Happy Thanksgiving!

Here is a Thanksgiving Doodle; Happy Holidays!

Goblins

I came up with an idea for a Table Top Role Playing Game where the players play Goblins in the employ of a wizard. The game involves cooperative play where the players work together to achieve some goal, but at the same time there will be plenty of back stabbing too. So i have been working on the mechanics of the game and doodling up concepts for the art in the game book. Here is some of the Goblins I doodled up:

HAPPY HALLOWEEN pt2

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Happy Halloween. I for one love this holiday because you get to dress up in costume and no one looks at you like your weird. Not that usually stops me anyway.

Sword Swing Animation part: 3

Here is the final result of the Sword Swing animation. I'm pretty happy with it. I adjusted the timing for the arms, spent more time working with the left arm to make it look and feel more natural. I added in the facial expression, not my strongest area, but something I will be working on more and more over the next few weeks. I also added some color textures to the Goon's body to make it appear as if he was wearing a little leather underoos and some pieces of armor.

Sword Swing Animation part: 2

I have smoothed out the tangents and played with the timing. You may also note that I completed changed the character's Left arm. I did this because of the fact that the previous poses for this arm was floating a bit and had an instant where the arm did a 180 flip before grabbing onto the sword.. Which is always fun when that happens. On top of all of this the arm was a little to active, too much movement that was distracting from the overall action.

Now I need to add some slight movement to the fingers on the left hand so they don't appear to be so stiff. I also need to go through and add the facial expressions to finish of this piece.

Sword Swing Animation

I am currently working on a CG Animation of a the Goon Character model preforming a sword combat. The first steps I took were to study an individual swinging a sword with a purpose. I found Several good references on youtube and in several books. Once I had an idea of the direction I wanted the animation to take, I sketched out the key poses. Once the Key poses looked the way i wanted them I set up the scene in Maya and began to pose Goon in the the poses I had sketched, while keeping the Tangents in the graph Editor as Step Tangents. Once I was done here is what I ended up with:

This didn't look to bad. So i decided to make a few adjustments to the poses I had here and then start to add inbetweens to smooth out the larger motions and adjust the timing.

As you can see the Animation is coming along nicely. Now I need to change the Step Tangents to Spline Tangents and then clean up the tangents and smooth out the motion as we go. I'll post the finished animation when I am finished.

2 hour Digital Paint Copy

Earlier today I started to do a copy of a photo to strengthen my Photoshop painting skills. The first run of these will be 2 hours long and then later I'll change it to 1 hour paint sessions. So here is todays. The face is still off, but I was not aiming for a final fully detailed piece> I was aiming to capture the reference Image to the best of the ability and then go in and strengthen certain areas as best as i could. I don't spend enough time painting in photoshop and need to improve.

The Digital Copy:

the Original:

The Parts that I like that turned out really awesome; the area under the chin and around the jaw line. There is a really nice reflective light in there thats full of color and life. I like her arm, the direction it was heading, it just is not on the same page as the face. Still to suggestive. The eye still does not look right and part of this has to do with the fact that the eye is too white. It makes her look crazy or evil. The face too is not prefect, she looks to old.

Hopefully, I'll have another one of these up tomorrow night.

Ravenwood Fair

The other day I applied for a position at Lolapps, which is a social network game company. In an effort to get to know the company and their games more, I started to play one of their facebook games, called "Ravenwood Fair". To tell you the truth I really liked the image that they had up on the Lolapps main site for the game, which is why I decided to try it out. Anything with floating islands only accessible by airship is awesome, in opinion.
Ravenwood Fair is about you living on this floating island that is covered by a dark (haunted) forest and you want to turn the land into a fair. So you cut down trees to make space for your fair and the more stuff you have the more people show up (by airship) to give you money (and experience) to enjoy your fair. These same people will also occasionally give you quests to complete, which is cool. Later you get a mole who shows up and helps you build a mine on the island as well, and you can go down there and mine to your hearts content. You can build mining machines which will bring in more moles to work the mine. These moles operate the same way as the visitors of the fair and you will gain experience and rocks (which you need like wood to build stuff in the mine). However, the mines and the forest are not safe so occasionally you will need to beat down the monsters that live there. Which gives you all kinds of fun experience points and other goodies. I think the best part about it is that you beat them up with a shovel. Anyway, to help protect your visitors and miners you place protectors in your fair/mine. These will comfort the visitor/miner when they are scared and attack monsters. Each protector is different and each has its own area of effect and its own amount of time that they can operate before needing recharged (which is you dancing for them).

I never play facebook games, I think they are addictive and that you end up spending a lot of time on them when you could be working on other stuff. So i try to stay away from them; the same goes for MMORPGs. So I tried the game for 3 days and I have to say that the game play is fun and enjoyable. It is a game that you could jump on to at least 3 times a day and play without ever having to go out of your way to buy anything with real cash. However, The two things I did notice is that 1) if you don't have other people you know who also play- it makes it difficult to build things because of a lack of certain resources, and 2) as far as i could tell there was no way of knowing what all the requirements for any one building/game/etc were before you started to build it (these requirements are ones needed besides cash and wood). You get almost done and be at the last step when you would be told that you needed 3 (or more) different resources other than wood and that you didn't have enough of it yet. Which hey, whatever, I'll just go looking for it, right? Well not all resources are equal. The resources that you get all the time are things like wood, money, and food. Easy to get. Other resources are a bit more hard to get - some maybe even a little to hard to get if you 1) don't have neighbors (friend who are playing) or 2) don't want to spend real money to buy it. I imagine you could just wait it out, but that will slow the game down a bit. However, I imagine most facebook games are setup like this, since they are 1) social network games and 2) free, so the companies who make them need to make money some how. So with all that in mind it is a worth while game to play and the Art work is great! Try it out if your the type to play Facebook games.

Figure drawings 8/17/2011

I was unable to sleep last night, so after the 3rd time trying to fall asleep I gave up and decided to do some figure drawing instead.

Knight Tale: 3

So here is today's progress so far. I need to go back and fix both the Tower doorway and Window so that they are large enough for the princess. Plus I need to go back and break the Princess' hair into 4 parts instead of the 3 that it currently is so that her arm does not get lost in her golden locks. Soon we shall see the monster make an appearance then things will really get lively.

Knight Tale: 2

So I started to animate my wooden horse, that the knight will ride on. The knight is not animated yet, but here is the horse. Enjoy.

One Inch Chef

I had this idea the other week about a one inch tall chef that had to battle all kinds of food stuff in order to return to his proper size and finish the making Diner. Some of the food items that I think he would fight are things like: Zombie Carrots, Killer Turnips, Ghoulish Spring Onions, Many0eyed Potatoes, Headless Chickens, Menacing Beef, Vengeful  Turkeys, Spoiled Grapes, Spiting Pomegranates, etc. Along with Crazied Mice, Evil Rats, and Devious Cockroaches.
The play style of the game would be a side-scroller much like the old Mario Brothers games or Sonic the hedge Hog. The chef would wield a big cleaver as his main weapon, he would have a heath gauge and a spice rack. The spice rack would have a few different spices on it that he could collect as he traveled the kitchen environment. You would have Meat Tenderizer that doubled damage done to meat products, salt to dehydrate veggies, some kind of spice for heath and some other spice as a power up.

So here is the image I saw in my mind; I still need to work up the health bar and spice rack, which I will post up at a later date.

Knight Tale:1

I am working on a short flash animation of my own devising.  Here is the scene layout, which will help reflect the feel I am going for. The flash animation will be much longer than this quick preview.



Here is the Monster that will be with in the scene:

Plein Air Painting

Today was a nice day to go outside and paint. Usually it rains in Portland during any season that is not summer, so you take the warm none wet days when you can get them.
 Since it was nice out I decided to go out and do a quick little Plein Air Painting. I have not done one of these since last summer, so I'm a little rusty. At the same time I haven't used any oils for just as long, since I have been spending the winter getting better at Water Colors. Oil Paints is what I like to think of as "Warm Climate" paints, since It requires either a well ventilated area to use or the outdoors. And since I don't like to be cold the only time I go out to paint is during the spring and summer. Water colors are more of an everyday paint for me, same goes for Acrylics since neither of these require ventilation or fresh air to use safely.
So I spent 3 hours outside and did only one Painting from my front yard. I could tell that I am a little rusty at doing this since it took some time to get anywhere with it at first, and then half ways through i had to remind myself that, "A course it doesn't look right, your standing to close. Take a step back and get some perspective on the scene as a whole". And so thats what i did. once I did this the painting and hard to find core colors started to fall into place. So over all it turned out pretty good. And i even finished the painting too; this is something I am bad at doing some times. I get either bored by the painting towards the end and just want to move on or dislike the progress i have made and just want to start anew.
I will point out that Lee White was correct with replacing my use of Titanium White with Zinc White as a white to mix with other colors. If you mix Titanium White with any other color it tends to make the color look chalky, whereas, the use of Zinc White does not. I don't know why my teacher who taught me how to paint with oil paints did not know this, since she required us to use only Titanium White.

So here is the final result, this was taken with my phone camera, I'll have to wait til it is dry to scan this on my Epson later. When I do this I'll post the better Image here.

Designing Flash Characters and ASIFA.

This past weekend I went to my first ASIFA Event here in Portland, Oregon. We meet downtown Saturday morning and had a bagel breakfest and chatted a little before the main event. ASIFA Portland had a few speakers come for their second annual unconference, one of which was a woman who worked for RACC. This was the main discussion that I went to. RACC holds these yearly grants that they hand out to artist so that those artist can get  their purposed projects done. There are a few specifications that an artist has to meet in order to receive a grant from RACC. The first is that they must write up and hand in a proposal for the project, the breakdown of what the money will be used for, and they have to have something to show as a finished product at the end of the year. if they like your proposal then they give you half the money up front and the other half at the end when the project is completed.
Now, I don't have any projects currently that I need funding for.The knowledge that this is available; however, is great for if I do at some point down the line need money for a project. The only bad thing for those who might be reading this is that this is a Oregon thing. However, I don't doubt that other cities and states have this type of thing available as well. You'll just have to look into it.
The other discussion I sat in was on how to promote yourself. However, I hand to leave before the end of the discussion, because I had to meet up with my wife and Daughter to go to another event that day. It did not look like they were going to get very far with that discussion anyway, since when I left they had something like 10 mins left and were still discussion the use of a Blog as a self promotion tool and how it differs from a personal website. The Unconference lasted until about 2:30 pm and had several other discussions going on.

The other thing that I have been working on these past few weeks is character designing for Flash. When I do this I create everything in Adobe Illustrator and then import that whole ai file into flash. From here the different parts are turned into symbols and saved into a main Flash file. I make any minor adjustments that you cannot do in Illustrator in Flash before I am done, such as remove lines that don't need to be in certain areas like the arms and forearms.
With this Knight character I had to remove the lines that separated the Chest from the Lower Body so that the two pieces looked to be one whole piece.

The next piece I hope to do is a dragon to go with this character.

Tentacle Monster

Here is a little 2 second sneak peak at something I am working on. Enjoy.

Always Learning Something New.

I will tell you what, once you become a CG animator it no longer about worrying about make sure you keep up on your animating skills. Nope, its all about keeping up with the new software version that they came out with that year so you can do your bloody job. I mean you'll still be practicing your skills, but your focus will be on learning all the new stuff more so than on the animation as a whole. Traditional Animators in the past had it easy. They didn't have to worry about needing to learn how to use a new pencil every year, they just picked the pencil up and started to draw.

Anyway, I have to now learn to use several different CG animation software. Luckily, they say that if you can learn Maya you can use any of the other software. It comes down to learning all the buttons and going throw the motions- which takes time. Time in which I wish i could use doing something else, like paint.

Dialog

I was going to do the March 11second club contest, but March was a really busy time for me and as such i put aside 5 days at the end of the month to animate the whole 11 seconds. Unfortunately, I should have given myself more time and only got four seconds done. So i cleaned these 4 seconds up and here they are.

Robber Bridegroom Part 3

Here we have the Beat Boards for the Robber Bridegroom story.

THE YOUNG GIRL WAVES TO HER FATHER AS SHE HEADS OFF TO COLLECT BERRIES IN A

NEARBY MEADOW.

A RICHLY DRESSED YOUNG MAN SHOWS UP TO THE MILLER’S HOME IN ORDER TO ASK

FOR HIS DAUGHTER’S HAND IN MARRIAGE.

WHILE THE STRANGER IS TALKING TO THE MILLER, A SHADOW PASSES OVER THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER AND CAUSES HER TO FEEL A CHILL DEEP IN HER HEART.

WHEN THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER RETURNS, SHE IS SURPRISED TO SEE A STRANGER IN

HER HOME AND IN HER SHOCK DROPS THE BASKET OF BERRIES. THE CHILL DEEPENS

IN HER HEART.

THE MILLER HAS AGREED TO THE MARRIAGE PROPOSAL. THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER

TAKES THIS NEWS WITH A SAD FACE, THE GROOM ASSUMES IT IS BECAUSE OF HER

NOT KNOWING HIM AND INVITES HER TO VISIT HIS HOME FOR SUNDAY DINNER.

THE BRIDE DECIDES TO TAKE HER GROOM UP ON HIS OFFER AND FOLLOWS THE PATH

HE TOLD HER TO HIS HOME. THE PATH SOON BECOMES UN MAINTAINED AND THE TREES SEEM TO TRY TO HOLD HER BACK, BUT SHE MOVES ONWARD.

 THE BRIDE COMES OUT OF THE FOREST AND FINDS AN OLD NEGLECTED DARK HOUSE.

INSIDE SHE FINDS THE ONLY OCCUPANT, AN OLD WOMAN. THE OLD WOMAN TELLS HER THAT EVIL MEN LIVE IN THIS HOUSE. THAT THESE EVIL MEN MARRY WOMAN OF THE VILLAGES AND THEN BRING BACK HERE TO EAT THEM.

 THE OLD WOMAN EXPLAINS THAT THE BRIDE SHOULD HIDE, BECAUSE THE EVIL MEN WILL SOON RETURN.

WHEN THE MEN RETURN, WE SEE THE GROOM AND HIS MEN THROW A DEAD WOMAN ON A NEARBY TABLE AND BEGIN TO HACK THE BODY INTO SMALLER PARTS.

DURING THIS PROCESS, THE WOMANS FINGER GETS LOPED OFF AND FLIES INTO

WHERE SHE IS HIDDEN INTO THE BRIDE’S LAP. SHE HOLDS BACK A CRY IN FEAR OF BEING FOUND.

WHEN THE BRIDE RETURNS HOME AFTER SNEAKING AWAY FROM THE HOUSE SHE

TELLS HER FATHER WHAT SHE SAW AND HEARD. HE IS IN DISMAY AT THE FATE HE

HAD ALMOST COSIGNED HIS DAUGHTER TO.

THE MILLER ALLOWS THE WEDDING PROCEED AS PLANNED BY THE GROOM,

BUT BEFORE THE CEREMONY BEGINS THE GROOM IS ARRESTED. THE BRIDE TELLS

EVERYONE IN THE VILLAGE ABOUT THE HORRORS THAT SHE HAD WITNESSED IN

THE ABANDONED HOUSE. THE GROOM AND HIS MEN ARE ROUNDED

UP AND SOON HANGED.

The End

Robber Bridegroom Part 2

As i had stated previously, I was working on the beat boards to the Brother's Grimm Fairy Tale "The Robber Bridegroom". Here are the character designs that I worked up for this story. There are four characters in this story that are important, The Bride: the miller's Daughter, the Miller, The Robber Bridegroom, and The Old Woman.

The Bride

The Miller

The Robber Bridegroom

The Old Woman

Next time I'll post the beatboards for the story.

The Robber Bridegroom

 One of my current projects that I am getting together for my Graduation at the end of March is The story of "The Robber Bridegroom", which is a Grimm Brothers fairy tale. I am conceptualizing out a few of the key Layouts, as well as the four important characters within the story: The Miller, The Miller's Daughter, The Robber Bridegroom, and The old Woman that lives in the house that the Robber Bridegroom and his men use as a home base. I figure she is his elderly Mother who they use as a house slave.
  My hope is to have all of these conceptual drawing done, as well as, the Beat Boards for the story. For those of you who don't know, Beat Boards are Storyboards that cover the main idea of each scene/sequence.

Robber Bridegroom Synopsis:

A miller wished to marry his daughter off, and so when a rich suitor appeared, he betrothed her to him. One day the suitor complained that the daughter never visited him, told her that he lived in the forest, and overrode her reluctance by telling her he would leave a trail of ashes so she could find his home. She filled her pockets with peas and lentils and marked the trail with them as she followed the ashes.

They led her to a dark and silent house. A bird in a cage called out to warn her that she entered a murderer's house. An old woman in a cellar kitchen told her that the people there would kill and eat her unless the old woman protected her and hid her behind a barrel. A band of robbers arrived with a young woman, and they killed her and prepared to eat her. When one chopped off a finger to get at the golden ring on it, the finger and ring flew through the air and landed in the bodice of the hiding woman. The old woman discouraged them from searching, because the finger nor the ring were likely to run away: they'd find it in the morning.

The old woman drugged the robbers' wine. As soon as they fell asleep, the two living women fled. Wind had blown the ashes away, but the peas and lentils had sprung up into seedlings: the two followed the path of plants and reached the young woman's home.

When the wedding day arrived and the guests were telling stories, the young woman said that she would tell a dream she had had, and told of her visit to the robbers' den, her bridegroom punctuating it with "My darling, you only dreamed this." -- or the robber punctuating with exclamations that it was not so in the Mr. Fox variant -- until she produced the finger of the dead girl and showed it to the company.

The robber bridegroom and all his band were put to death.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Robber_Bridegroom_(fairy_tale)

Cleaver Fever

Recently, I started to animate for a video game that is in production at the Portland AI. The first character they gave me to animate was a Spider and my first thought was, "oh, no. A multiple legged creature, dear me." But it turned out easier than I had originally thought it would. Here is the walk and bite animation i did for the game.
    

Spider Walk

Spider Bite