Night at the Museum Final Render + "Cheated" Whiteboard Animation

After a few weeks of lazy vacation time, I finally got around to re-rendering my 3D Fundamentals final. I'm quite proud of the results, and will be creating more tests as I build an Animation Reel. I learned A TON from creating this scene from scratch, a lot more than simply going through Digital Tutors tutorials (though, very informative and helpful). All the elements of animation production: modeling, rigging, lighting, texturing, animation, staging, rendering, forged themselves into a scene once a story was done and simplified. Keeping everything as simple as possible kept headache time pretty low.  Click to view it, in all it's foreign film glory:

Night at the Museum - Animation Final from Jesse Soto on Vimeo.


(For specifics, please go to the Vimeo page)

Over the break, I also created this Mickey Mouse Whiteboard Animation test. This one is "cheated" since there isn't a true whiteboard drawing. Instead, the drawing was handled on Flash. And, the hand was added while compositing in After Effects.

Whiteboard Animation Test - Christmas Mickey from Jesse Soto on Vimeo.

Night at the Museum - Breakdown Pass

Things have been busy busy the last few weeks. I've taken up learning CGI Animation @ Santa Monica College in their Academy for Entertainment and Technology. The teaching there has been fantastic, easing any inhibitions of not being able to learn or continuing to self-educate about Maya. There's been a strong emphasis on storytelling that simplifies your projects and the clarity in instruction lets you hit the ground running.

I'm taking ET24 - 3D Fundamentals with Chris Fria. It's a pretty fast paced class....one week it's modeling polygons/nurbs, the next animation, and finally culminating nicely into rendering while coming to the ends of our final projects.

Here's a sample of the textures that are going into be assigned to the characters. More to come!

Golden Banana - 01

In a jungle, around one obscure location, in a time predictably set for treasure hunting, a quest will unfold!

Here are a few images of a new project I've been working on at Santa Monica College. Hoping to have an Animatic by the end of the semester. Must keep working with my nose to the grindstone!

Sunday Doodles!

Micron Pens and faded Copic Markers for the environments. Looking back, I should have bought a new marker for an even tone. The Buff Ninja drawing done on Photoshop with a 7 pt. brush.

More Applejack Sketches

Exploring around the closed-off world that this talented band begins in.

Eventually they'll hit the road, starting at fun joints to make ends meet.

First spending countless hours hanging out and making loud music, mixed in with food trips.

It's all about the Dark Knight!

Over the weekend, I went to see Medieval Times + Batman Rises for my friend's birthday. The first sketch came about because our yellow knight was wickedly awesome, but got destroyed by a cheap knight on a horse. There were no other knights as wolverine-like a fighter as he was, so alas we were sorta rooting for the bad guys... The bottom one is fun doodle! Two kid bickering, because of a out of control rocket.

35th and 36th Sketchcrawl

 

July 14th was the 36th Worldwide Sketchcrawl, and the LA Sketchcrawl group decided to visit the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. I didn't make it out there, but managed to sketch a bit from a coffee shop in Burbank. Some of their artwork (and fun experience) is posted: http://www.sketchcrawl.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=62&t=7946

 3 months prior was the 35th Sketchcrawl. I did a few sketches (above) at the Glendale Brand Library.

 Pages from the good ole Sketchbook!