Internship Presentation at SCAD

On November 9, 2012 I will be speaking at a presentation at SCAD about internships. I will be covering the process for applying for an internship, what I learned from my internship, and what I am doing now after my internship.

I will be positing more details tomorrow, but here are some images that will show up tomorrow in the power point presentation. All intellectual property are part of Hi-Rez Studios. I am showing the animations I worked on tomorrow. For the Wu Kong animation, I worked on the secondary motion only. I worked on the full animation for Ymir. All models were created by Hi-Rez.

Fail Safe Design Sketchs- Kael (Antagonist)

So I have been working on some designs for the antagonist for a character named Kael who is the main antagonist for a story I am working on. He is suppose to be much stronger and intelligent than Halian, but the size of his body makes him slower too. I like the asymmetrical design with a cloak for Kael since he is a character who is intimidating with a presence. While Halian boasts state of the art technology with the things he wear, Kael as a rebel wears more pieced together sets of armor and equipment.

Concept Art Factory Morla and Environment Painting Color WIP II

The Morla environment is at a point where I'm pretty happy with what I have. There are still places to tweak but I am moving on to my next environment.

Weird Creature

I was looking back at some books I read as a child and found the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. The illustrations by Stephen Gammell never ceases to illicit a feeling of unease even as an adult. So I decided to do my own black and white illustrations with weird monsters as a homage to Mr. Gammell.

Looks like a broccoli monster, but I actually searched Antarctica undersea and found some weird anemones that looks like puff balls. The lighting in the image made the indentations at the base of one particular anemone to appear recessed, creating distorted face-like features.

Concept Art Factory Morla and Environment Painting Color WIP

So I finally added color to my value study for the Neverending story environment concept. The swamp is suppose to be sparse and rocky and I wanted the rocks to mimic the shape and texture found on Morla. At this point I am going to populate the world with more dead trees to give it that swampy feel. I'm pretty happy with the steamy feel, it just needs more trees and background clouds.

Rifts Character Roleplay Design: WG-GLE-5

Recently I started hanging out with a group of friends who got me into playing a game called Rifts. It is similar to the D&D board game format. It blends Sci Fi elements with Fantasy which I think is really cool. There aren't many games that merge magic, which is seen as having unlimited power versus technology with a perceived power limit.

The game is not just about combat mechanics; it is also about the interaction between the characters. In many cases, players become attached to the characters they play similar to the way how an audience sympathizes with the protagonist and antagonist of movies or video games. The Rifts session has been extremely helpful in getting me into the psychology of how each character would act in different situations.

Today I am uploading my first character from the game called WG-GLE-5 a full conversion cyborg affectionately called "Mr. Wiggles". In the game, he wakes up from a deep slumber after having been deactivated for some time. He joins a group of intrepid adventurers to pass the time and make a living, all the while he tries to figure out who he is and what happened to him before his awakening.

The Wiggles has tremendous physical strength and speed, but has average intelligence. He fumbles around a bit because he is not used to his cybernetic body after having been deactivated for such a long time. In one session, he had to save a team member who fell off a tall building. Not knowing his strength, he flies toward his companion and catches him, but his full speed and strength ended up hurting the man. What makes this character interesting is the fact that he seems like a child, but looks like a ten feet tall walking death machine. In a way the fact that he tries to help but usually ends up messing things up and having to clean  up afterwards makes this character endearing to other members.

Apparently Mr Wiggles had a tragic past where he lost a loved one during an attack by the Coalition States, a human centric organization bent on ridding the Rifts world of dimensional beings who they deemed below the human race. The protagonist was also hurt during the attack and left for dead with fatal wounds until a third party organization turned him into a cyborg. It turned out that he was created to fight against the coalition. For some reason, he has been deactivated for a while, it was presumed his old team were wiped out by CS forces, and has been put into safe storage to avoid the CS from completely destroying all the combat cyborgs made to take down their regime.

Morla Environment Concept #1 WIP

I have selected one of the compositions from my previous sketches. This shot is going to be more cinematic than something dynamic and energetic. It is for establishing location and scale of the characters.

Meeting Morla for the first time.

Morla Environment Concept Sketches

Hi everyone, sorry for the long wait between each project from the Neverending Story. I have been swamped with work at my internship. I am posting up some concept sketches I did for the environment I want to put Morla in. I tried a few story telling shots along with some that are more cinematic.

I am trying to approach the composition as if it were used for a movie set. The size format currently is 1600px x 1200 px format. I will change it to a 16:9 scale when I begin the actual piece.

3Ds Max Project II

For this Massfx project, I am have broken down castle walls. Courtesy of the 3Ds Max Tutorial Channel on Youtube:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACrhTDu66rA&feature=plcp

3Ds Max Massfx project I

I am currently learning how to use scripts and Massfx for particle animation in 3Ds Max as a part of my internship for SCA Transporation Forensics. For this demo, I modeled a few pillars, broke them up with a script, and set up their physical relationship with the Massfx Rigid Body Editor.

Morla Value Study #2

My second value study for Morla. The last design used mountains and rocks as a design motif. This time, I used swamp trees, roots, and tree fungus for Morla's silhouette design motif.

Cerebus Animation

More updates from the feature film: Cerebus!

So this is a short scene I animated for Cerebus.

Here is a recent interview of Oliver Simonsen, owner of What Comix! and director of Cerebus, by Katie Chats, keeping the momentum on Cerebus going- Congratz Ollie!

Morla Value Study

This is one of the final designs I am thinking of doing for Morla, the turtle from the Neverending Story. I wanted Morla to have a really long face as the saying goes, "why the long face?". The shell has a distinctive mountain design and it even has a lighthouse at the edge of the shell. This shows that Morla is so big that her shell has an ecosystem of its own. However, her sheer size prevents her from seeing the beauty on her back and is thus blind to life around her.

3D Modelling Personal Projects

So I have decided to model my own room for my personal project. I'll add in some fantasy/sci fi elements when I am done just for kicks. These models are all done in Maya. I will be uploading my next batch of WIP.

Venetian Blinds

Door Way and Closet

The Fan

Concept Art Factory Challenge

So the Concept Art Factory is hosting another sketch challenge where students will be redesigning characters from the Neverending Story. I chose to do Morla for my design, so far it is only in sketch phase. I will be developing the sketches further as I find time away from my internship with SCA Transporation Consultants.

Morla is a depressed turtle so I tried to make the shapes curve down. The shell has to seem heavy and burdensome while the face is long according to the expression "why the long face".

New Background

Well...I got critiqued for having a stock image as my background, so I decided to create my own background, a star field nebula for my the blog. Simple. So I uploaded a series of frame by frame shot of my background WIP so you can see how I did it. Enjoy!

Start with a black background

Use a soft brush on 1% opacity in dissolve setting. Set fade brush on to control amount of dissolve.

Turn down layer opacity and erase random areas of the star field to make different patches of star recede or pop.

Add in larger stars for extra depth and parallax. Use the gradient tool in radial mode to create the halos around the closer stars.

I did a lot of work here, but I basically took a soft brush and covered certain areas with white at different opacity. Make sure the focal point has the most white for greatest contrast. Use smudge tool to move the white blotches around. I then used a crunchy brush downloaded from conceptart.org to erase the edges of the central blob to make the gaseous nebula effect.

I took the gradient tool and set the mode to vivid light to make highlights brighter and darker regions recede. The gradient is dropped onto the center of the nebula where star clusters are closest.

Change file format to RGB. Create a layer and set blending mode to color. It has more saturated, fuller colors, than the overlay mode. I used the gradient tool on normal blending mode to spot the colors. Don't for get to hit some of the stars as well because stars come in different colors based on size, fuel, gravity, and other factors.

Set the gradient tool on vivid light again and hit the center with a saturated magenta. Now the night sky is really shining!

I hope you guys liked the quick demo, if you have any questions, please let me know. Thanks!

Phase 4 Senior Project Finals

For my finals at SCAD, I decided to do two final illustrations for marketing purposes. In the gaming and film industry, marketing illustrations tend to be done in a square format so that the advertising department can crop the image. Each object is on a separate layer too so that they can be moved around if the image is cropped. I decided to do a action packed fight scene at night, and a more cinematic city shot of Buckysville to show that I can compose scenes with different moods.

Chevy Ford Carter vs Beatnik Nick the Robot on their way to Bucky Theater

Jack Nick saving Chevy, Janice, and Karen from the clock tower overlooking Buckysville.

Phase III update

Some updates for my Phase III submissions.

Props:

Revolver

The revolver uses nuclear fusion as its power source. I looked at Smith and Wessons for the nub nose design, but ended up going with a more heavy duty body. The revolver chamber is actually the container for the solenoid coils that charges each shot that comes from the fusion cell at the base of the handle.

I played with the glow effects. I felt the ones with the body glowing to be too excessive. I decided to combine the simple body of the gun on the bottom with the barrel from the one on the right.

Final design for Chevy Carter's revolver.

DIBBS

I used alchemy to produce the silhouettes for the DIBBS. I played around with different ways to create an imposing object that would be difficult to remove. DIBBS are suppose to be place holders for people who literally want Dibbs on something.

I've got Dibbs on DIBBS!

Environments:

Clock Tower

I tried playing around with minimalist designs fro the clock tower since minimalism started to become prominent in the 1950s. However, I liked the quirky zany feel of a world where objects look like familiar everyday things. This resulted in a tower that used cogs as its design motif.

I had some perspective issues with the value render. The Aerial perspective effect isn't too bad though.

After some perspective tweaks with some red and blue lights, the scene looks reminiscent of Blade Runner.

Bucky Theater

Buckminster Fuller is one of my heroes for his visionary talents. His most celebrated designs today is the Bucky Ball which can now be seen at the Epcot Center. I originally designed the building to look like a movie projector, but since the ball is already minimalist, I might as well go that route.

The top one looked too Epcot, the left is a glowing soccer ball. I went with the bottom one because it reminds us of something vaguely sci fi, modern era-ish. I really liked the contrast between the round sphere and the triangular body.

different color designs for the theater as the gas tubes change colors periodically.

Cerebus Feature Film

Hi everyone, I just want to advertise for a feature film currently in development called "Cerebus". It is based on the comic book "Cerebus" which inspired graphic novelists like Jeff Smith. It is written and illustrated by Dave Sim and today, it is one of the longest running English language comic book series ever printed. I happen to have the good fortune of being contacted by Oliver Simonsen of What Comics Entertainment to animate a short scene for the feature film.

Come join the fight and follow up on Cerebus the Aardvark's progress!

Click Here to access the link to my animation contribution to "Cerebus" the animated feature.

Sequential Art Senior Project Phase I and II

It is the end of midterm week at SCAD. Being the usual busy bee, I am taking two senior project courses for my sequential art and animation majors. For the sequential art project, I am working on 2 character, 2 vehicles, 2 props, 2 environment, 2 final concept illustrations, along with a 200 panel storyboard, and a written treatment for my video game concept.

"Think Fast" is the name of my senior project; it is about Chevy Ford Carter, a private investigator from Buckysville who is disgruntled about his boring job until he picks up a case on a killer beatnik robot. The story aesthetics are influenced by the 1950s and features dark humor with science fiction elements of the Fall Out series while retaining a quirkiness found in the Sci-Fy channel series Eureka.

So far I have completed 10 thumbnail sketches for each character/vehicle, 3 value studies for each character/vehicle, and 1 full color concept illustrations for each character/vehicle. Enjoy!

From this silhouette study, I felt that the ones where Chevy's shoulders are sagging with an unbuttoned coat were strongest at portraying an unkempt and unhappy fellow.

The value study portion. I noticed that my design did not look sci fi enough, in fact the character looked almost stereotypical.

Final Protagonist Character Concept for Chevy Ford Carter

Jack Nick has to look human so all the wacky designs with bulbous looking robots are out. In here, I started adding in clothing to give the robot a more interesting silhouette design. I focused primarily on the sunglasses and the V shape it created. I liked the silhouettes where Jack Nick looks tough and has strong arms to contrast with the thin arms. My influence for the clothing was Bob Dylan.

I thought the ones with the curved shapes were too feminine and not masculine enough. The one I selected repeated that V shape over and over and over.

Final Antagonist Character Concept for Beatnik Nick the Robot

The Ford Nucleon was also designed by the robot's creator. It is the only civilian flying car since law forbids average citizens from having one due to potential traffic hazards. The historical Nucleons were supposed to have a nuclear reactor as its power source. Obvious concerns over radiation poisoning and other hazards caused it to be scrapped. had a lot of fun designing the Nucleon. It had to sleek, fast, and agile. The first couple of designs were not my favorites because they looked too much like muscle cars. The final design actually had a shape that contrasts well with the police car.

I liked the one that had chromium covering the entire chassis. However, it did not seem like such an appealing design because it would be really bland. The Ford Nucleon has to be edgy with bright colors.

Final Nucleon Vehicle Concept

Police cars from the 1950s had a charm to it because of the way the passenger compartment rides closely to the back. The police cars have to contrast sharply with the nucleon in that it has to be imposing, strong, and powerful. Some of the silhouettes looked like taxi cabs and others were too futuristic. The most successful one has a powerful front and the back features a propulsion system seen only in a sci fi world.

I played around mostly with the front and back design for the police car. I liked the more stable and reliable look of having two fins in the back. I also added in one of those sirens from the 1950s which had to be placed outside to be heard.

Police Car Vehicle Concept