Desert Penguin CG Animation

Here's my most recent character animation. It was an acting piece with lip sync. Quite exciting. Took me about four hours total with small distractions (darn that internet)...but I've never animation a piece like this before, so I'm sure I'll get faster. I'm content with it, but I think the right hand moves too much and I wanted to play off a subtle body opposed to a crazy-all over the place- body full of arcs and jumping about. I did the animation, everything in the background, and the crappy quick-fix lighting. The models/rigs were provided.

Barnstorming Adventures Models

Here are all the fanciful works-in-progress for the "Barnstorming Adventures" project that the team is producing.

First we have Tailspin Tommy, he's the hero of the story.
































































































































Next we have "Cash Register" Kate. She's sort of the sidekick to Tommy and they have this little "thing" that is never said aloud. This is a WIP of Kate, I plan on revamping the paints so her face doesn't look so ugly.






Next up is Simon Cawker. He's our villain although Tommy was in-cahoots with him long ago...Cawker is unfortunately not on model and he's not painted yet either. The first image is his body, the second is a preliminary style sheet and the third is a final style sheet with some WIP blend shapes for emotion on his face:


Lastly, we have a police officer. He's only going to be in frame for a couple seconds, but I think he's the best of the bunch, although Tommy's a close second.
That's all for now on Barnstorming Adventures. I'm going to upload the fresh models with fresh textures (mainly Kate and of course the unfinished Cawker) when I have them for you.

Kate Character Design Turnaround

Here's another turnaround for the Barnstorming Adventures Project. This is Kate. I finally get to start modeling her now.

CG Animation Heavy Lift

Here is a portion of an animation I'm working on. It's a heavy lift scene where a character is attempting to lift someone else's dead weight. There's more to the animation, but that's yet to come.

Music Video: CG Camera, CG Animation, Compositing

The challenge for this was to take a completely stagnant, poorly modeled scene with no animation and affect the camera so that it moves appropriately to a chosen song. The goal was to make the scene more interesting and have the camera work go well with the music.

Pre-warning: The song is loud and fast (Kitty - "Brackish") sooo if you have epilepsy or anything, I'd be careful haha. No seriously...

Character Design; Turnarounds; Illustration

Here are some character designs and turnarounds that are being worked on for a Bubblegum Entertainment Production. Our "studio" (for lack of a better term) is comprised of 29 people. As for me, I'm currently the Lead Character Designer/Modeler/Rigger/Texture Artist in a team of 4. We're doing a short CG and 3D (anaglyph) trailer called "Barnstorming Adventures: The Theft of Fossil Falcon". There will also be a 2D splash screen for the credits that will also be 3D (anaglyph), but I'm working on the CG area. :)

This is the complete cast lineup of the characters. Kate has changed completely, the new Kate is just below. And we wont be using Skip or Dipstick in our final animation.















Here's the new design for Kate.




















In the full script, there are scenes where Tommy Tailspin is younger. Here's our version of that. We've cut out the idea of him being younger for our trailer, so this is scrap anyway. But it's here to look pretty for you none-the-less.















Here's the turnarounds for Simon Cawker. The side version needs some love, but it'll do for what we need.















And, lastly, here's the turnaround for Tommy Tailspin (older). We're still working on Kate's turnaround, but I'll have it up soon.

CG Camera, Lighting and Texture

I decided to move a camera through an earlier lighted scene, to play with the camera. The song used is "Al Genina" by Our Lady Peace.

2DAnimation - Tyler Johnson

Here is the product of my 6-person teams fruitful labors for the past 3 months. We've worked from beginning to end on this puppy and we're proud.

Rigging

Here's one of my projects from this past quarter. It's a short video showing that my rig actually works. I'm not brilliant at rigging, but I understand the mechanics of it.

Texture, Materials, Lighting

These are some examples of my texture and lighting skills. All lighting was done in Maya and the textures were worked in either the Maya textures or imported from Photoshop.

In this scene, I was given all of the modeled objects with a screen behind them. It was my job to create a mood with lighting, color, material, etc. and also manage to create something unique and beautiful. I decided to use the Pon and Zi comics as my starting point in the framed photo. I turned the backdrop-screen into a window with a night time plant-filled yard and a source of light outside. I used a bump and more Pon and Zi on the vase in a sort of Greek Pottery effect - I then continued the Greek theme on a carefully placed symbol around the candlestick holders and on the shiny table. I used Sub Surface Shading on the blue candle wax and simple but effective ramps and point lights for the flames. I also used a glow ramp on the incense stick and did the incense smoke in post (Photoshop).



This is a set of vases I did. I took a photo of three glass vases with three slightly different glass materials (the smallest is ceramic, the medium is a dark glass, and the large a clear glass). I modeled each and then worked the textures and lighting in Maya. The photo is bottom right, the wireframe is top, and the modeled image is bottom left.

This is my set of eyeballs. I modeled them with a transparency ramp shader, fixed the materials in Photoshop and then uploaded them.

CG Character Models

Here are some turnarounds and a couple still images of some CG character models that I've done. They're beginner sculptures and I can't wait to do more. These are all done in Maya, with the textures done in photoshop.

This is my robot girl. I decided to take a clip from a movie or short (in this case Blur Studio's short called "A Gentleman's Duel") and build a CG model that was NOT in the clip but could have been incorporated. I decided to take the countess and give her a robot so that she could fight along side the men. This is the only model that I also incorporated my own lighting.





This is a character I came up with to use in a book called the Narjuta. The character and name are both copyright so don't you dare think to steal it :).





This is my first character model. It's a young boy, about 8, and he's got his backpack and cap on so he's ready to head off to school. I skinned him and gave him simple flat materials as well.

Photoshop

This was a freelance project I worked on with my consultant and fellow artist, Jose Marin, in D&M Corps, for a marketing company called California Dreaming Exchange. It was entered into a marketing competition and won. It will now be used as fliers in high schools all over San Diego to help get students interested in study abroad programs.

2D Animation, Flash Animation

Here's a quick flash animation that I did, the bees represent different qualities of me, it's a metaphorical way of introducing myself.

Audio

Heres an example of what I can do with audio - music and sound effects.

For this, I chose a Playstation commercial, removed all audio, and recreated it myself.

2D Animation, Pencil Tests

These are some more of my pencil test animations. All are hand rendered and then composited in both Adobe Premier and Adobe After Effects.

This is a pencil test called Little Man at the Movies, it's about a man who is watching a movie in a theatre and is talking the audience through the action. It helped me with my lip sync and smoothing out my motion as well.



Here is a compilation of quick animations that were helping me with lip sync as well. I used quotes from movies to create individual short storylines.

This piece does have one piece of bad language in it, just a warning.



The next one here is of a very popular character - Huckleberry from the Hanna Barbera - this too helped me with my lip sync.

Background Design

I was given the opportunity to create some cartoon backgrounds in Photoshop for a story about a man named Jack who was an inventor. When he was given three magical cogs one day at the market he came home, bolted them to his invention, and this large contraption skyrocketed into the sky like a mechanical beast which reached to the clouds where a giant and his golden goose lived....

This first one is of Jack's kitchen. Notice the mechanical parts on the chairs and lamps. I tried to do a very light and colorful theme with a loose hint of steampunk.


This is Jack's den, it's underground and very cavelike. I played with the warm and cool motif, and made sure to give his den a very "lived in" feeling.
This is the mechanical contraption of a beanstalk that rose from Jack's den. It has all sorts of parts to operate it, along with a chair that will give a ride for part of the way up.
This last painting is of the Golden Goose doorway. There is the statue of the goose on the top and on the arch's symbols it tells the classes story of Jack and the Beanstalk in a cuneiform manner. you can see the beanstalk top is very plantlike and the flowers have a powdery glow to them.

CG Modeling

This is an example of my object modeling - I chose three around-the-house objects to model. We have the utility knife, the needle nose pliers and the flashlight. Each model is on the bottom left, the wireframe on the bottom right and the photo on the top. Each object was done in Maya.

Rough 3D Animation

This is an animation of a kitchen. It's modeled after some photos and blue prints of an actual kitchen with the idea that I needed to show a rough idea of what a prospective clients kitchen would look like in 3D space before they actually had it built. The animation of it is mainly to make it more interesting.

Rough Pencil Test 2D Animations

Here are a few rough pencil test animations - they're less of my ability and more of my interest in story and keeping the animations fun. They all need lots of work of course, but they were all fun to begin with.

This is a pencil test of a story about a boy trying to impress a girl with his magic tricks:



This was just supposed to be a simple walk cycle, but I used some characterization to help with the storyline.

Character Designs and Turnarounds

Here are some of my character designs and turnarounds.

Below, Hillary Hippo, is a full color model for a children's show design. She was made in Flash using the pen tool.

The following three designs are from a project I'm currently working on in a group of six called The Adventures of Tyler Johnson. They were each hand drawn then inked and colored in Photoshop by yours truly. The Yheti is the only character here that is actually my design. I collaborated with Yuki Radcliffe on the Snuffles Cat design and Tyler's design was done completely by Jason Barnes. This is a concept sketch of Michael Rios, a character from a story. He's a homeless confederate veteran junkie with only one leg. He's completely hand rendered and hand inked.

This is a style sheet for Carla Neal from the same story as (the above) Michael Rios. She is hand rendered and hand inked.
This is a turnaround of Tula the Wolf Princess from a story I was working on called Cage Free. this is a hand rendered pencil version of her turnaround with the template in Photoshop.


Here's a very early example of Tula and two other characters from Cage Free, Jag and Axle, in their environment done in Photoshop.