one blog post when each clip is only a second or two long. Since the entire animation is only 18 seconds long I must've buggered something up in Adobe Premier when compiling it all together.

I've got the individual clips here and Windows Movie Maker so I can try to put it altogether, until then here's my three dimensional head turn which seemed to have impressed Don...

So updating and stuff.

2007-04-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

With the end of the semester I really didn't have time for, well, much of anything outside of school work, this blog included. But now I have plenty of free time, in fact more than I know what to do with. I need to get a summer time job as quickly as possible or think I'll go crazy. Anyhow, update-y-type stuff...err, here's a doodle of Spider Jerusalem I did while volunteering for the '07 Grad Show (which was kind of scary and reaaallllyyyy impressive).

Final model pack

2007-04-25T10:38:00.000-07:00

In hindsight it seems like you get so little from so much, I swear I killed a small portion of the rain forrest to arrive at this point.

Colored 3/4's

Comparison sheet

Protagonist Man's rotation sheet

Expression sheets for Moanica and Herr Doktor

Pose sheets for Moanica and Herr Doktor

Prop design

Two person dialogue assignment

2007-03-27T14:10:00.000-07:00

Otherwise known as fun times with Youtube.

Protagonist Man's re-design

2007-03-20T22:46:00.000-07:00

I ran my design pack roughs by John Delaney, excellent use of my time in layout design class, and received the following criticism on the original design of Protag. Basically the character was caught between two styles, naturalism (the upper torso and arms) and stylisation (the legs and neck), and if I want to make the design stronger I had to choose one direction to go in. So...

Here's what he used to look like...

And here's the re-design...

Expression sheets

2007-03-20T22:42:00.000-07:00

For Herr Doktor:
And Moanica Le Stab:

Protagonist Man and Sidekick Boy the 3rd in Adventure City (New Jersey)!

2007-03-12T19:44:00.000-07:00

A.K.A. Model Pack Update.
Okay, so I've pretty much settled on my designs and have the final roughs. I haven't cropped the negative space from some of the images because I hope that will help reinforce the scale--which will bemore clearly conveyed once I actually put them together on a size comparison chart, but anyhoo...

First it was Captain Justice, then it was Justice Man, now it's Protagonist Man; kinda matches his sidekick's name, Sidekick Boy the 3rd. Dunno ifthis name will stick as well, but it works for the moment.

Used car salesman by day, the (unwanted) costumed defender of Brick City (New Jersey) by night. He's The Maxx, The Tick, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Captain Britain, ect, ect all bunched up into one uber generic superhero-type-guy. So he's super strong, indestructable, got heat vision, can fly, ect, is as dumb as a post and probably is a borderline nutcase with delusions of grandeur.

His strength and nigh invulnerability are only surpassed over-weening sense of justice, patriotism and complete and utter stupidity. He generally causes more problems than he solves, and is completely oblivious to the fact. There's currently multiple multi-million dollar lawsuits against Protagonist Man for destruction of public and private property, but since no one knows his secret identity,no one knows whom to serve the subpoena to.

One benifit to his secret identity is that Protagonist man has a healthy supply of crime fighting vehicles on his used car lot. Any of the lemons which currently occupy it can by quickly modified with some spray paint and magnetic peripherals to turn it into the Justice-mobile (which I have yet to draw)!

Sidekick Boy the 3rd. He's living the dream of every little boy who has ever cracked open a comic book. He's the sidekick to a superhero. He doesn't have to go to school, he gets to stay up late, watch tv, eat whatever he wants whenever he wants, and punch people in the face. All in all it's pretty cool, except for the fact that he misses his parents, and his home which he hasn't seen in months. Protagonist Man and his never ending war for truthiness and justice don't allow for either.

Sidekick Boy the 3rd doesn't like the fact that Protagonist Man won't mention what happened to the first two Sidekick Boys. What's even more disquieting is how Avenger sometimes looks at him when Protagonist Man isn't looking.

Avenger, he acts as Protagonist Man's canine crime fighting companion as well as a mobile security system for his used car lot when he isn't fighting and making sure Sidekick Boy the 3rd never leaves the carlot during the day.

Avenger is fiercly protective of his master, one might say jealous even. He may have had something to do with the disappearances of the first two Sidekick Boys, and soon possibly a third if the right circumstances arise.

Protagonist Man hasn't suspected a thing given how the first two Sidekick Boys seemingly fell in action, but this new one seems kind of cagey. Avenger will have to bide his time.

Moanica Le Stab. The top female assassin in all of New Jersey and chief goon/underling to the nefarious Herr Doktor. She's a master in all forms of armed and unarmed combat. She's cold, calculating, ruthless, and quite possibly secretly/begrudginly in love with Protagonist Man, the only man in all of New Jersey who has proven to be her equal.

I don't know if her name is too complicated compared to the rest of the cast, but I like it. It's got an Octopussy (Bond), Robins Spits/Swallows (Austin Powers), and Molotov Cocktease (Venture Bros) cheese kind of vibe to it.

Herr Doktor. Lord of the Undertow in 7/8ths of New Jersey.

Born on the German border in Switzerland, he grew up as a child clocksmith prodigy. Reknowned throughout all of Switzerland, until one day he had a horrible accident with a spring loaded cuckoo which left him both horribly disfigured and deathly afraid of Swiss clocks.

Even with hundreds of dollars of reconstructive surgery the young Herr Doktor was a horror to gaze upon. His parents couldn't bare the shame of his failure and visage, so they sent him off to boarding school in America.
Herr Doktor grew bitter and twisted in his exile, he turned his meticulous mind towards the criminal arts. He hopes to one day conquer all of New Jersey and New Yorks criminal underworld so that he may have the resources to strike out and crush what used to be his homeland. The only thing standing between Herr Doktor and his revenge are Protagonist Man and whatever bit of fodder he has for a sidekick this week.

Hey look it's Evilis

2007-03-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

So, blogging and stuff...

2007-03-11T18:18:00.000-07:00

One of the things that has held me back from actually creating a blog for the longest time would have to be just coming up with a name for the bloody thing. One that wasn't taken and one that didn't sound too stupid. I've at least succeeded in in coming up with something that wasn't taken.

Right now we've got a scholarship contest going on at school with one of the local animation studios and I'm trying to put together my final model pack for my character design class so I can use it as part of the portfolio submission. I've gotten the rough designs of all my characters done and could move on to the pose, expression and rotation sheets but I'm not entirely happy with the designs as is.

I've gone back to Ben Caldwell's Action Cartooning for inspiration yet again--his style is similar to Bruce Timm's without looking too much like Bruce Timm stuff, so it's a nice bridge from my typical comic book stuff to making designs that lend themselves extremely well to animation.

I'm trying to create a completely ludicrous superhero vibe, I don't have a title for the premise yet, but I've got the characters...

Still a work in progress, but hey I've got like a week left...oh shit.