If you don’t know about Bearmageddon you should because its an awesome webcomic by Ethan Nicolle. If the title doesn’t give it away it’s about Bears taking over and ripping people apart. I found out about this comic through Ratfist, which is another awesome webcomic.

I deiced to do this for couple of reason, the first is I really like webcomics or comics in general and the ones that I find are the best visually are really dynamic and have a lot of motion on each page. I’ve had on my list to animate a webcomic for a while now but still have not really done it yet to where I really like it. (I did a commercial spot for I Kill Giants)

When I saw that Ethan was taking a break I though I should do something to show how great the comic. I also saw that other people where posing other cool images about the comic and thought I could make something too.

Originally I was going to animate the last few pages from where the bears start chasing the van, but realized this would take a lot more work then I had the time for. So after some quick brainstorming I came up with the idea to animate the sites banner image which is also in desktop format.

I planned to do a 3D camera project of the image on to some rough geometry to give it a more believable feel then some of my other animations. I still had to cut our the whole image into parts and map them onto geometry and make sure it looked ok. My first tests where good with my original camera moves but I change the move a bit at the end and you can see some repetition where I didn’t think anyone would see.

I did some final composting in After Effects to try and give it a more movie feel. I also added a whole host of sounds effects that I mixed together to try and help enhance the already amazing visuals. I paid a bit more attention to it this time trying to create a good mix of sound with in the piece that didn’t just become mush when you listened to it. Tried to give it a real stereo sounding feel to it so if you listen with only one headphone you wont get the full sound.

I think this is one of my better 2D image to animation pieces but still has bunch of things that could be worked on. This was supposed to be just a weekend project but it wound up taking a few days more but the result is better because of it. So here you go my a 3D camera project animation of the Bearmageddon banner/desktop image.

Updated my with some more recent projects and swapped out some of my weaker projects. Currently working on another personal project to replace my least favorite project still in my reel. Then I think I will do a completely new reel with a new opening, closing and music.

Two weeks ago now I did an every day of the week typography exercise using definitions of words to try and create a type treatment for them. One of my favorites was exoteric and I deiced I would try and do a full 3d or 2d design with it. I choose to do a 3d design and in addition added some simple animation to it.

I planed out the animation using my base type design and just thinking how the type would animate together in a logical way. The random pointy and circle objects that go through the top and out the bottom as pyramids, squares, and spheres I developed because part of the definition of the word is simple. So my idea was to have items transition from complex to simple it also gave me an excuse to play with thinking particles and Xpresso.

A few things I noticed is my timing for the E to pop out could be more spaced out to give it more of an impact entrance. I also could have given more X-ray time to see the objects transition in the middle. Lastly this font Null Free isn’t great for 3d text at angle but still looks cool anyway I think.

Last week I deiced to try my hand at another week long design project using words from the word of the day from dictionary.com to create a simple type design. This is similar to my design define series I did a while ago on my 365 project.

I used fonts that I either had on my computer or browsed the internet quickly to find that went with the definition. I used adobe Illustrator to setup the type and create any additional elements I might need. My favorites are Exocentric and Vilipend which are also the ones I had the most time to work with. Mammonism I found quite hard to work with and with Tramontane I had a few good sketched designs put didn’t quite have enough time to make them look good enough to show.

I think I’m going to use one of my designs for exocentric and do a full design with it in either 2D or 3D.

1. exoteric: suitable for or communicated to the general public.
2. cordate: heart-shaped.
3. vilipend: to regard or treat as of little value or account.
4. mammonism: the greedy pursuit of riches.
5. tramontane: being or situated beyond the mountains.

A friend of mine, Keshna, from college ask if I could help her with 3d project she wanted do. She is an industrial designer and has a tea box product that she designed and has actually built a real life mock up of it. What she ask me I if I could make quick 3d mock up of her tea box with her graphics in a simple environmental.

I asked for the images she took of her mock up and her designs for the box graphic and began to model it. I started with just sketching the basic shape of the side of the box to get a better understanding of the curves. My first couple of attempts in 3d where using splines in combination with the extruding & lofting.

These looked like they would work but both ways produced faces that didn’t smooth well and showed up in the render.What I went with was a simple box primitive with a set amount of segments and using a FFD modifier or a lattice I shaped it based on the splines I created before.

This allowed me to get the exact shape I wanted and not have any weird lines or faces show up. After that it was just a matter of getting the textures to show up which was straight forward except for the parts that needed to wrap around the edges and stay flat.

To she more of Keshna’s work check out her website at http://cargocollective.com/keshna