Categories
3D Animation Mograph Notes Motion Graphics

Bearmageddon Animation Notes

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.

Categories
Motion Graphics

Bearmageddon Banner Animation


This is a 3D camera projection animation I did using the banner/desktop image for the webcomic Bearmageddon. http://bearmageddon.com/

I will be posting some notes soon on my process.

Categories
Motion Graphics

Reel Update 2011

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.

Categories
3D Animation Motion Graphics

Exoteric 3D Type Animation

 

3D Type animation personal project. I will be posting some notes on this project in a few days.

Categories
3D Modeling Project Notes

3D Tea Box + Notes

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


Categories
Mograph Notes

Jux Animation Notes

 

 

I have been using the newish blogging system called Jux. It a simple platform that lets you publish content a number of ways but focuses on your content in a full screen way no ads way. Initially I didn’t want to start using a new system but It looked to cool not to try out at least once. After using it for a bit I found I really liked how it displayed my photos and videos and have continued to post there every once in a while.

 

After looking around the site’s blog and others Juxxers I deiced to make a quick animation about the platform use their post’s, “Top 6 Reasons to Jux” as inspiration. I entitled my animation 6 Ways to Jux and choose to make it 15 seconds long.

 

I did a mini storyboard and after collecting some assets I proceed with the design, first using some vector logos that Jux provided. Then I browsed other Jux blogs via SURF JUX to find images that I would used for each section. After that I went started to animate and work our the final composite.

 

My last remarks are that the mp4 versions have a lot of banding due to the compression process. The uncompressed looks fine so it seems I will have to play with the conversion process and re-upload to get ride of the banding. Also in retrospec, I would have made more of a distinction in the orange and yellow or possibly placed them differently.

 

G=out


https://ct907.jux.com/Chrome and Firefox & The creative adult is the child who survived’ & Here, take it. & Back to my Lego

http://nuwin.ca/ – Just another Pokemon Battle

https://olaviakite.jux.com/ – Places I’ve Dreamt About

Union Ident – http://audiojungle.net/item/union-ident/674275

Categories
Motion Graphics

6 Ways To Jux Animation

A short animation showing the ways you can post on Jux.
https://jux.com/
http://mojux.g2bproductions.com/ – my jux blog
All pictures and videos featured where posted by other juxers.  More info on this project on this blog soon

Categories
Mograph Notes

Nutcracker Holiday Animation Notes

I wanted to make another personal project since I haven’t made one in a while and since it’s the holiday season I thought I would make one to fit the season. It just so happens that I made a model and had it rigged just for this occasion.

mecha nutcracker by kidchuckle

About 6 months or so a go I saw this image  by KidChuckle and thought it would be cool to model it in 3D and animate it. Since it was holiday themed I figured I would animated it finally for the holidays.  I decided to clean it up a bit and make it a bit more accessible to animate and tweak the rig a bit. I also change the color on the models to make it a bit more festive.


After my few tweak I built a scene using a simple infinity floor with some Christmas like trees to randomly in the background so that I could blur out the background  to indicate some depth. For the text in the foreground I tried a few options and came up with the one in the video that read the best though composition wise I like the one that had Holiday in the front better.  The ornaments  are from a pack that happen to be a free give away.


The audio is from audio jungle and drove most of my animation as far as a timing. I planed it all out a head of time then re-adjusted it to the audio that I edited a bit. My main goal was to show off the drill which spins a bit and the gun that shoots nuts.

I’ve notice now that I’ve seen it in full quality that I have some flickering issues. Not sure what is causing it exactly but its in my  light multi pass channel.

Categories
Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Lesson 10

My submission for Robert Legers Xpresso lesson
better quality on youtube due to using my one hd video a month on vimeo already
Categories
Xpresso Tasks

Xpresso Task 9 + Pogs

Well it seems I haven’t posted in quite a while. This has been partly due to my working full time at a post-studio in NYC and some freelance work that took up most of my free time. All excuses a side I think I have simply not been focused with my own personal work which I’m getting back into now.

Last week I finally made time to do Robert Legers XPresso Lesson #9 – Task – Custom Effector. This one was was a little bit tough at first to figure it out but I was able to complete it. My example isn’t that spectacular but I put together a little example that reveals some text. Still waiting to see the official results from Balázs and Robert.

Another project I’m working on is a personal project that I’m going to finish in some capacity by next monday. The idea is to a simple id spot using pogs to show a company logo. The idea for pogs just sort of came to me after looking at the recent vector designs from http://blog.signalnoise.com/, especially the circular ones. I plan to make a few designs using them as inspiration and some other cool pogs designs.

Not sure if scene wise this is what I will go with but it’s in the area right now.