Pop Secret "Dark Knight"

Here is the first of three Pop Secret spots I've been working on over at Nathan Love! They are all based on movies, and this first one is based on The Dark Knight. It just started airing on tv. Check it out!


I animated Grandma's demise popping, and most of the shots of Bobby, save for the last shot, and the one where Grandma jumps off the sofa. I've had the pleasure of working with some great people over at Nathan Love these past few months. Every day is a blast, and I'm really proud of all the work we churn out. Two more of these spots are on the way. I'm sure they'll be just as awesome!

You Could Be Mine

So...damn...tired. o__o;;

Here's a cg of Regina I made recently. There are a couple things about the pic that irk me (proportions and face arrangement), but overall I'm pretty pleased with it. Usually after I finish a cg, I'll look back at it after a couple days and think it looks like utter crap, but not with this one! Hope ya dig.


I was gonna try and finish off this entry with something mildly clever and profound, but then I realized I'm neither of those. Instead, I leave you with this masterfully crafted paper mache of Pikachu!

Knockin' on Heaven's Door

My body is always tired, but my mind just wants to bust out the story and comic for Revenant. Ah yea, and to add on top of the fact that there's a dumb vampire craze going on, I just found out that there's a movie coming out called, you guessed it, The Revenant. I think I went nuts after I found that out... The story isn't the slightest bit similar, in fact its title probably serves the movie better than mine, but still! Now I'm considering changing the title for my story. Crap.

Anywho, here is a rather lazy cg I made of Regina using one of my old sketches. I really want to make this a movie someday... hence, the cheesy film grain and depth of field.


I've been writing the script for Revenant (now tentative title) on my commutes to and from work every day. It's a slow and grueling process that takes massive amounts of tweaking, chin scratching, and actually acting out the scenes myself (mentally of course). It takes an asston of time to get the dialogue right, and even more to make sure that each character is, well, staying in character. It's slow. But if this is what it takes to get it right, I'll drag my fat ass through it. It will get done. Comic, movie, 3d short, WHATEVER. Something will come of this.

p.s - Uncharted 2 is one of my favorite games ever.

Revenant sketches

Long time since my last post... Been pretty tired as of late, and the only real time I have to draw anything is on my commute to work. I'll whip out the moleskine and try to draw as best as I can on the shaky train. Sometimes I get pretty into it and the 45 minute ride goes by fast. Other times I'll be too tired and just sleep, haha. Most of the drawings in the sketchbook are Regina related. And that brings me to another point. I think I have a name for my comic/movie/whatever the hell it is. It's still tentative, but Revenant, will do for now. I'll try to refer to it using that name instead of calling it "Regina's story" all the time. Here are the sketches, hope ya like.

Jamie and Rudy

Regina enjoying a cig

She will probably finish that bottle before heading off, haha

About to let loose

Welp, that's it for now. I've been getting immeasurably irked by the amount of vampire related movies that have been coming out/getting announced. It really saddens me to think that Revenant could get bogged down in all the other vampire movies out there. But now that I think about it, it's not like it will be finished any time soon. If it ever does get released in any form, it will probably be a looong time from now. So here's to hoping that by then, this gay vampire craze will have died down.

Peace!

p.s.- I watched District 9 today and could not hold my excitement leaving the theater. WATCH IT. MANY TIMES.

doodlage

Some sketches I made....some of them are kinda old. Ah well!

Squid Girl

Regina...giving the finger O_o

Random girl faces..

Totally creepy android girl

Sam vs. Todd with nCloth!

So here is the same animation clip I posted before, but this time Sam has a nCloth poncho! I am not a dynamics guy, so screwing around and tweaking the attributes using nCloth was definitely challenging. After having done this, I still wouldn't say that I'm the slightest bit competent with nCloth, but hey, at least I got somewhere with it.

I had to attach the neck and shoulder area of the poncho to Sam's mesh accordingly. This was so that the poncho wouldn't go flying off of Sam while spinning or jumping... It's not perfect, every now and then it'll bunch up, and look funkadelic but for the most part it looks pretty poncho-ish. Hope ya dig it Eric. Enjoy!

Down beside that red firelight

Some pics of good ol' Regina.

MEGA POST OF DOOM

Just a warning. This post is pretty damn long. It's a walkthrough of some animation I've been working on. Read on if you'd like. If you don't, I don't blame ya.

Sam Animation

After my senior year ended, I asked my buddy Eric if I could animate his thesis character, Sam, just for fun. He let me use it, and he even made another character for Sam to fight against! His name is Todd. Saucesome.

I wanted to animate Sam because I always saw him doing some pretty nifty things in my head. I would always choreograph crazy, cartoony action in my mind and it just begged to be animated. I couldn't help it! And though it took a while for me to actually get started on the damn thing, I'm finally getting somewhere.

So here ya go! This clip is the first quarter of the main action sequence I saw in my mind. If I was forced to choose just one scene from my head to animate, it would be this one. Also, this is all kinda rough and lacks polish... heh.

This second clip is the exactly the same as the first, but without any camera animation. It's purpose is to help you concentrate on just the characters' animations.

Pretty short, I know.
The first shot you see has Sam giving Todd the one, two punch.


If you look closely, Sam's first punch is actually aimed right at Todd's crotch. I was worried that I'd have to animate Todd in excruciating pain, but thankfully it happens so quick that nobody would really notice. Next is the uppercut. I don't know if its noticeable, but Sam's fists are actually getting bigger for a couple frames as he's punching. I had to do this because Sam's hands are normally kinda small, and it would be hard to tell that Sam's uppercut is actually an uppercut. Once I made it bigger however, it reads more easily as a punch, while adding just a tiny pinch of squash and stretch.

As for poor Todd, he was just enjoying the nice landscape view when Sam suddenly bumrushes him. He looks like the victim, but really, this is taken out of context. Todd is the badguy.

Next, Sam does a funny spin towards Todd, and trips him.

The spin is there because that's how I imagined Sam fighting. He's a pretty wacky cartoon character, and I thought he'd be the kinda guy who moves really fast, all over the place. Although....I don't know what other people think of it, haha.

Sam then jumps on top of the spinning pile of flesh that is Todd, and kicks him down while jumping over to the other side and delivers the final blow.


I wanted Sam to have a cool pose at the end of the shot, so I held him there for a while and it successfully telegraphs, "I just uppercutted your ass sky high biaatch". Although, the pose itself could've been stronger, heh. The impact of the uppercut itself is supported by a cheesy punch special effect I quickly made in maya, and a handy little camera shake. Also, the juxtaposition of a quick, two frame punch and the long hold on Sam's "uppercut" pose helps create a greater sense of impact as well.

And finally, the little rocks and boulders on the ground and that big block behind Sam and Todd are only there to help give a sense of movement in 3d space. With nothing on the ground or behind the characters, it's pretty hard to get a sense of how much distance they're covering when moving around.

Welp, that about wraps up this animation walkthrough. There are more to come later on.

I did not write all this out because I think my animation is the shit and I wanted to show you all how awesomeness is achieved. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I am still an animation noob. I really do think my animations kinda suck. I have so much to learn it's not even funny. I know there are plenty of hitches and mistakes in all my work and frankly, by the end I'm never satisfied with what I have.

I've just been working for a while on these and it's nice to finally open up and talk about my work and some of the things I went through during the process. That's all.

SO. If you have any suggestions, let me know! I'm still learning a lot and I'm open to new ideas.

Welp, I guess that's about it. My next post will be about Regina.

Peace!

P.S. - If you've read this whole damn thing, you really deserve a cookie.

Bwaa!

Ahh....my sleeping schedule is totally out of wack. It's been slowly shifting from ridiculous to just plain stupid. I think I might stay up a day to try and reset it...

On the plus side, I've been working on my Regina story and its been going along pretty well. I've made the very basic plot outline and I've started writing the story with dialogue. Feels good to be getting it down in stone. I view this whole story as a live action movie, but I think I might start making a comic out of it (as bad as I am at comics). :) Too tired right now, but I'll post pics of some of the characters later. I won't give away much yet, but all I can say is my story got a lot more tragic than I initially expected it to be. O_o

Oh yea, and I really want to make movies. Film school...? Too many things in the way, especially financially. But we'll see. Bwa!

Peace!

I make myself laugh

"I have a tendency to post on my blog and disappear for a long period of time before coming back. Well.. NO MORE! I will be trying to post here at least once a week to keep my blog from getting stagnant."

- Me, back in November

HA. That went well. Time has shown that I tend to struggle with regular updates. Therefore I won't make any similar promises in hopes that I won't need to eat my words again. Haven't done much drawing lately, but I've yet to post the entry I made for Udon's Darkstalkers tribute contest. So here it is...


Demitri in all his vampiric glory! It's kinda boring, and can seem a little homosexual if taken the wrong way, but his Midnight Bliss move warrants him the pretty little rose, so take that.

In other news, a while ago I found somebody on deviantart who more or less copied Leon and Claire from my R.E. fanart pic and called it his own drawing, heh. As soon as I saw the pic, I saved it so that one day I can make a post about it!

Here is the original

And here is his picture lol

I don't mind copying, just give credit where it's due please. But uh, no biggie I guess *thumbs up!*

Ice Zombie

I need to get off my ass and draw more...
First cg done in a while