Stagefright

This isn't quite my final image; there are some tweaks I'd like to do, but it's pretty close to it's final state, and I thought I'd share it. Happy to hear comments, critiques. I tried to incoporate the comments from my last harp images, including giving the curtain some thickness and randomness.

I'm entering the July competition for DT, which is to model, texture, and possibly animate a beloved child toy. It's a good way to get a portfolio image, because I'll have lots of good critique (I hope) from you guys and form the forum, and I'll have to be entirely happy with my submission. In between working on that, I'll be trying to get a portfolio level drawing done, and working on the swordfight sequence... just need a subject for a cool drawing... any ideas?

Later,
Stuart

Oh look, a Stand

Second prop for the new and improved harp shot. This one is mostly nurbs too, but some of the complex bits, like the hinging back of the top part are polygons, converted from nurbs geometry.

Still gotta do the texturing and fix up the stage, add some sheet music. Might tweak the harp too, we'll see. It's missing a couple features right now.

The occlusion renders are pretty white, which I like, but I can tell it's maybe not the best way to show off the model, so I'll do some settings tweaking to see if I can't make it a bit more readable.

Later,
Stuart

Oh look, a Chair

Changing plans yet again again; this week I'm fixing up/polishing my harp scene so that it's something I would want to put in a portfolio. I'll get back to the swordfight, promise, but I gotta turn out a few still images first.
Here's a chair for the harp scene. Still need to do a music stand, some sheet music, and set the whole thing up.
This is all nurbs geometry, which I like for this sort of thing cause it has clean and simple lines.

Finished Dune (quite enjoyed it, though the ending felt somewhat ambiguous... good thing there's sequels) and started off Tarzan of the Apes (bit lower reading level I think, but pretty fun so far).

Later,
Stuart

Competition Result

So it turns out I won the DT competition! Yay!
Thanks everyone for watching it and commenting!
I'll update on the current project next week, it happens to be my anniversary this weekend. Yes, the whole weekend. And Monday.
Stuart

Environment Sphere

On Saturday, I filmed a short little piece with my friend, (same co-director as Pixelmation), and we're going to try to add some fun special effects. I have no idea how well this will turn out, but it's an opportunity for me to learn some Photoshop, After Effects, Mudbox and Maya.

Won't give away any plot yet, but in order to create reflections off shiny CG elements, it's necessary to have an environment for them to reflect. So what we did is took a bunch of photos around his backyard and I stitched them together (with much warping and messy photo editing) to create this.

Then I created a sphere in maya, turned it inside out, and applied this as a texture:

What you're looking at is the inside of this sphere (the outside is transparent...) which will provide the environment that will be seen in the reflections of the CG swords. ...oops, did I say that? Didn't mean to.

Thanks for reading and looking,
Stuart

Centennial

100 posts! Can't believe it. Nothing too memorable to mark it, besides uploading my whiplash animation to youtube, and this picture I drawed of a frog. You could have had it if you'd hired me.

Yes, I quoted a local radio commercial. Click for larger image. I used a creative commons photo as reference.

But here's the animation again: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjr2HHgRviA
That's only if you're scared of vimeo or something... not to worry, the internet video content hosting monopoly is here to comfort you. Brought to you by the same company as this blog hosting monopoly.

So thanks everyone for commenting, good to hear what you like (or don't like). I'm going to start working on a still image for my next little project. My original plan was to finally edit my novel so that I could share it, but I really need to get a portfolio together, so I'm going to have to put it off a bit longer. Sorry to disappoint.

Stay tuned for the next 100 posts. I really hope they're better than the first.
Later,
Stuart