Producer - Final

Lou's finished head model. I think this project went really well in terms of learning experiences, and this is something I will continue to work on after graduation for a portfolio piece. I think it turned out good technically speaking, I finally figured out how to model the mouth, though the teeth and tounge I put in are seperate objects to be used as placeholders until I figure out how to model those in accordingly. The body is my next large hurdle to tackle, along with a nice UV map and a basic rig for posing. I also picked up a tutorial for pixar-style eyeballs that I'd like to try. Anyways, enjoy the short video and image below. As always constructive criticism is welcome and appreciated. :)



Lou - Poly Head Model - Smoothed

09 Demo Reel

A Demo Reel I Admire:



My Demo Reel:

Producer - More Modeling Experimentation

Here's a screenshot of the progress on Lou's model. Not very far along, because I started over several times, and kept running into the same problems over and over when I combined and merged a part onto the head. I kept getting sharp edges around where I merged and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what I was doing wrong.

Lou's Head-Progress (the mouth is still scary to model!)

So, I took a break from Lou and tried my hand at another character I wanted to model, just to step away from it a bit. Again, I ran into the same problems here, but I eventually figured out the cause. My normals were inverted on some of the parts. It was an easy enough fix, so I went ahead and finished up the model just to prove to myself that I could do it, as well as to see how fast I could get through it. I feel like this is good grounds for a start and good practice. I feel a lot more confident in my character modeling now.

Fatcat - Front
Fatcat - Side
Fatcat - Perspective

Also, below is a quick video of Lou's environment model if you haven't seen it yet. This was what I did for my advanced time-based projects class and will eventually serve as some background scenery for Lou when he's textured and ready to be animated. :)

Lou Orthos

Admittedly I didn't get a whole lot done this week because I've been preparing for my Advanced Time-Based Projects class exhibition, but I did manage to narrow down Lou's design and come up with a couple of good head orthos. I plan to model this several times this weekend, and then once I have a good feel for facial modeling, I will move on to the body.

Side Ortho
Front Ortho

PS - The idea of modeling the inside of a mouth is daunting to me. If anyone has any advice or tips I would be very glad to hear them. Should I model the tongue hanging out for animation purposes?

Poly Modeling Experimentation

I recently asked Michelle to help me get off on the right foot with character modeling, and she helped me get a good start. I am getting a good feel for character modeling (faces at least) already! She originally gave me some orthos she had prepared for class, and went over how to model the difficult parts, such as eye sockets, noses and mouths. I started with her character, then decided to give a canine face a try and drew up orthos of one of my own characters (not Lou, I'm still trying to narrow down his design before I finish his orthographic views). Neither is finished, but I ran into a couple of problems on the dog face where I stitched the nose into the rest of the face, that I want to work out before I finish the model. Here's what I have so far.

Poly Human Head

Poly Dog Head
Poly Dog Head (Front)
Poly Dog Head (Side)

Designer - Final Palette and Story Development

Lou's New Colors
These are the colors I decided on for Lou. From the color tests in my last post I received a lot of positive responses to the tan brindle color. I chose a blue sash to subtly represent Lou's racing dilemma, and the warm tan brindle to represent his otherwise happy and caring nature.

Lou's Color Palette
This is Lou's color palette graphed appropriately. The 14 segments of the circle represent the 14 hues in the 14 hue color chart. Each color is placed according to hue number around the circle, and I tried to arrange them on the lines to correspond with the value of each color.

Lou, Max, and Riptide
I created this piece in an attempt to show the contrast in personalities between these three characters. Lou's colors were swatched directly from his color palette.

Designer - Color Test and Backstory

Seattle Slew a.k.a. Lou

Lou is one of the world's top contending race dogs. While he is a racing dog, and racing dogs are normally cared for differently than house pets, his owner is still very compassionate and this reflects on Lou's behavior. He is a very kind, good-natured dog. His best friend is also racing dog (Maximum Overdrive a.k.a. Max) raised by the same owner as Lou. While Lou is extremely successful at the track, he suffers from an inner conflict that causes him to hate racing for competition. The only real joy he receives from running is off the track, where he feels no pressure to be the best. His driving force is a dog named Riptide, who constantly berates Lou and Max out of jealousy, and is Lou's biggest competitor.

I have a good idea for a story pertaining to these characters, that includes more cast members including Lou's love interest, Mindy (who Lou meets while playing at the dog park with his trainer), but it's not very well fleshed out at yet. I'd like to finish the story with Lou, Max and Riptide attending the Waterloo Cup Meet (the Kentucky derby of greyhound racing). As Lou rounds the last turn before the finish line, he notices that Max is close behind him, Riptide following closely on Max's heels. Lou believes that Max can win, and decides to swallow his pride as he slows up, letting his best friend pass him to win the race. Lou happily retires shortly after the race, and is adopted by Mindy's owner. Riptide also retires shortly after but not so willingly, he is adopted by a small family with a particularly annoying little girl (think Elmyra from tiny toons). Max goes on to win many more races, and Lou's new owner even brings him to the track from time to time to visit his former owner and friend.

A few of the many ideas I've been tossing around and scrawling in notebooks the last few days. Would love some constructive criticism on the story particularly, and also would like to know which color tests catch your eye. :)

Design for Media - Progress

I spent the week trying to narrow down my style. I've decided I want to model my greyhound character as a racing dog, and for my Advanced Time-Based Projects class I plan to model a race track environment for him.

I found lots of great references of racing dogs and even a chart of common greyhound colors and markings.

Here are my sketches from this week

Sketches 1
Sketches 2
Variations on styles

Sketches 3
Anatomy and run cycle study

Constructive criticism welcome and appreciated!

Explorer Progress

Dogs

Papillon

Australian Shepherd

Afghan Hound

Boston Terrier

Bull Terrier

Chihuahua

Design for Media - Explorer

The first few dog breed studies I worked on in preparation for a finished character model or models. I probably spent more time on them than I should have, but I was having fun trying different character styles. I need to work on varying my style more and getting through sketches quicker. I used references from many places including google, several books and photos of my brother's greyhound. Thinking I should go to the dog park or an animal shelter to study and draw dogs from life.

German Shepard


Pembroke Welsh Corgi


Greyhound

Feedback is always appreciated :)

Inspiration

Mika- Lollipop (Music Video)

Wall-E Trailer

Monkey, Journey to the West

Princess Mononoke Trailer

MGMT - Electric Feel (Music Video)

IPod Nano 2nd Gen. Color Trails Commercial

Design For Media Final

For our design for media final, we were asked to, in a stylistic approach or compositional strategy, creatively interpret/portray/exemplify our assigned musical term. My musical term was Baroque. Baroque music describes an era and a set of styles of European classical music which were in widespread use between approximately 1600 and 1750. The word "baroque" means, literally "misshapen pearl." Baroque music expanded the size, range and complexity of instrumental performance, and also established opera as a musical genre. For my project, I chose a segment from an Opus written by Antonio Vivaldi. The piece is preformed with only strings, however baroque music normally tends to cover a wider variant of instruments. For my composition, I chose a simple black silhouetted theme for my instruments and scanned a piece of tea stained parchment to simulate old sheet music. The segment at the beginning features a line from the sheet music itself. If you'd like to learn a little more about Baroque Music, you can check out some of my resources here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Vivaldi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baroque_music
http://www.baroquemusic.org/bardefn.html
http://baroque-music.com/frames/frames.shtml

Design For Media Final - Progress UPDATED

About 3/4 of the way done with the actual animation. Should be finishing up and fine tuning within the next couple of days. :)

Updated 12/01/08

Problem 4 - Final

Panels one through eight of Problem 4. Character/Object Dominance: Sequence & Theme - Designing a Visual Storyline.

The goal of this series was to create a series of sequentially or thematically related compositions that clearly demonstrate the dominance of the following characteristics. I chose to illustrate themes including life, evolution, and the passage of time in this piece, using animation as a means to convey these ideas. I used mostly organic shapes, soft colors, and soft music to further illustrate these themes.

In order, the eight panels represent: rhythmic, natural, dynamic,symmetrical, geometric, animate, asymmetrical, and inanimate.

Problem 4 - Panels 1-4

Panels one through four of Problem 4. Character/Object Dominance: Sequence & Theme - Designing a Visual Storyline.

Create a series of sequentially or thematically related compositions that clearly demonstrate the dominance of the following characteristics.

In order, the first four panels represent: rhythmic, natural, dynamic, and symmetrical.

Problem 2 - Panel 1

pri·mal /ˈpraɪməl/ [prahy-muhl] –adjective
1.
first; original; primeval: primal eras before the appearance of life on earth.
2.
of first importance; fundamental: the primal resources of a nation.

Primal"was my word for our second problem, the goal of which was to create a cumulative series of abstract designs employing the following elements: dominance, cumulative, accent shaping, decoration, pattern and texture. I chose the color scheme on a triad from the 12 hue system based on the colors orange, bluegreen, and purple to represent earthy, natural but still colorful tones. I thought of primal as both early cultural lifestyles and primal elements, and aimed to create, colorful and bold, yet flowing and soft compositions.

Problem 2 - Panel 2

Problem 2 - Panel 3

Problem 2 - Panel 2

Problem 2 - Panel 5