Portfolios Ready! Almost Time!

The winter semester is back in full swing, and I've mostly had my hands full with getting ready for our 3rd year group film, and prepping for my internship application. Related to the latter, on the side I have been working on a couple of additional art projects that I have managed to include in my demo reel and portfolio site, which you can view HERE. For the sake of explanation, I'll post my newest work here. Most of my free time the last two weeks have been spent working on a model of the chef lip sync character I animated last summer (see July 2010 post). The idea was to not only include a model demo for my portfolio, but also get a personal model completed for the character rig assignments in this semesters 3D animation class. Sufficed to say, the model is now done, and the rigging can commence. Here it is for your viewing pleasure:







Here's the textured/coloured version that is ready for the rig.

And just for kicks, here's a proper turnaround demo of the alien character I modeled over last summer.


I have plans for this character, but my first attempt at rigging fell flat. For now I'm focusing on rigging my chef model, but when the alien character has a functional rig, I do intend to animate it.

10,000 Minutes to Midnight

The quip above just means one more week left until the madness of our production semester, and also one more week to finish all of my important personal demo projects. So I figure I should share with you some of the progress work I have been doing. How much is there to show?... Well, not a lot really. Seems the fatigue of last semester is catching up and I've spent most of my break in relaxation mode, as the numerous projects I have on the go right now have made some pretty slow progress. Fortunately my demo reel is pretty well in the clear thanks to my summer animations, but by the end of this week I hopefully will have most of my current work completed.

I have two performance animations I've wanted to get finished for January, but realistic factors suggests only one will likely get done. I have the turnaround and the key breakdowns (as they are so far) completed, and I'll hopefully have it inbetweened for the end of the week.

The key breakdown with audio clip from the film Air Force One:


I also did a character design for the second performance, but likely chance I won't get this done for the demo. Which is a shame since I was excited to work on this piece of dialogue (from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy). I do however intend to get at least keys done for this, so that if time during the school year permits I can work on it.

Because this might never see the light of day, here's the sample audio:


So that's all for now, there are still other 3D modeling projects and animations that are on the go as well. It is my hope that I can post the final result for each by the 10th.

Break time is over! Yep, time to prepare for the internship.

Happy Holidays!... Is it summer time yet?

I miss the warmth...

Break Time Again

Semester one has wrapped up until January, so here is the last bit of work from the term. Of course my action analysis assignment that has been in development since September is now completed. I'm quite happy with the result, despite the nitpicks I have. But overall, the amounts of work I put into it has given me a pretty nice (and pretty lengthy) portfolio piece. I guess a lot of diligence and care to produce a great animation is what the medium is all about.


In case you were wondering it's animated and cleaned up traditionally with the paint and two-tone shadows created in Flipbook Pro, with the ground shadows produced in Adobe After Effects.

Here's the animation cut into the final leica reel. Enjoy!


And just for giggles, here's a drawing my characters in marker and pen: I also have a performance animation produced Maya (using a Sheridan model and rig). the line is from Back to the Future part II. This project was quite fun, I do so enjoy animating character performance.


This next bit are are some new 3rd year film designs I did for the rough design pack. We plan to refine some of these over the break and in January, as well as may other things.




And finally here's an on location drawing that I sketched at my local Timmies.

That's all from this semester, but i have several portfolio projects lined up for the break in preparation for my summer co-op placement. I'll post each project upon its completion.

Happy Holidays.

Last bit of development

So one week remains until all is said and done for this semester. So since I'm on the home stretch for my action analysis assignment I figured I'd post the last bit of development work before the final coloured composite.

Here I have my rough animation:


The cleaned up sequence:


And my scene 1 and scene 3 composite layouts:
And finally all of the above compsite into the current leica reel. The final full colour will be done next week. Enjoy.

Stop Motion... Finally!

Ah, I finally got my stop motion videos working. So now I can finally post some of the stop motion exercises I have been doing over the semester.

They are posed from most recent to oldest.

MOARRRR!!!

Finally the last bit of the pre-end-of-semester bulk: rough animation and newest lieca reel for my action analysis (without dialogue so far), some concept art pages I did for our group film, and storyboards I did for the first pass at the story lieca (this sequence will be cut out as we have completely changed our narrative, so these are alright to post publicly).

A Bunch More Stuff!

So here's the second major update I promised, most of it is life drawing work which is unusual for me. First is this years work from our annual Royal Winter Fair Trip. Definitely my best year there so far (possibly because we were encouraged a more interpretive caricature approach... lets face it, I'm terrible at drawing animals realistically).


Second is a couple of painting studies from class. We have been taking a break from traditional conté for more mixed media application. I'll post some pen work later, but for now I have gouache and pen on watercolour paper. They're not great, but better than I normally do, and they were fun.




Finally, a series écorché studies for legs. The assignment was to take drawing we already have and focus a muscle based study on a part we could improve. I dunno if this helped me improve drawing legs with conté or not, but I know I can draw pretty well on paper. I guess I just work well with pencils.










This last drawing is a copy of Leonardo Da Vinci's Muscles of Lower Extremity II; one of the drawings was to be an overlay of muscles on a copy from a master.

This is all fro now. I should have some more bulk work to post soon before the end of semester goes into overdrive. WORK WORK WORK!

A Bunch O'Stuff

Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been putting this off for some time now, and because of that I have a multitude of stuff to post, which I will divide up over a few different posts.

For now, I have my newest development work for my action analysis assignment. Only a few weeks are left to work on this, and of course besides animating the character in full, the FX animation, cleaning it up, and adding the final layout, I also intend to make the story boards much neater and more presentable. I got a lot of work ahead of me... Here's the newest pass on the lieca with character pose test.



And for your convenience, here is just the pose test section.


I also did some additional character poses to explore my designs over the reading week. This was mainly just for fun.

And here is a nicer scan of my rough pan layout. I still have yet to clean it up, but soon enough I will have that done along with some colour concepts.

For the rest of this first bit of artwork, I have some 3D work. The first is a turnaround of the Alien model I have been working on since the summer. The rig is nearly complete with only some technical bugs to work out. It's close to being animatable now! The other is a walk cycle project for my 3D animation class.



I hope you enjoyed my work so far. I still have a lot more on the way. They should be posted by the end of this weekend. Stay tuned!

In Memoriam to my dearest friend.

Today, my best friend John passed away. After a very sudden admittance to the Toronto General Hospital the week before, I was informed that he was having severe heart complications. Tragically, the doctors could not perform any operation to save his life. On November 2nd, 2010, John Huynh passed away in the hospital. He was a dear friend to me, by buddy whom I known for over 15 years and have had a very close friendship with.


John was, like myself, an aspiring artist. His passion was always video game media and just this September had enrolled into the game design program at George Brown College in Toronto. His talent in the field would never be known to the world because of this tragic passing, therefore I hereby dedicate this blog and all of my future work to the dream that we both shared.




His passing was a very sudden and very shocking, but in his life I can never forget the good times we shared over the years.

Rest in peace, my dear friend. The world will miss you, as I certainly will.