im wokring on it!!!

sneek peek

2011-02-03T19:38:00.000-05:00

i'm having some camera troubles.

but! this is what i had a few days ago. it plays beautifully, the action is incredible--so much better than i had hoped.

currently, it's stripped down. I made a few minor repairs and its being prepped for paint now. Just doing an epoxy grain fill and then more research on finishing!

k, back

2011-01-09T20:27:00.003-05:00

lets cut the chase, i haven't posted in a while.

but.

here's some new work.

i had a few weeks of off time before i headed to pixar for the summer. so i thought i'd make some repairs on the guitar. it's still IP but the good news is it's all strung up and playable. it needs 3 more things. frets, paint and electronics.

re-routed the battery compartment recesses. my earlier attempts weren't exactly square.

old routes from about 2 years ago. you can see the faint pencil marks outlining the cut.

the block on the left is the new piece. this was machines on a C&C because of the rounded edges.

fit!

roughly removed excess wood.

dry fit to see how much the piece needs to be thinned down.

two-grit setup to gradually thin the block.

dry with clamps to see true fit

almost perfect.

I decided to do all the cutting before i glued the piece in. made it easier to clamp to milling machine.

hello.

test piece.

test fit. yay!

done! can't even tell you how nerve racking that was.

custom fit to the EMG's

glue prep. gotta do a few dry runs before committing to a setup.

you can clearly see the old wood is oxidized.

the plywood has two rectangles cut out to be used for the rear tremolo route.

i used a scrap piece of the same plywood to offset my measurements to get the exact depth i needed.

done!

here i soaked the are of wood with superglue and sanded it back. strengthens the wood.

these are small brass threaded cylinders my father made. planning on a direct mounting the pickups.

and voilà!

more updates soon.

promise.

turkey time.

2009-11-24T14:04:00.018-05:00

So i've been working on a number of things recently. And i've finally had a moment to sit down and make a post. I wish i could spend all my time working on these but stupid school is making me write papers and do lame projects. :(

Anyways, here's the stuff.

First off we finally got back the footage from our film Beneath Contempt. Ben put together a small trailer so you can all see some of the work we've done. Ben directed the film and I was the Cinematographer. So enjoy!!

**trailer is gone...sorry people. :(**

I started doing some still life copies as well. Just trying to get better at seeing subtle colors. I'm pretty sure both of them are Jean-Siméon Chardin but I lost the information on the second one, however style-wise they seem almost identical.

And finally here's an update on the sculpture. This is the state it's in right now. Im back in philadelphia so im unable to work on it now. :( Again, sorry for the bad pictures. I need to get a better lighting setup so that i can properly light these when i photograph them.

The index and middle fingers are still rough and i'm yet to sculpt the thumb in. Once i clean up all the fingers i'm going to sculpt it and attach it.

Some work in progress images.

Also. I came up with a new technique. Previously i would place the clay that i was about to use into the oven and warm it up a little so that it would be a bit more pliable. (I'm using a 1:1 mixture of 2 and 3 ROMA plastilina) However, this would cause the clay to heat up unevenly and it caused the oils in the clay to granulate and leave large deposits throughout the clay. This made sculpting very difficult when i tried to do detail work.

So instead of doing this i placed all the clay into a ziplock bag and submerged it into hot water. Luckily the tap water @ my apartment in Boston actually comes out boiling hot so i don't have to heat the water up at all. And in about 10 minutes the clay is perfectly malleable so i can quickly build up the sculpture. Then in another 5-10 minutes its cooled enough to rough and then another 5-10 its reached room temperature and native hardness so i can do detail work. It's great!

That's it friends! I hope you all have a wonderful thanksgiving!!

posting 101!

2009-11-05T03:50:00.004-05:00

Bypassing all the bullshit, here's what i've been working on recently.

Armature for a fist. I want to do some hand studies. This is the first of 3 i have planned. It's the easiest one to rig and find reference for.

Traced my hand and drew plans for the armature. This was more difficult than i thought it would be.

And these are a few drawings i did a few days ago. Just some more studies using various references i find online. These are really bad pictures...i apologize. :(

And finally a horrible photo of my pile of tool things.

Lots of sculpting to do this year. :D

Thats kind of a wrap!?!!

2009-10-16T12:14:00.005-04:00

Yes,

So it seems like principal photography has come to an end. We finished shooting our film Beneath Contempt this past monday. We started shooting on August 28th and have finally finished shooting over 440minutes/7 hours/16,000 feet of film.

I only say it's kind of a wrap because this was only the second step in making a movie...if we'd like the generalize things in a huge way. We have a number of shots to pickup over the next few months as well as the potential for re-shoots which I'm hoping will be minimal.

But lately I've been catching up on lost sleep and trying to re-organize my life so that i can get back on track and start working on my next portfolio. I've got a bunch of ideas down and have spent classtime drawing up design for it. When i get a chance i'll scan some up and post em here.

In the meantime i stole some pictures of the last day of production for Ben's father, John Brewer, our amazing on-set Photographer! :D

If you want to see more pictures and news you can check out the Blog. Beneath Contempt!

Again, Photos Courtesy of Mr. John Brewer.

This was the skeleton crew for out last day of shooting. (Left to Right) Erin/PD, Me/DP, Kaz/Gaffer, Abbey/Actress, Ben/Director, Greg/AD and Mike/Actor!

As the production went on we slowly lost people so Ben ended up doing sound on our last day. It's understandable though. I think this was the longest production i've in my emerson career and i assume people were just not dedicated or ready to work on something so large. (Left to right) - Ben, Mr Brewer and Mike.

Break for a ridiculous picture. (Left to right) - Ben, Mike and Alex!

These are really bad captions.

2009-09-06T09:19:00.010-04:00

Starting August 28, Ben and i started shooting a film these are just some pictures since then. We will be shooting all this week and for the next three weekends after this one.

This is what i've been living out of for the past 2 weeks or so...

Cleaning out the Aaton.

Here she is loaded up...no mag though.

Our flipped car...

...that attracted the attention of the police and firefighters.

A wide of the crew...

...and a close-up of the crew.

Ben (right) talks to Dylan (left) about the scene.

And heres my camera crew for the day. Actors, Chris and Dylan, Me, Kaz the Gaffmeister and Seth our 1st and 2nd AC.

And here's the beautiful sunset we shot under.

This is a long post.

2009-09-06T08:26:00.010-04:00

For about 2 years now I've been working on building my own guitar. I really wanted to be able to finish it the first summer i started but things never seem to go as planned. So now it's become a long-term project i work on every time i get a chance to go home. @ the beginning of this summer i had about 2 weeks or so to relax and kill time so i got to work on some of the detail work on the headstock and finally was able to put the whole body together. Lots of pictures were taken but i posed only the major steps in the process.

Rough-cutting the Ebony headstock veneer.

This was just as hard as it looks. Clamping something that doesn't have a straight line reference point is tricky. The veneer kept slipping from it position. I had to clamp a small piece @ the base of the headstock to prevent this.

The next morning.

My 4 favorite tools.

Using those 4 tools i began carving down the ebony to the shape of the headstock.

Getting closer with it.

The final carve.

Reverse angle.

Prepping for gluing the ebony fretboard to the neck.

This was probably the most stressful part of my 2-week relaxing summer. What are omitted from this post are the steps right after this photo was taken. The problem was the neck wasn't sitting completely flush against the fretboard. The center was glueing properly but the edges had about half a millimeter gap. The glue has about a 30 minute working time on so i had to think quickly on what i was going to do. I'm not yet quite sure if it was the best solution but after about 25 minutes i slowly moved clamps from the center of the neck to the left side so it got some tension and then a few minutes later i moved it to the other side to even out the tension. There's a tiny bit of gap at the base of the neck but it will be covered up. :/

Here i started to measure the center point for each side-dot.

The tape on the drill was a depth marker.

After all the holes were drilled, without any glue, i inserted the plastic dot material into the holes and lightly hammered them.

Clean-up. Just trimmed them down, filed them and sanded them down.

Oh, wait. This was the most stressful part. This guitar had so many tiny imperfections that needed huge solutions to fix. If things aren't cut perfectly, then things don't seat properly, and the guitar doesn't work. This was a critical part because the neck had to be completely perpendicular to the bridge. I later did tests and it seems pretty good.

I took the guitar to my dad's work and using a Bridgeport Mill i drilled the tuner holes @ 1 inch intervals. However the first tuner wasn't sitting properly because of the curvature of the volute. The simple fix was to...

Completely re-carve the volute. It looks so much better. I got better @ it after a year. haha.

Here's the profile. It's still not perfect but its where i'm going to leave it now.

With the tuners temporarily installed.

A quick test i did with some twine to check string spacing on the neck.

I used making tape to mark the neck-to-body joint carve limit. I like to use tape because it's easier to read than pencil. Mahogany makes it really hard to see pencil marks.

Final carve! There's a bit if imperfection in the joint that's impossible to fix naturally so i'll have to use some filler to patch it up. :/

Prepping the arm carve...i don't know what it's really called.

The final arm carve. The line that's in the center of carve is the joint between the top and bottom pieces of the body. All this will be covered up by paint.

Some stuff in the meantime!

2009-05-08T01:40:00.008-04:00

I've neglected to post any of my Photo 1 final photographs here!

These might seem a bit dusty but they are actually just 600dpi contact sheet scans I did. I was pressed on time and didn't want to spend hours in the darkroom. It already takes me about 3-4 hours for one good print so I wanted to focus on that more than anything.

So I scanned up contact sheets of my negatives and checked focus and exposure with photoshop. I marked the photos that had good negatives and then printed them on 11x14 FB paper.

Here are the contact sheet scans. The photos were taken with a Bronica ETRSi on Ilford Delta 100 and developed in 1:1 d76 pulled to ISO 50. Probably not the best combination but thats all my class supplied.

It's actually interesting to note that the DoF is extremely shallow. The lights I had were not as powerful as I wanted. And shooting with a MF camera requires more light than I actually had. So most of the shots were taken 1/60-1/150 @ f3.5 or f2.8 which is extemely shallow for MF.

Irina:

Chris and Matt!

Matt as a wrestler!

My parents!!

That's it for now!

I got in. I got in. I got in. I got in!

2009-04-28T02:56:00.002-04:00

So we're getting back on track here.

2009-04-25T03:36:00.003-04:00

I decided to stay in tonight and get some work done. Along with some homework and reading i got the armature done on the sculpture. This is radically different from my first armature and its so much better. I have to actually thank Alex for helping me out on this. I've looked online for how to properly make armatures but i could only find one good source (http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/) and i combined that with what Alex told me he learned @ RISD and i came up with this.

That's it for tonight. Building the clay on this will have to start after i get some more schoolwork done. Lots and lots to do so i don't fail! And i bought a higher density grade clay so i can do finer detail work on the sculpture which means it will me twice as hard to build up!

I feel like i need to post something.

2009-04-20T21:15:00.006-04:00

Much time has passed since my last real post and I've been rather stressed through all of it. I got a failure notice from one of my classes, i failed a paper and now am facing 3 projects that need to be completed within a week along with a heavily looming desire to procrastinate. All pretty much by April 28th. It's funny, posting on the blog is another way to procrastinate. But i feel like this is much more important than some school projects i'll probably forget about in 3 weeks.

Most of the past month I've spent wondering what i've been doing the past month. I honestly don't know where the time has gone. I guess i measure time by how much i get done and seeing that i've really done noting, time has come and gone rather silently. I have been working on Beneath Contempt but it's all been pre-production stuff and most of it has been our producers telling us what they've gotten done. (Our producers are pretty awesome! I can't believe how much they help and care about our movie.)

I've tried to work but every time i try i end up staring at my Gmail. A few weeks ago i went to Rhode Island with Ben to visit his brother Alex and i bought a pre-made sculpting base:

but its been sitting here for weeks. I cant get myself to start working on it. I don't know why. I keep telling myself that "I'm taking a break" from all the work i did on my portfolio. But a part of me wants that fucked up schedule again where i only feel half-alive but working towards a clear goal. All i have now is schoolwork that i'm doing to just to avoid failing. The reason i don't want to fail? cause i don't want to take the classes again. that reason? because i don't want to stay in school anymore because is way too expensive.

I can count the useful things i've learned in school on one hand.

1. How to deal with people.

2. How to avoid people.

3. How the world is filled with horrible people.

4. How to build a website with CSS. (this i learned @ Drexel, sorry Emerson)

Yes obviously there are many other tidbits of information i've picked up but i don't think these 4.2342309423 lessons deserve the right to put me $70,000+ in debt.

Anyways.

So I never really posted about the completed portfolio and what i ended up sending out. I don't believe in superstitious things like jinxing or knocking on wood but I try to be careful about what i say. But anyways here's what i sent out.

Each of those folders were hand-cut from 19x30 poster board. I had to go to 4 different art stores to find just the right poster board. It was the one farthest from my home. So I measured and marked each one separately according to a template i designed in Illustrator. Then using a ruler and an knife i cut each one down to size scored them, and again using a ruler folded them into their shape.

The actual booklet took 3 days to get printed but i again went to 5 or so different printers until i found the (most expensive) best printer i could find in Boston. And once again it was the farthest one from my house. They had this special HP printer that imitated Offset printing which got me really excited. Offset printing costs thousands of dollars to get done and this digital version was way cheaper (still expensive for me) and still maintained about the same amount of brightness my computer monitor radiated. I had other printers make test prints for me and all of them were super-muddy in the blacks however the HP printer was superb.

I ended up rushing the last few pages of the portfolio because of the quickly approaching deadline. After i put the order into the printers i found out that the deadline was extended by two weeks. But it all actually worked to my advantage. I was able to get all the folders cut and folded without any rush. I didn't have to overnight the portfolios (that would have been waaay to expensive). And it just so happened that the HP printer technician was there when i was getting my portfolio printed so i was able to look at the proof and have the technician easily change things. Especially the blacks. We did something called a double-hit black which made the blacks look SO nice on the page, they look so rich. If i waited any longer to go to the printers i would have missed him and missed the opportunity to learn about that.

When i received the booklets they were super-crisp and very round. They were very very bulky. I had planned to make the folders so that my portfolio, and all the paperwork would fit inside of it, but with these extra bulky bound booklets it was impossible. So i took each one, wrapped em in tracing paper and placed them under heavy books. (You can actually see them in the photo on the right.) The stack reached about 3-4 feet high. I was afraid i'd break the binding and the ink would crack at the spine so i started with a few books, and every day i added more weight to it. It took about 5 days to get them to the thickness i wanted.

That's all folks.

Making a Production Packet!

2009-04-03T19:59:00.006-04:00

DISCLAIMER! This was written by Benjamin Brewer and it pertains to our collaborative film project. It has it's own blog which can be seen @ Beneath Contempt: The Production.

It is very difficult to produce a film of this scope completely on your own. In fact, even with a sizable team of producers and crew on board the amount of work involved is still quite daunting.

When it comes to real films, the first step after completing a solid draft of the screenplay is to enlist the help of other interested filmmakers as well as financiers. This is where the ‘production packet’ becomes handy.

Since we have elected to shoot our movie through the Emerson Film Program, our packet was put together as a formal proposal for a specific two-semester production class, which will give us access to essential equipment and other resources.

It is not unusual to print 50-100 copies of the production packet. The application for the program only required us to produce four packets, so we (DP Shant and I) decided to hand craft each one.

After I wrote the copy, Shant and I discussed a design for the packet. We wanted the packet to appear simple and elegant, while also incorporating colors and images relevant to our film.

A key part of the book’s design was the page dimension. We chose a 6.5’’x11 format to recall the 1.66 aspect ratio that will matte the film (this ratio was chosen for its similarity to the golden ratio, and has NOTHING to do with Nestor Almendros’ preference for it).

The pages were exported from Adobe In-Design and printed onto matte paper. Each page was cut individually. When the pages were assembled, with the photo title page and heavy black cover in place, Shant hand-sewed each binding using a simple but very neat stitch,

Here is the final product.

We have yet to hear back from the program to see if they accepted us…

Here are some progress pictures!

Cutting down the pages!

Scraps!

It's all about the Boar's Head

Pages all cut down.

Sewing pattern tests.

Ben. He did one thing, and he messed up. LOL

Hammering/punching-out the holes!

Some sewing.

TADA!

-Benjamin (pictures by shant!)

The end has finally come...

2009-03-02T10:50:00.007-05:00

Well, not really.

I finished compiling my 2009 portfolio but I guess I never see an end to it...and that's not a bad thing at all. If there really was and end to all of this then I would have nothing else to learn. And I really have so much left to learn about myself and my craft. So I guess we'll call this (the overly-clichéd) end of a chapter.

I've realized over the years that I’m usually very impressed with my work for a few months...maximum about 4-5 months I’ll look at a piece of work I’ve done and say, "damn, nice work Shant" (hopefully that doesn't sound too bold). But then I reach a certain point where I’ll look back on my past work and I’ll wonder what the hell I was thinking. I'll cringe at what I've produced. "How could I have been proud of such mediocre work?!" It sounds pretty bad but I feel like this mindset is what drives me deep down, this desire to find out what I can accomplish, seeing what level I can reach next that would amaze me for the next few months.

So, I'll come back to this post--this chapter--what have you, and I’ll cringe, move on, work harder, and hopefully repeat the cycle until I can create something memorable,

something fascinating.

I'm not going to post the final portfolio yet because it’s in printed form and I’m unsure yet as to how I’d like to post it online. However, I have the final images of the sculpture. I'll only say one thing about it--and this really goes for the whole of my portfolio--

"How the hell did I do this?"

Sculpting

2009-02-17T07:17:00.004-05:00

So i've been pretty absent recently. I've been compiling my portfolio so it's not very visual right now. Its all random PDF files exported all over my desktop. But while i wait for renders i still work on the sculpture so here are some updates.

khazaros is done. for now.

2009-02-14T04:19:00.002-05:00

24+ layers of color!!

2009-02-13T04:12:00.007-05:00

I've been working on it since 5am yesterday. Considering i went to class and then took a powernap, its been about 18 hours of work to get the colors and layers setup and blended properly. And im still not done.

You can see it has alot of odd layering problems. I left the errors there because this is my rough composite. I didnt feel like going through each later and re-rendering the whole frame when i made a change. It would take me far too long to finish.

Here's a rough breakdown. All the layers aren't here because this was inly a test in getting down the correct layering order. The mssing layers are the left over mask layers that let me dial in fine hue tuning for each separate element on Khazaros.

S'more

2009-02-11T04:33:00.003-05:00

Once i get a good pose I'm gonna make a final render of him. This "pass" is called an ambient occlusion pass for those who don't know. Its light/shadow without a directional light. Sort of like an overcast day. One of the many rendered layers.

The collar will be fixed. I've kept it detached from the rig because it's going to be cloth simulated and then re-attached to the rig. Just so it has the best possible deformation.

here.

2009-02-10T08:08:00.001-05:00

I'm sure pictures are enough here.

Um...this is kinda cool.

2009-02-07T04:56:00.005-05:00

So i've been working since 3pm today. It been about 14 hours straight so far. I figured I'd post now because im going to start working on khazaros again and that work doesn't yield many visuals.

Yesterday i was trying to finish painting the skin weights for the (dreaded) shoulder joint and i finally gave into my gut feeling that the shoulder was just rigged incorrectly. I denied it for about 2 weeks now hoping that i was wrong but alas, i have seen the light. I spent most of yesterday re-building khazaros's arms and shoulders. I re-built the shoulders about 3 times trying the find the best configuration. There are still minor errors however it's not the time to nitpick now. Plus, i can go back anytime and fix them.

Anyways. So today I decided to focus on making some renders. I put together a rough composite of Hamlet earlier today and then decided to render out a higher quality version and come up with a final composite. I started the rendering, expecting it to take over 2 hours or so and began sculpting. Sadly at the end i realized that the resolution i had set it at was half of what i had actually wanted. It's no problem though, I still got some good results. I have the basic framework for the composite so it was no waste of time.

Here ya go.

No pun intended.

Ahh!!!!!!1

Over 21 layers to make these. Tomorrow I'll post a layer-by-layer picture.

Whoops, Almost forgot.

Sculptures. It's really bad at this stage. I'm roughing things out trying to find out what i want for this one. Also this was all from my head, i only ended up feeling my own face to see how things were placed. Other than that i wanted to use no anotomical references. For finish i will use references to make sure i have the anatomy down corrently. Oh, you can actually see Maya rendering in the background. haha. I'm a nerd.

Cone-head anyone?

Ice Cream Truck

2009-02-05T06:48:00.003-05:00

Day 1 of real modeling. I spent a few hours a few days ago trying to model and failing misreably. I took another approach and i was a bit more sucessful. Still needs lots of work before i can start rigging.

This is harder to make than a face...

Decided to do some detail work. Some bolts and bumper pieces.

I also started making placeholders for the portfolio layout So i can begin blocking it out and getting that in progress.

Really quick.

2009-02-03T07:28:00.001-05:00

I started doing some render tests. This image consists of about 6 different renders composited in photoshop. It's got a few errors and doesnt have any reflections or highlights. It way too late/early for me to care. I now know what i am up against for rendering.

Color.

Monochrome!

Oh, by the way.

2009-02-02T09:21:00.001-05:00

Put together a test render.

I made it monochrome cause im still trying to figure out the best colors.

Quite an odd day.

2009-02-02T06:07:00.003-05:00

It seems like recently I've been spending more and more time working however I'm unable to produce as much as I used to. It might just be me being crazy or jsut the fact that I'm dealing with more complicated situations and find myself troubleshooting half the time. Who knows.

Anyways, so here's today's progress. I did some more work on the new sculpture and i almost completely rigged the Piggy. I keep changing the Piggy's rig structure. I cant find anywhere that shows how to rig a piggy bank so its quite hard because i dont have any references.

He's pretty shocked.

Baked the clay @ 200F for about 10 mins to soften it up.

Rolled them into cylinders.

Spiraled it onto the base.

Smoothed out.

Updates!

2009-02-01T06:03:00.004-05:00

Some more updates.

I started adding custom attributes to Khazaros's feet. You can see them @ the right. Still working on perfecting the key poses for the custom attributes.

I started working on Hamlet's controls. I used Spline IK's for all his legs and also set up his eyelids. As you might be able to tell, he's deforming oddly. I still haven't painted his skin weights. once that's done he'll deform better.

So I decided that the third "character" is the Ice Cream Truck! It's just my first drawing of it so it's bound to change in the future. I'm giving myself a few days to draw it all out then i begin modeling right away. Hopefully I can finish Khazaros and Hamlet before I start this.

Also in the meantime I have started the base for another sculpture. I'm not sure what this will be but i want it to be more realistic than the last one.

Facial Rigging!!!

2009-01-31T03:15:00.004-05:00

I spet today setting up Khazaros's eyes, eyebrows and eyelids. I still need to set up the rest of the face.

Facial Animation Test!

Different angle!!

Pre-eyebrow Rig.

Eyebrow rig!

I hate painting Skin-weights.

2009-01-29T05:54:00.004-05:00

Seriously. There has to be a better system. This is the most half assed way to rig a character. It's way too messy. Anyways, I've been caved away for almost two straight days skinng this character and im getting very frustreated. It's all working out but its taking alot of time to get it to work properly. I'm wondering if i shoudl really have this all done for my portfolio. I have so many other things that i need to get done I should focus on them.

Anyways. I put together a 30-day Calendar/Planner of what i need to get done before March 1st. Its alot.

I animated Khazaros so i can test out the rig and the Skin-weights. I've edited the model a few times as well as the rig as a result of testing.

Bicep Skin-weights. Its not fun.

Clavical Skin-weights. Neither is this one.

See this? I edited almost every single point manually. There are hundreds...and theres only one of me. It deforms pretty well, but i need to do some cleaning up on it. I spent a few hours on it so i got sick of doing it so i'll save it for a rainy day.

The last few days have meshed together quite oddly

2009-01-25T20:34:00.002-05:00

So i'm going to make a mid-day post now just to catch up with myself. I've done a ton of work but i've had to reason or time to post it. Most of it was working on small inconsistencies and technical aspects of the character rigs. However i somewhat revamped Hamlet's face and began rigging him.

I also built another base for my second sculpture. Now i need to find a subject to sculpt. I want something relatively challenging but not murderous...?

Anyways.

Fixed the brow, nose and eyelids, added the bones and rigged the eyes.

Used SplineIK to rig the cork strech.

Bone system...

Day 14

2009-01-23T06:24:00.004-05:00

So it's been two weeks. I've drawn, sculpted, modeled rigged and nearly starved myself to death working. Hopefully this pays off.

Here's what i got done today. Rigging takes so much more time than i thought.

Initially i wanted to start on the foot rigs but i ended up having to re-rig both legs and re-rig the spine. The two most difficult parts. It's for the best though, i re-rigged them much cleaner than before, now that i know what to look for.

Started on the hand rig. Not attached yet, obviously.

The rig after about 10 hours of work today...

Ha! I tested out the binding. Good?

Day Thirteen

2009-01-22T05:03:00.004-05:00

Today was filled with rigging, drawing and sculpting. Mostly rigging.

Here ya go.

Looks kinda cool.

It's about halfway there. The rig that is not the whole process.

This is almost done. Just need to finish up the eye, smooth everything out and add tiny wrinkles and pores.

I used a stubby paintbrush to smooth out the rough edges.

Did some more work on this. I need some stuff for the background...

Day 12!?!?!?!?!?

2009-01-21T06:00:00.005-05:00

Interestingly enough i got a lot done today. It was the first day of classes and i was on campus from 12-10pm. I came home and now its about 6am. I have class tomorrow @ 2pm. So it should be okay.

Anyways. I finally solved the problem with hamlet and i learned a bit more about rigging eyes and eyelids. Btw, i owe a thanks to Ben (Brewer!) for guiding me in the right path for fixing the eyes.

I have to sleep, but here are some images.

So i started with a screen shot from my animatic. I traced over the images very roughly to get an idea of what i wanted.

After that i drew this on top of the traced images. It's not necessarily traced but the bottom layer is used as a guide for perspective.

A few shots of Hamlet now with his eyelids.

Just a basic Cluster deformer placed on the eyelids. The deformer will be used to help me model the eyelids positions.

"hm...something's fishy..."

Day eleven!

2009-01-20T01:54:00.002-05:00

I have no idea where the day went. I feel like i accomplished close to nothing today. It was more or less filled with lessons on how i should and shouldn't do things. Namely on how not to model hamlet. I really like the way he turned out but i'm still confused as to how i will be animating the eyes. It's really bugging me. I want to have him rigged and ready to be part of my portfolio but its not looking too good.

I also did some work an Khazaros and decided that i'm going to spend a little time each day working on him for the next few day, just to make sure i am satisfied with the model before i go ahead and rig him.

Oh, and i modeled a fedora for him.

He's pretty much done. An accessory or two and he's ready.

I also started working on this fellow here. I don't have a name for him but hes pretty odd looking. He's very similar to a character i had made a long time ago, however this one should be much better. I hope.

DAY TEN!

2009-01-19T06:56:00.004-05:00

...aaaand we're back again.

So today i got some inspirational words from my sister and got to hang out with one of the coolest chicks i know so i feel a bit refreshed. However i started working @ 10pm so i had only 9 hours of work today, as opposed to 14 or so. Oh well.

I spent most of the time fine tuning Khazaros, building his mouth and rebuilding his eyes. I also spent some time working in Hamlet. I've changed the way hamlet will be animated. Instead of giving him completely read eyes i'm giving him 'hand painted' animated eyes. It's going to be a bit more difficult to animate but it will look 100x better. Maybe even 200x better. Who knows!

Here's the mouth. I've only roughed out the gums/teeth.

Close-up of the new eyes. It looks much better.

Body shot!

And here's Hamlet with his make-over. He doesn't look as adorable but once the eyes are laced they will make him look so awesome.

Here's his little ceramic tail! It still needs work because there is some odd geometry on one side causing weird bumps on the model. I'll save that for tomorrow. I've had enough pig tail for today.

It was pretty tricky to make so i drew out the wire frame before i started so i could figure out the loops beforehand.

And here's the basic wire frame of the tail before attacthing.

Day 9

2009-01-18T04:43:00.004-05:00

Today is an early one.

I spent the greater part of the day reading and watching video tutorials about how to rig a character. I also took notes...and I took a picture of my notes as documentation. Sadly i couldn't get much actual work done. I'm getting a bit stressed with the deadline quickly approaching and me having hardly anything to show for. Anyways...after watching/reading tutorials for about 6 hours i moped/napped for 2 cause i got pretty down about my portfolio. However i couldn't let the day go to waste so i took some time to watch and movie and do some sculpting. It's funny, one of the most stress free activities for me seems to be sculpting. I don't know what it is, but it puts me in another place. Anyways here are some pictures for the people who don't read my entries.

Enjoy!

My rigging notes!

DAY EIGHTTTTTTTTTT

2009-01-17T05:47:00.002-05:00

You can see, as the days go by, i get crazier and crazier.

So we've got a lot of progress today. Khazaros is about 90% finished. I need to fine tune things and add a few accessories and he'll be ready to rig.

A few hand sketches.

I took the finger that i modeled yesterday and i worked it until i came up with something i liked.

The fingers all connected.

The almost completed hand...

And the completed hand. The palm is a bit messy but its all quads. I actually ended up changing it a lot once it was attached to the arm.

Here was a mock up of the size and position.

And here it is attached.

Khazaros looking nice and scary haha.

Quick render!

I spent a bit more time fixing the edge-flow of the hand and arm. Still needs a bit more...

And finally...this i what i have at the end of the night...morning...whatever you want to call it.

And a wire.

I made a lot of small changes here and there. I spent a lot of time fixing his hair. It still need some work. I also added an undershirt and fixed his moustache.

Day se7en!

2009-01-16T06:20:00.003-05:00

Im getting pretty creative with my titles. Watch out.

A day filled with pretty complicaed modeling. Well atleast it was stuff i really hadn't modeled before.

Built the ankles with some socks.

After a bit of tweaking, here is the final product.

Decided to make the shoulders and connect them to the arms. I'm unsure about the arms thought. They need to be a bit more exageratted.

Thickened the collar so it looks like cloth.

Colored version.

Low-poly render.

Button!

I started on the hands and really didnt like the direction it took. I'm going to salvage one of the fingers and rebuild it to match Khazaros's look. I think i'm going to go with a thick blocky hand.

And the final render. If only i had the hands...there's something i dont like about it. Might be the hair...

Day sicks!

2009-01-15T06:27:00.005-05:00

Whoo!

Getting there.

Decided to keep working on Khazaros. I'd like to finish him up so i can get to work on other characters and begin rigging him. I'm a little hesitant to start rigging because: 1. never really rigged before. 2. I don't know if its possible to edit the character after it's been rigged. I guess i need to learn more about rigging to find that out.

What i have so far.

Added the neck a bit and some shoulder.

Started on the belt. This actually took 2 hours to do. I tried to come up with a consistent way of getting it done and making everything look rather realistic.

Some closeups. Changed the belt a little bit. and started on the shirt.

AAAAnnnnd...a nice turnaround video.

I have a bunch more pictures of the sculpt, but its 7am and i need to sleep.

Added neck muscles and more detail on the face. Next come the shoulders and eyes!

Added the other ear as well.

Day 5!

2009-01-14T05:24:00.006-05:00

I woke up at 4pm today. I think that's a record for me...wait, i think i've done worse. Anyways, today was rather productive.

1. I finished Khazaros's head. It still needs a lot of work and cleaning up, but the basic rough wireframe is done.

2. Started working on the shoes and pants.

The rough shoe shape. It took me two tries to figure out how I was going to make this. I finally ended up making a cylinder and extruding out the front.

Added the sole.

And here it is with the pants. All of this needs detailing but its good for now.

More shots.

Full body. It looks a bit odd. I think i need to add the collar...

3. So I kept working on this sculpture. I don't know how i'm doing this. I've never sculpted a human head before. It's pretty simple though considering i don't have to be perfect about anything. I just have to make everything anatomically correct and have the skin react to gravity properly.

Only the right ear is done.

Side shot.

4. So i decided im going to model the old man with the really long nose. So i drew him up a bit larger and starting plotting his wireframe.

Day Four!

2009-01-13T05:58:00.004-05:00

Today was sort of off kilter.

Too tired to explain. Here's today's work.

Plotted out Little Jack's wireframe. The circled dots are the E Poles...5-sided vertices...

Some more characters. Trying to find what I'd like to model. I'm digging the gramps on the left.

Some dude kinda based on Jafar.

I don't know how this happened.

Maybe i used this as a reference. I drew this in Blues class...

Day 3!!!

2009-01-12T02:47:00.004-05:00

Sadly i feel like i've lost some momentum. In terms of modeling, im venturing into places i havent gone to much and im losing some confidence in modeling. The only setback as a result is the extended amount of time it takes to model because i need to do a lot of tests to find out what works best. I just need a printer and a scanner and i'll be back on track. A few more hours and i can use one. Here's today's work.

I decided i need a good body reference for Khazaros so i went ahead a drew him out.

I wont dare draw arms. Too time consuming for me.

Resultant modeling.

I also spent the other part of the day drawing some characters. I need more things to model and i figure i should get to drawing some of them now.

I almost forgot!

2009-01-11T14:32:00.005-05:00

I also made the turntable animations of Khazaros! I forgot to post em last night. Obviously the head needs alot of work to complete.

Day 2!

2009-01-11T05:05:00.004-05:00

So it's day 2 in Boston. Well it's day 4 technically, but also it's day 3 technically too. It's complicated.

Anyways. Here's what I've got done for today. I got a bunch done, but i feel like i need to go faster. I need a scanner and printer for god's sake! By the way, here are the drawing i did of Khazaros.

This is how i stared the ear. Detached a piece of the mesh and worked off of that.

A few hours later, and i have this. There were some issues with the mesh i couldn't figure out.

After another 5 mins i stumbled upon a solution. Don't worry, i didn't get hurt.

Some more hours later and i had this. I decided to try and put glasses on Khazaros, but i don't know if i like it. With them he looks EXACTLY like my uncle. Very weird. Maybe adding the hair will change that.

Compare.

Okay so over the break i somehow got into making my own notebooks. I had this idea where i wanted to make a custom notebook that i hadn't seen in any of the stores. I bought all the raw materials, dyed the canvas, cut and sewed the pages and my mom sewed the elastic bands. It didn't turn out to be anything like what i had planned it to be but im happy with it. I learned so much, and now i have 4 notebooks.

um...

I dont know what the little red thing is called, but its pretty cool.

I also did some sculpting but i'll save that for tomorrow. I ran into a small speed bump along the way so im trying to resolve that.

...aaaand we're BACK!

2009-01-10T04:09:00.008-05:00

I've been on quite a hiatus. However, it's been for good reasons.

I was on Christmas break these past two weeks and the time before that I was working on the animatic for my animation which was submitted for my Animation Directed Study. Now, however production is going to take a small digression. I'm still going to be working on the animation but i need to prepare my portfolio for this summer. I got accepted into the LA Program at Emerson. It's nothing to brag about because its rolling admission bullshit. Anyhow, I need a lot of catching up to do so i decided to go ahead and model a bunch of things, do a bunch of paintings and drawing and complete another sculpture/maquette.

So I decided to strand myself in Boston. No one is really around and my housemate it out probably for another two weeks.

Three cups of coffee and half a bag of pretzels later, I have this:

This is Khazaros. Try to pronounce that.

He's an Armenian character I came up with. I'll post drawings later. I don't have a scanner in Boston until Monday when the labs open up.

...and...

haha. My set-up.

My tools. Handmade I might add...well...four of them are.

The base wire structure.

A little 5-min epoxy to hold it together.

This might be bad. I used paper to stuff the sculpture. Considering this will be baked I hope this doesn't pose a problem. 275°F isn't that hot....right?

So far. I ran out of Sculpey. A trip to the art store tomorrow! Woo hoo! Notice the Full cup for coffee. Soo good.

window!

2008-11-17T01:33:00.003-05:00

Figured I'd post this as well. Just roughly built the window. I'm working on a timing sheet now. I was sort of confused as to how I was exactly going to time this but as I get more into making this time sheet and the animatic it slowly becomes more apparent.

Window!

Piggy almos done!

2008-11-16T14:52:00.003-05:00

Still needs a bit of work. There are some 5-sided polys i need to resolve. Also need to add more polys to the eye lids so I he can blink.

Started on Jack.

This looks pretty bad. All my models go through this phase where I just want to give up and start over. Lots to go.

more of the piggy

2008-11-13T14:47:00.003-05:00

Don't feel like writing much still. More progress pictures.

Updates!

2008-11-10T10:38:00.007-05:00

So the weekend didnt go quite as I had planned. I wanted to spend the whole time secluded in my bedroom working on the movie but i ended up doing a lot of traveling to Carlisle, MA taking photos and what not. But I spent the greater part of last night starting on modeling the pig.

I don't have much to comment on, so here's what I've got.

He'll look more adorable by the end.

Ambient occlusion pass.

Ambient occlusion pass 2.

Wireframe of the room.

Rigged rocket-lamp w/ expressions used to animate it.

After a long hiatus.

2008-11-06T10:27:00.008-05:00

So it's been a while since I've posted on this blog. It's not as bad as it seems however. I had try and put the next few months into perspective and find out weather or not continuing with Chairaphobiawas worth the time. Considering that the story was outright ridiculous and lacking almost any conventional structure i decided to scrap it and cut my losses. However my losses are much less than i expected. Yes i did spend all summer working on the movie, but i also spent all summer getting better at using Maya and honing my 'skills.'

In the meantime i came up with a much better idea which I've actually spent time developing over the course of this semester at school. I tried to find a story that connects to kids of my generation and a few generations before.

But again, before i get into the story, here are a few concepts drawings. These are rather rough and were just for my own visual reference so be aware. Oh and click the image for a larger version.

basic orthographic of the room

little jacks test drawings and what not

some props and layout

hamlet's model sheet

old props and layout

more props and some furniture

MORE PROPS!

Some Test Shots

2008-08-21T23:00:00.006-04:00

So I got some more shots with the adapter.

Before I started taking the shots I set up my tripod outside and loosened the locking nut on the adapter, focused the lens to infinity and then rotated the lens until the very distant power lines and chimneys were in focus. Once I was happy with the focus and so was the D100's Electronic Rangefinder, I held the lens in place and tightly locked it. So now I have infinity focus.

The close focus is about 18 inches bout .45 meters. The original lens has a .6 close focus label but it turns a bit farther.

No sharpening, only Levels and WB adjustment (in Adobe Camera RAW 4.0). The Blogger removes some of the quality from the image. They are sharper as RAW files.

f/4

f/8

f/8

f/4

f/8 - infinity focus

Lens Adapter Update

2008-08-21T01:08:00.006-04:00

So as far as machining goes the adapter is done. We ran into some difficulty with regard to fastening the reverse mount onto the back piece of the adapter. The design was almost improvised and rushed in a way so it ended up not being too planned out for future problems. The next version of the adapter will be much better. I plan on taking Register distances and building the adapter as a completely fixed structure without the extra threads to allow for adjustment. The benefit to having this thread is i can add extra threads in between to get an extension tube-esque set up. I doubt i will use that much because setting infinity focus will probably be pretty time consuming.

Here are some pictures of the assembly.

The knurled tightening ring is missing in the picture.

This picture has the knurled tightening ring. I've placed a thin ribber O-ring in between the two threaded parts to tighten the seal prevent them both from turning in unison.

Mounted on an F100 without a lens.

My $9 Bronica lens. It's nice, I can actually get metering on the F100. Not on the D100.

Some test shots. More to come.

Sculpture Update

2008-08-20T01:15:00.002-04:00

Okay so here's what i have now. It's been like this for a few weeks now. The lips are not there cause I have no idea how to make them. Or i guess it would be more accurate is i don't know how they should look.

Might do a digital paint-over to get some ideas.

In the Midst of My Absence Pt 2

2008-08-20T00:20:00.005-04:00

So recently I've been working on getting a 35mm kit together. I bought a Nikon F100 a month ago and since then I've been trying to find a few lenses that I really like. Most of the Nikon lenses are amazing but the more recent auto focus ones are a bit lacking in the bokeh department. The ones that do produce good results are either 1. TOO BIG or 2. too expensive. So I decided to whip out one of my trusty medium format lenses from my Bronica ETRSi and try that out. Only problem is that I needed a lens converter to go from the Bronica to the Nikon mount.

I took a few shots with the Bronica lens held about an inch away from and open D100 and this is what I got.

Notice the sides are out of focus and the center is relatively sharp. I held the lens a bit tilted to see how it would look.

Sadly I don't have pictures of the whole process but here's the roughed out stage. These two pieces started out as just billet aluminum bars. The CAD drawing was done by my friend Andre at work. All three of us, Andre my Dad and I, designed it. It started out as a basic converter but then evolved into a monstrous contraption. It's still evolving and should actually be done machining by the end of the week.

The threads were machined first.

Seriously, my dad is amazing at this stuff.

Adding some oil for a smoother finish cut.

This is what we had at the end of that day.

What I have now is actually much different. After building the basic structure I needed to measure out a range in which I could achieve infinity focus on the Bronica lens. I measure .710" from the F-mount to the back of the Lens. So we had to do a lot of trimming down. I'll post more pics tomorrow. But here are a few shots I took with my D100 and the latest version of the mount. The lens is my beater $9 Bronica lens. (Photos were Levels/CC/Sharpened in Photoshop)

Dinner.

Lenox Orgy.

Tea.

In the Midst of My Absence

2008-08-10T16:06:00.007-04:00

I decided to take a bit of a break from the animation because it was only mentally but physically draining me. I did however keep productive. I took my first freelance job in 3d Animation and spent about a week and a half completing it.

The animation was a simple logo-spin animation made for www.karmaloopTV.com. Here are a few WIP images.

Building the Wire frame. (click for larger) I was given an Adobe Illustrator file and I used that to extrude and model the text. Although it might not seem so, I'd say 65% of the structure was modeled by hand. I simply extruded the shapes as NURBS and then converted to poly and used Extrude Edge to build together all of the shapes.

Finished model with shader. Sent this to the client to see different camera angles.

Render passes. Each element was rendered separately. The color and reflection passes took no more than 20 minutes. However the Ambient Occlusion pass took about 14 hours. And I had to do it twice because I didn't triple check my scene! haha

And the result is...

Obviously this is a different camera angle. This render was used to just show the final composition and get approval to start rendering.

--

Along with that I took a trip up to Boston for a week to do what i dread the most: find an apartment. Well luckily I found one just in time and about a 35 minute walk from school. Sure beats a 35 minute train commute.

--

I've been meaning to get back onto the animation recently, but things done seem right. I'm not sure but I don't know if its going to be feasible to make the animation. At least not alone.

Just because I took a 2+ week break from the animation doesn't mean it hasn't been on my mind. I've probably spent hours thinking about it and how different things will be done. This time has also helped me pinpoint my weak spots. I've realized that I might be able to build a complicated model or construct a relatively nice edge loop structure, but I really lack in the 'creative' department. I don't know how to explain it but without reference images i find it very hard to design a building or a character. Especially characters. I spend hours searching through images of characters and slowly pick out characteristics and mesh them together to create a new character. I don't know if that's the way to do it, but it kinda gets me results. One or two a month, but I guess that's better than nothing.

Okay, kinda an update ca

2008-07-21T02:52:00.002-04:00

Kind of an update cause I feel bad.

Basic floor plan.

Profiles.

3d view.

The buildings in general look a bit flat on one end but that doesn't matter because they wont be exposed to the camera.

My current problem is the brickwork. I tested out the script on one of the buildings and it dragged down on my processor. I'm still trying to come up with the most efficient way of having mesh bricks. I'm really opposed to the whole texture mapped brick.

An Update...that turned into a novel.

2008-07-21T01:42:00.002-04:00

It's been 4 days since my last update, and I'm sad to say I haven't made much progress. I've put a fair amount of work into a few different things but each yielded no product. eh. I guess that's how I'm going to learn.

It's funny though. I can't bring myself to cut any corners in this production and I think it will be the death of the project. I have this vision of exactly how i want it to look. I mean i can see it with the colors and the motion and all that jazz. The problem is that it's only my imagination and there are no boundaries to that. To think of adding clouds takes only a fraction of a second in my mind, but probably 3-4 days of work in real life, from testing to final composite.

But I think the hardest part is doing this all alone. I work best when I'm alone, I can get a lot done. No one bothers me, I can work at my own pace and get things done rather quickly. But I'm most creative when I can bounce ideas off of others. I have tendency of hitting brick walls. I guess you could call it creative block. So what seems to hold me back are a few things. 1) scale 2) time:worth 3) efficiency 4) composition 5) work flow 6) OCD.

1) Scale: For every item in the scene i have to come up with a scale drawing first, it doesn't have to be 100% correct but it needs to be in the ballpark. If proportions are off then it ruins the illusion of life and brings the viewer out of the movie. Windows cant be 8x the size of doors. Well, maybe they can...

2) Time:worth: This one is the killer. How much time is allotted to each element and would it be worth the time it takes to create it properly. So I need to make sure i don't waste 4 hours on making a drainage cover that might have 2 seconds of screen time.

3) Efficiency: I spend at least an hour before building something thinking about how i could build it in the most efficient manner. I don't like cutting corners unless they will be beneficial in the end. Something like the brick script. Instead of duplicating it on my own, I wrote the script so I could do it quickly and randomly so it would most realistic. I spent a goo 10 hours on that code, not because it was a complicated one, but because i had to learn MEL syntax and commands. But then I see that it's no time wasted cause that's just another language I'm getting to know and i could use it in the future.

4) Composition: What looks good. It's not easy. A shot in animation is probably thought out and recomposed 1000x more than live action. Why? Because it's possible. So it needs to be good.

5) Work flow: This one stumps me everyday. Which should I do? Rough everything out and then slowly work in detail? Or should i jump right in and make all the elements for one building then move onto another? The way i usually do things is rough out a bit, work in detail, rough out more, add detail, and then once the whole thing is done i repeat the process with secondary and tertiary amounts of details until my head explodes and i get tired of working. And should I build scenes in references so I don't have 100x iterations? And if I do that would i pose a problem in the future? And finally (well..at least for this post) how much can my computer handle? I don't have money to get a faster computer, and if I search for a movie grant or some money it's gonna put so much more pressure on getting this done that the fun will be sucked out of it.

6) OCD: Now, factor in the fact that i have self-diagnosed OCD. Everything has gotta be perfect. It's great sometimes but I know it will be the death of me.

7) I know, I know. This one is extra, just to bitch a bit more. I haven't been in the 3d loop for a while. The last time i really made something was probably 2003 and before that 2001. On top of that, I've been using Maya since January so I really don't know it well.

AH!

Okay, that's enough. It's nice to write this all out eventhough no one reads this because I know if i tried to explain it to anyone i know they would just look at me with crooked eyes.

Last Night's Carving

2008-07-17T22:53:00.002-04:00

Made a few more tools too.

Shane, you're the only one reading this. I need to talk to youuu.

An Update from the Digital World

2008-07-15T02:12:00.004-04:00

So here's a general update of what I've been working on recently. The picture of the bricks at the bottom shows 16 different bricks I've modeled so far. Im going to make about 30+ or so to make sure its not easy to notice a pattern. The new MEL script will randomly select one of these 30 bricks and arrange them onto the buildings. Granted it wont make it 100% automatic, it will cut down on randomizing the brickwork.

One of the main camera views.

Views of the street.

Building A.

Building B.

Building C.

Bricks!

A Break from the Digital

2008-07-15T01:41:00.006-04:00

So after a few failures at modeling on the computer i decided to take a stab at real 3d sculpting. This is my first time so be kind. haha. I looked up some tutorials, watched some videos and decided to try it out myself. Here's what I did tonight. I ran out of clay so I need to head over to A.C. Moore tomorrow to pick up some more and maybe some tools.

Supplies: (see picture).

I bent the armature to about half the side of the shape of the head.

I cut down the threaded rod and then reassembled the base. (By the way, I built this yesterday, pretty simple structure: plywood, screws and some threaded rod.

Set up the armature and used clay epoxy to secure it in place. Took about 5 minutes for the epoxy to completely harden...pretty crazy.

If you look carefully, I dropped in some foil in the center of the armature and then started to place slabs of sculpey on top.

Keep building...

Roughed out the features and then built one ear. Then marked the head so I can place the second ear.

Building up the face more.

Some progress...

And this is what I have so far. Still rough.

So along the way I realized I needed some carving tools. I had a whole set and just about a month ago I threw them out (I think). So i went down to my garage and found some brass sheet metal and pulled out some guitar string and made these.

Side 1.

Side 2.

Rolling Door

2008-07-09T04:49:00.004-04:00

Ya know, one of those security door things.

Fire Exit

2008-07-09T00:44:00.002-04:00

Progression of the fire exit. Im done working on this for now. Time for a coffee break.

Manhole Cover!!

2008-07-08T19:17:00.002-04:00

More props. Funny, this wouldn't really be a prop in a live action movie. This took much longer to make than I expected. Not sure what I'm going to do about detailing the center.

Dumpster!!

2008-07-08T16:02:00.002-04:00

Modeled a dumpster. Still needs the wheels (If i decide to put them) and the lids' (or is it lids's? haha) connection to rear shaft.

Here we go again...again!

2008-07-07T16:56:00.003-04:00

No modeling this time. Giving him a few weeks to develop through drawings. Obviously this one is far from done. Just a basic underlying drawing. hehe.

It's funny, I have a problem with using sketchpads. I cant seem to draw inside one. As you can see this was drawing on a piece of scrap paper, most of my drawing are done on scrap paper that I have stuffed into my sketch books. This particular piece was from my Animation 1 class. Used for drawing thumbnails of abstract junk, silhouette training I guess.

Window / Street

2008-07-07T01:31:00.004-04:00

Some more updates. Went ahead and decided to build the window in detail. Not too much detail, just enough that it looks good rendered. I also rendered a frame to make sure the beveling would suffice. Models don't always look the same as they do in the viewports when rendered. There is a lot of artifacting in this render as well as some model errors. I fixed it up a bit after the render and repositioned the bottom assembly.

Street Progress

2008-07-06T17:46:00.002-04:00

Just some progress pictures. Its much easier to design the scene when the 'groundwork' is laid out. So I went ahead and started building the street. The hardest part was making those corners. Looks simple enough but when no one tells you how it should look then its not as easy to visualize ha ha. Did em 2-3 times until I got this mesh with gave me the best polygon shapes. Almost all the objects in this scene are still just box models. Once everything is laid out I'm going to start roughing up everything so they don't all look like boxes.

Wall_1A!!!

2008-07-05T05:25:00.005-04:00

So I forgot to put an update on the scenery. I started building the main opposing wall. This one I think will be a mixture of both brick and stucco. I'm not sure yet. I still need to do some brick tests to see how it will all be placed.

Next I think I'm going to start on the street. Rough that out so I know where to place other buildings.

Faceeeee!

2008-07-05T05:17:00.005-04:00

OK so I went back to working on the face. I tried earlier today...well earlier yesterday on Friday...and I couldn't get the eyes to work, something was wrong again. I took a break, went to a 4th of July BBQ and then came back, took a nap, watched all the Pixar shorts (again) and got a idea on how to do the eyelids. I tried that, it failed and I kept trying things until I came up with something that worked. I really like it actually. It still needs work but it looks pretty good from all angles. Also, to make sure the eye lids had a sufficient amount of polygons i did a blink test. Just did a quick closed eye model and created and animated the blend shape.

More Building

2008-07-03T02:22:00.003-04:00

Still just working on the same wall. I think it's done for now. I didn't add all the windows because its pretty much a pain in the ass to add and remove them if I decide I want to move something. the duplication will probably occur when i start to add details and I need to see the composition of everything. I'm going to move into the opposing wall tomorrow and then the street. Again, this is all roughed out, well...its perfect now it will be roughed out later. Think about it.

More Progress

2008-07-02T03:22:00.002-04:00

Pretty much blocked out the whole base of the wall here. Added a close-up to see window detail.

Wall 2B_0 / Progress

2008-07-02T02:03:00.002-04:00

Starting the Scene

2008-07-02T01:45:00.004-04:00

I'm still taking a break from modeling the face so I decided to give the scene building a stab. I did a few drawings yesterday and a few today of one of the walls (Wall_2B_0 - in case you were wondering what I named it. haha.) Here's just a progress image of it. I started out just testing to see what technique I was going to use to build the windows and I ended up going with. Just blocking it out now. Trying to see what I like. Most of the details will be added in later with some modeling and texture, displacement and bumps maps.

More progress pictures to come.

Oh yea!

2008-06-30T22:09:00.003-04:00

After 3 days of stress I finally patched things up and have made some good progress. The problem was this. When I initially modeled the head it was too square in the front. As I looked back on old models I realized that I tend to do this a lot. So I stripped the model down to bare essential edge loops and remolded the head so it would be rounder. I'm really liking this now. The only part done on this model is the nose. I need to add the eye lids, some brow definition, lip definition and the back of the head.

I also took the nose that i spent all night modeling and stripped that down to its bare edge loops and attached it as well. I think it looks pretty natural and cartoony at the same time. You be the judge.

I also noticed with each model (this being my third one in 2 months) my edge loop definitions are getting better and better. Before this I had modeled one head and that was about 6+ years ago and that I thought had edge loops haha.

Nose Study / New Progress

2008-06-29T14:06:00.004-04:00

I wanted a break from modeling the kid so I went ahead and modeled a nose. Did this last night.

I'm still working on the head here's what I have now. I've made many changes, it still looks rough as compared to the previous version. Instead of going right into modeling the rest I'm giving it time so my eyes will settle a bit. Definitely need to start on the scenery. But what i like about this version is that in the 3/4 view the character doesn't look weird as hell. He still looks a bit weird but that's cause he's half a head and with only some detail. I'm thinking about implementing the nose I modeled into this instead of just the button nose. We'll see.

My Dilemma Part 2

2008-06-28T16:26:00.002-04:00

So after last night's post I stayed up and tried a few things but ended up finding out more problems. This time the face looked bad. In the front view port everything looks a-okay, I really like it. However the profile looks a bit odd still and on top of that the 3/4 view looks horrible. He looks caucasian form the front but when I circle the model he begins to look like an asian baby alien. Definitely not what I'm going for. haha.

I'm working on it.

My Dilemma

2008-06-28T02:04:00.003-04:00

I'm having a lot of trouble balancing the realistic with the cartoony. this is supposed to be a balance between the two but I'm def seeing its not easy as it seems. I've been working on this movie for two months and all I have is a head and a torso to show for it. Granted I did tons of drawings which then went to scrap because of the story change, I still feel very behind. I don't want to end up wasting a lot of time in details that wont matter in the end. But then i think this project is not for creating a movie (well it is to a certain degree) but its a way to teach myself how to do all this jazz. Absolutely none of what I'm doing is going to waste at all because even if i fuck up something I still end up learning something from it which helps me other places.

So finally, I ended up scrapping the bottom half of the torso because I felt that it just didnt work. Every time I looked at him I pictured some sort of alien creature or someone like Dobby from HP. And I keep picturing Anton Ego from Ratatouille as a kid. That final scene where he has his flashback and he's standing in the doorway. I just wonder how they created that? Did they build a detailed character for a 5 second sequence? He looked pretty simple but still full of expression.

I don't know, I guess now I fully understand why and how pixar can release those hardback books filled with artwork from their movies. The pre-production stage is so important in being efficient. I'm pretty much wingin' this whole model from a mere sketch I did. It's just that one sketch I posted at the beginning of this blog.

So here's what I'm left with. I'm going to put him off for a bit and work on other stuff. Try to begin on the scenery.

Hair Preview

2008-06-27T02:50:00.003-04:00

I'm still unsure exactly how im going to build the hair. Im trying to think of the most efficient way to get it done and look nice. I like the method game devs use to make hair but if I choose to do it that way I wouldn't use opacity masks but extrude the flat polygons and make full shapes. I'm not sure if that makes sense w/o any visual aids.

Anyways, I modeled the center wisp (I don't know crazy hair terminology) and then quickly mocked up the rest of the hair. I'm liking it.

I just realized...I work about 7 straight hours a day @ work, about 7 hours a day on this movie when i get home and then probably 10 hours each weekend day.

I work 90 hours a week. lol.

The Rest of the Torso

2008-06-27T00:01:00.004-04:00

So I tried a few different ways to guide the edge loops on the model and i ended up with this mess. 30 mins or so later I cleaned it up. I'm happy with the torso now. A few things bother me about it but I'll deal with them once i get the whole body modeled and I can look at everything from afar.

Onto the hair.

Torso Progress

2008-06-26T03:52:00.003-04:00

So I'm just posting pictures cause I need to get to bed like...now.

Note: Shoulders in the first picture are too muscular. Gonna fix that. I like them more in the second one. Im tying to get some relistic anatomy as well as a cartoony feel.

Some Torso!!

2008-06-26T00:28:00.003-04:00

Making the torso. Still working on it. I'll post at the end of the night.

Adding the Neck!

2008-06-25T03:36:00.004-04:00

So I was very hesitant with adding the neck. I was unsure how I would do it and how it would turn out so I put it off for a while. I finally thought of a way to add it so I decided to do it tonight. Here's a picture of the basic process I used. Its pretty self-explanatory. I'm actually really happy with the way it all turned out. It still needs a but of tweaking but it's much better than I expected. I think I'm moving onto the hair next. Making the body is scaring me haha.

I also roughed out the flow of the code I'm going to write for the super random brick wall generator. I'm probably going to have to scrap the other code because the new version is based on a different approach.

I'm super tired, I'd write more but I have to get up at 8am tomorrow.

More Tweaking

2008-06-24T03:20:00.003-04:00

I kept feeling like something was off. I really liked the front view but the side view of the character was odd. So after staring at it for a few minutes I realized the jaw was still way too far out it was giving him a very alien look. I pulled back most of the points including the nose and it looks much better from the side. I guess that's what you get from modeling a character from only one reference drawing. haha.

I also smoothed out his cheeks and removed some of the baggage under his eyes. I feel like his face is almost done but what's bothering me now is the roundness from the top view. his head is square looking in the top view so that's needs to be addressed. Hopefully it's and easy fix.

Bricks - Part 2

2008-06-24T03:06:00.004-04:00

So I kept working on this brick script and I added a random rotation to each brick. It's still a little uniform so I threw a Lattice deformer on the whole wall and moved and rotated bricks by hand. This is far from what I picture the brick walls in the movie to look like but its a start. The bricks here are way too square and they don't have texture or bump maps on them at the moment. Once those are addressed it will look 100x better. I'm also trying to figure out a better way to generate the mortar. I've got some ideas but I'm sure something will come to me.

Automated Brick Walls!

2008-06-23T23:55:00.009-04:00

So I really like the way brick walls look when they are all mesh instead of a texture and bump map placed on a plane...that's just boring. Its got hardly any dimension and it reacts badly to lighting. So I wrote a MEL script to generate brick walls for me. This is my first MEL script and it's still a work in progress. Right now all it does it create a bland brick wall with evenly spaced and identical bricks (see image). In later versions I'm going to add a random selector and have it select between a number of different brick models. Broken ones, small ones and crooked ones. Just to make it more natural.

I can select the width and height of the wall and the spacing of the bricks (mortar thickness) and the script does the rest. It's also based on relative values so all I have to do is place the first brick at the bottom right corner of the wall and then set the width and height of the wall.

So right now my work flow is this:
- Create 20+ different bricks each with a unique shape but all with same 2 x 0.6 x 1 dimension.
- Texture individual bricks.
- Create walls that are only mortar. With surface texture, bump and displacement.
- Generate random bricks on given wall.
- Add more randomness.
- Add stains and graffiti.

Here's the script right now. If anyone would like to use it. (lol)

//Brick Wall Maker//////////////////////////////
//
//Name First Brick "start_brick_mesh"
//Author: Shant Ergenian
//Date: June 23, 2008
//Verson 0.1b
//Assumed:1 Maya Unit = 10cm
//
////////////////////////////////////////////////

//Set these////
float $wall_height = 10;
float $wall_width = 50;
float $mortar_thick = .1;
//Set these////

string $firstBrick = "start_brick_mesh";
float $brick_h = getAttr("start_brick_mesh.scaleY");
float $brick_w = getAttr("start_brick_mesh.scaleX");
float $x_trans = $brick_w + $mortar_thick;
float $y_trans = $brick_h + $mortar_thick;
float $offset_x_trans = ($brick_w + $mortar_thick) / 2;
//Negative Movement
float $neg_x_trans = $x_trans*-1;
float $neg_y_trans = $y_trans*-1;
float $neg_offset_x_trans = (($brick_w + $mortar_thick) / 2) * -1;

//Select First Brick
select -r $firstBrick;

//Height Loop///////////////////////
float $v = 0;
do {
//Vertical Loop///////////////////////
//Positive X - Horizontal Duplicate
float $h = 0;
do {
duplicate;
move -relative $x_trans 0 0 ;
$h = $h + $x_trans;
}
while ($h < $wall_width);

//Start Next Row
duplicate;
move -relative $offset_x_trans $y_trans 0 ;

//Negative X - Horizontal Duplicate
float $h = 0;
do {
duplicate;
move -relative $neg_x_trans 0 0 ;
$h = $h + $x_trans;
}
while ($h < $wall_width);

//Start Next Row
duplicate;
move -relative $neg_offset_x_trans $y_trans 0 ;

$v = $v + ($y_trans * 2);
}
while ($v < $wall_height);
doDelete;

//End///////////////////////////////////

Lips Lips Lips

2008-06-23T02:10:00.005-04:00

I had to do a lot of repositioning to move around E-poles on the face (the verticies with 5 adjacent faces) so the rest of the face is a bit off and many points need to be cleaned up but the lips are roughed out nicely and just need a bit of tweaking to finish up. He almost looks like hes about to cry or that hes an old man.

Other than that i need to clean up the bottom eye lids. There's way too much definition there. I also need to clean up the ear to head transition and find out what the heck im gonna do with the nose. nostril? no nostril? I dont know!

Starting the Lips

2008-06-23T00:52:00.003-04:00

I can't tell you how much i hate modeling and drawing lips. It's like the biggest mystery in the world. But anyways I started on it after putting it off for a while. Here's what I got so far.

Getting there...

2008-06-22T19:28:00.006-04:00

I think I'm done with my cloth tests. I've posted a final video and a final render of the shirt. I'm not 100% satisfied with the settings but I figured out almost everything i needed to know to in order to make this possible. I'm going to leave the rest of this research for after all the animation has been competed and I'm in the final rendering and lighting stage. There's one error in the rendering and animation, if you look carefully there are verticies under the arm that get caught in themselves. That should be easily solvable with some tweaking of self-collision values.

The only things that are missing are the seams on the shirt. I didn't do a test with that but I'm sure it'll work out fine. If not, it's not too much of a problem because I can use a bump maps to fake it. Also the color map should be enough to give the baseball shirt look.

Cloth Simulation

2008-06-22T17:42:00.003-04:00

Long story short, I've come to the conclusion that I'm going to simulate cloth. So I took a break from modeling for a bit to figure out key points that have mystified me about cloth simulation. As it turns out, Maya's new nCloth plug in lets you model your own cloth mesh and apply a cloth simulation to it. Hooray!! So that means the model I slaved away at isn't going to waste!

I've posted a shirt test video, just a quick playblast to see which attributes need tweaking to get good cloth simulation. In this clip theres WAY too much bouncyness in the cloth, looks like a thin rubber shirt. So Im still working on it.

A Plethora of Changes

2008-06-22T02:48:00.010-04:00

So i re-re-re-did the eye lids and finally found out what the problem was...not the eye lids. Well, it partly was, but what was happening was that when the eye lids were built they meshed very oddly with the rest of the face. It ended up looking like an alien. So i went back and began re-positing stuff, namely the jaw. I pulled it back the rotated it around a bit and it finally looked much much much better than before. It still needs a lot of work but its getting there. Right now i would say the eyes and the ear are 85% there. the nose needs to be tweaked a bit and the mouth has to be started.

Texture Stuff...

2008-06-21T19:13:00.005-04:00

Just wanted to see how a texture would look. I literally did it in 5 minutes. It's hard to see the mesh seams because it was such a sloppy paint job.

Seam Test

2008-06-21T17:30:00.005-04:00

So here's another one of my test models. It looks close to done, but i felt like changing it up a bit. I don't like to focus on one this for a long time, i tend to junp around on projects to keep things fresh. It makes sure that i look at an object with a different point of and keeps me from focusing on problems for too long.

The significance of this step is that it gives me a chance to come up with a workflow for producing seams in the model. For those who understand modeling terminology read on, otherwise just look at the picture.

First I created the an edge flow for the seams I wanted to create. Then I selected the edge loop and applied a 'Bevel' to it. In this case it was about .2 units. Next I selected the newly created faces in between the beveled edges and extruded them in on their local axes. Then I extruded the Z-axis a bit more to push the faces in to create a channel. I then added an edge loop (evenly spaced) on the newly extruded faces, in between the edges. So now i had three separate edges that were inside the seam...which is way too many. So then i deleted the two outer ones and cleaned up any extra edges leaving only quads in place.

The purpose of doing this was to be able to extrude along the local axis so I can get a consistent seam and so that I may get an edge loop perfectly placed inside the seam. I like this process and the result so I'll prob go back and re-do it a bit cleaner for the final version.

I'm actually pretty excited at how this came out. It still needs a lot of work but it's definitely getting there.

Fixing the Sleeves

2008-06-21T15:23:00.004-04:00

So here's a quick post on the fixed sleeves. I'm still playing around with the scale of the shirt. However I feel like the sleeve size is good now. I don't think I'm ready to model the arms yet though, gonna read some tutorials and watch some videos and then I'll move onto that.

The picture here only shows the base mesh without 'thickening' it to look like cloth. That update next, after a few tweaks.

CLOTHES! (con't again and again)

2008-06-21T04:21:00.006-04:00

So after hours of working on the sleeves and shirt I've decided that the sleeves are much to large. They are going to need to get smaller and therefore probably have to remove a few edges. It's all good though i have the basic edge flow so there was no waste of work.

By the way, 'max' looks a little cracked out because I also began working on his eyes. I pushed the verticies right around his eyes way back to achieve a very circular base for building the eye lids. I tried it once already on this character and they looked fairly odd. Im going to take another stab at it later today (its 4:25am now) and see how i like it. I definetly need eye lids, i jsut need to come up with a way to make then look good.

Thats it for now.

CLOTHES! (con't again)

2008-06-21T02:49:00.004-04:00

Okay, so I've done a lot of re-building. I developed the proper edge loops (I hope) to get nice seams for the mesh and not to mention the texturing. I deleted the lower half of the body because it got messy, im going to re-build that now. I also deleted the arms and rebuilt them out from the shoulders. the increased number of sides forced me to do so. The original started with 8 sides and i kept adding edges until it reached 12 sides. Right now this has the potential of becoming 14 sides if i decide i need more shoulder detail, but im thinking it looks good the way it is now.

I've marked the edges that will be the main seams in the shirt. Once the mesh is near complete these edged will be multiplied to add detail. I like the test out how its going to look early on and then delete it right away. All the extra faces make roughing and finishing very difficult. Once I see I am happy with the mesh and I feel like no more changes will be made then I will add the edges and begin texturing.

CLOTHES! (con't)

2008-06-21T01:42:00.004-04:00

Update. Fixed the scale of the shirt. Looks a bit out of proportion in the previous post. Also pulled out the sleeves a bit. Now I'm preparing the edge loops so that I can give him one of those baseball shirts. Notice the curve coming out from the armpit and going straight up to the collar. That line and the collar line will be accentuated in the mesh to show a seam.

CLOTHES!

2008-06-21T00:20:00.003-04:00

Here's just a quick progress report. I want to get a few "steps" of the clothes making process posted. So here's a screenshot of what I've got right now. Prob gonna take a break for a bit (bit is like15 mins (in case you were wondering)).

Just a New Sketch...

2008-06-19T01:56:00.006-04:00

Didn't have much time to do any work in Maya today, but I finally drew out a more frightening version of a chair.

Also did a few shirt drawings. I think I'm going to go for modeled clothes that are bound to the bones and deform along with the character's movement. Cloth simulation seems to be more complicated than its contribution to the overall animation. If I see that its not too complicated then I might rig up two version of the character and see which one flows better.

So What's Next?

2008-06-18T02:32:00.008-04:00

Doesn't seem like much was done but I've tweaked around a lot. Ears are bigger, brows are rounder and head is more smooth. I'm afraid of two things though. 1) too much detail and 2) too much wasted time. I know none of this is ultimately wasted time, but theres a schedule I have to go by to make sure this movie happens.

Here's what I ended up doing with a previous character. He was supposed to be very simple and have kind but insecure face and it ended up looking like some weird cross between animation and reality. Prob 20+ hours of work down the drain...well no, I learned a lot which helped me build my current character in much less time.

Anyways, what's really boggling my mind right now is weather I should use cloth simulation for the character's clothes or I should use hard-modeled cloth that animates with the characters. I'm leaning towards the latter but it seems like I'm going to be watching some animated movies tomorrow to see some techniques. Also need to check out "Iron Giant." Shane keeps bringing it up and I feel almost embarrassed to admit I've never seen it.

One more thing: eye lids. Do I need eye lids? Character needs to blink, right? They just make him look too realistic. I need to find a happy medium.

This is the last one: nose. detailed nose with nostrils or just a nice cartoony flat nose?

Oh, and a name. I was thinking Max...seems too predictable of a name though.

Before I Go to Bed

2008-06-17T02:59:00.004-04:00

Here's progress since my last post. I added his ear. Still a bit rough, but I'm liking it so far. Ill get some close-ups later.

night.

Starting the Wireframe

2008-06-17T01:29:00.001-04:00

I started building this last night. Built a basic shape I wanted and I've been tweaking it today to match my sketch. I plan on doing a bunch more sketches before the character is finalized. I'm just tired of drawing. I've been drawing non-stop since I got home from school. Wanted to take a break and do some non-tangible work.

Here we go.

2008-06-17T01:23:00.000-04:00

I'll introduce everything later. Here's a quick sketch of the character. Currently he's afraid of chairs. I don't know why. Maybe cause he's really cool. haha.