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!

Applejacks - Desert Stampede

(Click to ENLARGE, much better in high resolution)

Done originally as what should have lead up to a portfolio piece, but had left it alone for months. Mostly because it was really busy with many dark lines, and equal lighting. It sort of looked a little dull! Played with the color overlay to get an atmospheric vibe with the canyon walls and giving a shade in the front helped out the composition. Really glad I came back to this and finished it!

As far as the story of the Applejack's goes...they eventually leave their RC hometown in a fixed up shaggin wagon. Their poor sense of direction leads them into a misadventure, involving rounding up a herd of cattle (farm in a desert), who in turn, stampede them through desert canyons. Their make shift escape plane begins to fall apart upon take off. Mag (the machine) flings himself to hold the wing together. They redirect the stampede back home through flight!

AppleJacks - Hangout

Two band-mates hanging out in the park, only one of them is like a battery.

Played around with some screening affects in Photoshop. 

Definitely like the hipster retro photo effects.

Sketchies - 02

Fresh doodles drawn during lunch and breaks while at work. Colored and stuff on Photoshop!

Have been reading Trigun and a little of bit Assassin's Creed, so the ideas are filtering in here.

A Very Deadly Trap!

Mouse likes to nom-nom

Nom-nomming leads to trap

Trap leads to death

Mouse will nom-nom no more :(

Tis a sad Mouse

Link! Skyward Sword

Death from above!

I've been playing Skyward Sword over the last few weeks. The game is like visual candy, there's a lot of neat textures and patterns throughout. I could walk around Faron Woods and stare at the ancient trees or the symbols on the temple walls for a long time while my heart meter drops to 0. Also, fighting like a crazed monkey seems to work out better than pretending to be a calculating samurai.

Happy New Years 2012!?!

Happy 2012 Everyone! Year of the Dragon! My main resolution is to draw/paint something everyday + continue work on Applejacks. I'm hoping to have a few sketchbooks by the years end and not stressing out after Thanksgiving dinner.

Dog Canyon Exercise :P

My storyboard teacher gave me a note to utilize the entire space to help my storyboards become more cinematic. Having the characters move toward/away from the screen is helping open up a lot more options for storytelling. Am pretty curious if using a long down shot of a barren desert underneath the dog's house would help to better sell that there's nothing to eat.

Plasma Arm Superheroine - Roxy

Sketched her out to be a super heroine of sorts with an plasma arm that activates when in battle/protect civilians. I imagine her to be a swift as elves and somewhat a scout. I would love to see someone sketch out super heroes as friendly tags on allowable walls. This was inspired by the awesomeness of Avengers on Netflix.

Applejacks Exploration!

 

Exploring the Mood/Emotion for Japanese Rock (Jrock!). Some bands are very dark and flashy (Malice Mizer), while others are high energy and inspiring (L'arc~en~Ciel). I'm taking some time to research some well known Japanese bands, which turns out into watching some amazing concerts :) It's pretty amazing how far these bands go to dress and stage, it's almost like a musical. This piece is a mixture of both kinds of moods.

Story Ideas for the Applejacks

 

So, needed to play around with potential story ideas for the Applejacks for Story @ Concept Design Academy: (here's what I got)

1) established band on their first road trip tour.
2) fighting giant monsters with music (and elemental creatures) to protect their RV park home.
3) other band gets jealous of Applejack's awesomeness. They might sabotage them or just be a hurdle for every adventure they go on.

Character Exploration + The King's Speech Comp Studies

I'm taking Story Development for Animation @ Concept Design Academy right now. Our assignment this week is to explore our characters a bit further. This is a vingette character exploration of the Applejacks (a band I made up). Mag, the robotic boy of the group has a talent for rebuilding himself as well as building other robots/machines. He does this in the basement of his parent's RV home. The RV community usually requests the strangest coffeemaker combination machines from him.

These studies, taken from The King's Speech, were mostly for the lighting effects on storyboards. Also practicing foreground/middle ground/background elements. There's quiet a bit of depth of field camera work with conversations between characters, and the blurry lines look pretty cool on storyboards.

Archaeologist Mickey

A quick sketch in continuation of my lessons with Mickey Mouse. He's still a tough little fella and I feel that with great practice, makes him greatly difficult. Been having a few requests at work for a few Disney Characters, so I hope to be well practiced with them.

Mickey Mouse - Test Animation

At Disney Consumer Products we've been shown how to draw Mickey and his friends once each week by Jeff Shelly. Mickey's surprisingly hard to draw because of the balance between design and draftsmenship needed. Most of which is achieved through a lot of drawing time with him. I've been tinkering around with this scene, finding different ways to make Mickey snooze, yet retain his likeliness. It's summer! so having a lazy summer laid back demeanor felt appropriate.