Demo Reel 2012

Check out my 2012 3D Animation Demo Reel.


All of the individual works can be seen throughout my blog. You can also view by 3D Animated short film "Old Reliable" in the post below, or simple click here.

So concludes the archives leading up to my first 3D Animated short film, as well as my first Demo Reel. Be sure to leave feedback!

OLD RELIABLE

My final 3D Animated Short Film "Old Reliable", produced within the 3rd and final year of the 3D Animation & CGI program at Dawson College in Montreal, Canada.

Old Reliable tells the story of a Cowboy and his Horse, who are lost and wandering through the scorching hot desert of the wild west. They have no food, almost no water, and to top things off, the two characters don't "share" well. Watch and see what happens!

Much blood, sweat and tears was put into the production of this film. Nearly 1 year of production, built from the ground up of 2d sketches and concepts to the full fledged thing you see above. I hope you enjoy it!

Leave your comments below if you have any questions or critiques. Would love to hear from you guys!

Welcome to the wild west

What's a cowboy without his horse right?  I made the challenge to animate a quadruped, not only as a test to my skills, but to gain the experience.  I'll tell you it was NOT easy, but the final result was definitely worth gazing at after much hard work.

NOTE: The horse was modeled by Tim Mayo and rigged by Christopher Carson, credit to noxlabs.com

Quadrupeds are a challenge to animate. With many different body mechanics to pay attention to, you'll be better off studying the anatomy of the animal first and watching LOTS of reference before you start animating one. I animated this cycle to show the horse as if it was fatigued and thirsty from a scorching hot desert.

Speaking of desert...




Yeah I wouldn't want to be stuck there either. This is the desert I modeled for my short film. Due to time restrictions I opted to keep it really simple, but the scale is quite large nonetheless. I really wanted to make it feel as though the Cowboy was lost and hopeless in a massive desert.

Waited long enough?  Time to check out my short film!

The life of a cowboy - Part 2

I began the modeling process from the drawings I made in the post below, lining out the face topology and extrusions.  Using 3D Studio Max as my primary modeling software, I polygon modeled the face in quads, and built the rest from the neck down.

I tried not to make the cowboy too high poly so as not to create slowdown on our school computers.  Of course though to get good bends along the joints of the anatomy (such as the elbows, knees) more edge loops and polygons are required.

The clothing was also very fun and simple to do.  I felt the character already coming to life.

I did the texture phase just afterwards, right now you see the base mesh colors from the software, but the model is complete (and with his awesome beard!)

After the texture phase, I brought the file into another 3D software called Maya.  Because I was more comfortable at the time with animating and rigging in Maya I opted to finish my film using that software.  I went on to create the Blendshapes for the face.

I created just enough facial expressions to emote what the cowboy would be feeling in a short amount of screen time.  It didn't take too long, and I had fun with it still.

Ahh, rigging. It's a love/hate relationship I have.  Do I enjoy it? The base of it, very much so.  But with skinning and ensuring proper joint orientations, it was probably the most time consuming portion of my cowboy's creation.  I built the rig from scratch though, so atleast if anyone asks I can say I did indeed do it.  Moving the controllers and seeing nothing explode brought me so much relief!  I was definitely a happy man when it was done

Now... on to animation!

The life of a cowboy

When creating my main character for my film I opted to choose a style and direction I wasn't known for. I wanted to keep it a cartoon, but not super exaggerated. At the time of brainstorming, I was heavily inspired by the video game "Red Dead Redemption", and so I came to create a western setting. In conceptualizing my cowboy, I looked up celebrities, actors, video game characters, etc.

Eventually I came across a couple of images and started sketching faces.

 I was debating on whether he should be thick or thin, tall or small, old or young, heck I was even thinking of creating 2 cowboys having some sort of standoff (However, no guns were allowed) but in the end it didn't take long before I drew the cowboy I wanted.

I came incredibly close to making his hair white/gray, you know.. make him old and legendary. But in building his personality I thought making him a bit younger would've been more convincing.

Next post will be the 3D Building foundation of the Cowboy! Oh, and here are my reference images I found using Google Images to help inspire my cowboy.



Hulk Hogan and Red Harlow 

 

Exercises

Here are some exercise animations, done in late 2011.

Enjoy!

The early stuff

Here are some works I did when conceptualizing what kind of character I wanted to include in my short film.

I started off with a sort of man/bird hybrid (or "harpie" as they're called).  I eventually came to realize though that the story was too long and too complicated to produce in a 2 minute film.  It was an ambitious idea in my head that had too much backstory; maybe one day I'll use it for another film in the future.

I wanted to keep it simple, but it ended up being something that would have been too hard to handle while in school.

Hey readers!

Just testing out the blogspot format and layout settings. Works will be posted soon!