Dragon 07 - Rough Animation

I've been working on the animation for a while. I never know how to keep updates steady when I get to this part, but here's a quick scene of the dragon running away. This hasn't been put into the engine yet, so the textures aren't there and there aren't effects or lighting.

Dragon 06 - Animatic

Haven't updated in a while. I've been busy applying to jobs. I rigged and started blocking out the animation for this project, but I figured I'd share the animatic I finished a while ago:

The sound effects and music are temporary, and so is the title.

Dragon 05 - Riverside

Modeled another background for the Dragon Short I'm making. I am really enjoying Unreal Engine 4.

Dragon 04 - Background

Seems like a while since the last update. I completed the storyboard, and edited it into an animatic, but I'm not going to show that until next time.

But here's something I can show. My first ever environment in Unreal Engine 4:

Dragon 03 - Treasure

This week I modeled a bunch of treasure for the background of my short.

First I made a treasure chest:


Then I made some gems to sprinkle across the piles of gold I made. I'm going to make the shaders in the engine, so these are just temporary flat colors:


And lastly I made some various bits of low-detail treasure to add variety to the piles of gold (again, textures not finalized). I also made a low-poly version of the main pile of gold for the gold in the way back.


I was also experimenting with physics simulators to make realistic piles of gold, which are going to be used for the foreground. By next week I'm going to build the main environment with Unreal Engine. This will be the first time I've ever made something this big with the engine, so I'm excited to give it a try.

Dragon 02 - Props and Stuff

I was busy this week with my birthday, but I thumbnailed the storyboard, and modeled some props and decorations:

Most importantly, I modeled the deer background character. It only appears for like, ten seconds in one scene, but still has to be modeled and rigged like every other character.

I started off the week modeling a dead knight as a background gag. I'm going to stick him in with all the treasure in the Dragon's cave. The design is based on what I can remember of my college roommate's knight character from way back in sophomore year. I thought it would be funny to turn him into a skeleton and stick him in the background.

And I modeled a coin... with my face on it... so... here it is:

For the next update, I plan to start working on my backgrounds.

Dragon 01 - Dawn of a New Project

My brother the other day said "Hey I have an idea for an animation you should do." I said "Nah, I'm good, I have a lot of projects I want to do," and he said "But hear me out: cute dragon!"
...
So I dropped everything I was doing and drew up some dragon designs:

And I drew this character turn around:

Then I took a break from this project because I had some job interviews, and in my spare time I decided to teach myself Unreal Engine so I can render this next animation in real time.

Step one was getting something simple to render. I needed to learn the basics of importing an FBX into Unreal Engine, moving a camera, and rendering out a video. I started with a box that hops across the screen:

Then I tried a simple character with simple blendshapes and simple shaders:

And finally I did a test with a more complicated rig, which I don't have a video of. I was finally able to start modeling the dragon (textures still in progress):

And that's that. After I finish texturing, I'm going to rig it, and see if I can get it to render in Unreal (where I know I'll have to adjust the materials some more). I want to model some props next though, so expect that in the next update.

Low-Poly Art

Trying out a Low-Poly art style, because I love the way it looks. This is a low-poly caricature of myself.

Witness Progress 09

Remember that animation I was making and I said I wouldn't get distracted from it? I got distracted from it. I had a job interview, made that gif for my website, and then was inspired to make an animatic which I can't show now, but I'm quite proud of. Anyway, I'm back working on this. I have a little more than half the scenes animated (though I've saved the most complicated for last).

New Website Header

I took a break from my personal project to make a new header for my main website, and wanted to share my process work with you.

First I thought of an idea. Then I realized the idea was WAY too long and complicated, so I came up with a different idea, and I made a series of thumbnails to visualize and plan the actions I wanted:

And then I made a rough layout of how big everything would be with the final 1050x350 size that the website allows.

Then using the layout, I modeled the letters in Maya, and imported my Lou the Janitor Character. I also almost went with a black letter on white background, but it didn't look the way I wanted it to when I lit it. The background was constantly getting over-exposed, while the character looked dull. I like the way the character pops against the black background.

And finally, I animated it, lit it, rendered it, added a subtitle in After Effects, and made it into a gif.

Witness Progress 08

Well... sometimes things don't go as planned. Lots of complications since last update. A power outage left me unable to do a lot, and then the usual shaking off the dust of not having animated for a few months means I overestimated my abilities. I did not get the full layout pass that I wanted. Instead I ended up animating a few minor scenes, trying to get back into the groove of animating.

Here's one of the scenes I did. Again, I'm shaking off the dust. It's been a month or two since I've animated, and a few more months since I animated human characters.

Anyway, by next update I hope to have gotten a few more scenes blocked out. I'm hoping for like, at least one scene a day, maybe two. Really solid blocking, and maybe some full-on, first-pass animation if it's a short scene like this.

Witness Progress 07

Today's update is a little different. It was basically a lot of setup without anything to really show off, so I'm including an "audience reaction" GIF to predict your reaction. So without further ado, here's what I got done:

I re-recorded the dialogue, and mixed it with a new copyright-free, royalty-free, free song. Then I adjusted the timing of the animatic to be funnier, added the important sound effects, and exported each scene's audio.

How does the audience feel about that?

Then I imported the audio and referenced the characters and background into maya files for each scene, and in each of those file I set the camera into roughly the area it needed to be (like a really really rough layout). Then I recorded reference videos of myself performing the short, so I could get a feel for the acting.

How's the audience doing?

And finally, I organized everything into folders. Each scene has its place for the maya files, audio files, and render files. All the reference files are organized.

Audience?

Yeah, so today was a kind of boring update. Just a lot of organization, adjusting minor things, and setting things up. Not sure what future updates will be like, because I don't want to spoil anything, but from here on, it's just going to be animation. I'll probably just show screenshots, and maybe GIFs of scenes I'm proud of.

By the next update I plan to get an actual layout pass done, with significant poses, and final camera angles.

Golfing Astronaut

A silly character I sketched a while ago. I'd like to model him in 3D some day, and then I also have an idea for an animation with him. But for now it's just the sketch, and that drawing in my portfolio.

Witness Progress 06

Got Frankie all rigged. I think for the final animation I'm going to have his hands in IK instead of FK so they don't move around as much, but this was just a rig test.

By the next update I plan to have organized all my folders, broken down the animatic into shots, gotten the audio ready for the lipsync, and fixed the minor rig issues I noticed.

Witness Progress 05

This weekend I modeled the final character, Frankie. He still needs UVs, and some minor work done, but he's just about done.

By the next update I hope to have him all rigged up and then I'll be ready to animate.

Witness Progress 04

Since the last update, I changed Johnny's proportions to look more appealing (His head was HUGE. and his arms were lanky), and I got him all rigged up and ready to animate. He mostly stands in shadows and lends intimidation to the scene, so his face rig isn't super detailed like the two main characters.

I also got texturing done for the Boss and for Johnny (although I usually change the textures during the lighting process so these textures are almost final, but not really).

By the next update I plan to have modeled the last character, Frankie.

Spongebob Sketches

 

Spongebob was a huge part of my childhood. Here are some drawings of the characters I did for fun.

Witness Progress 03

This weekend I modeled Johnny. He's mostly going to stand in the shadowy background and lend intimidation to the boss.

I also fixed the other characters' rigs, but that's not something tangible I can show.

By the next post I hope to have rigged this character, and gotten textures done for him and his boss.

Zombie Doodles

     Had a silly idea for a short animation about a superhero zombie, so I started drawing a bunch of zombies.

Witness Progress 02

I've been working on rigging the past few days. Got Lou's rig done... except for some reason it seems to crash Maya a lot, so I have to figure out what's wrong with it. I think it has something to do with the referenced files because the face rig was acting weird.

And I'm pretty much done with the boss. Just some minor weight painting issues I noticed while making the gif.

By the next update I'm going to try to fix the crashing issues, and start working on the next character. I'm aiming to get these updates out every Monday and Thursday.