The last three months.

Were a major pain in my arse, but fun nevertheless. I overwhelmed myself with work which caused me to snap and crawl into a hole for two weeks. Word of advice as well as future note for myself if I ever read this again, don't ever, EVER, overwhelm yourself with work even if you think you can complete it all. I'm the type of moron that learns from his mistakes, I've gotten to a point where I almost enjoy 'fucking up' for a lack of better words because those moments in the long run make me even stronger. Plus, they make for great stories down the line.

But more importantly about me snapped, I acquired this new attitude that allows me to just do work, then do more work, and after, do even more work. If a problem comes up, I don't panic anymore, I just fix it. I've finally slowed down from my chaotic pace to something that is a lot more manageable. It's kinda nice knowing that don't care about the amount of work either, Ill just complete it, 'whatever' style. Don't take that the wrong way either, it's almost like the difficultly of the work doesn't exist, if there is a problem, I solve it. If I don't know how to do it, I figure it out without any hassles, and I feel comfortable doing the work, that feeling of being overwhelmed, or thinking I can't do it is long gone. And I'm glad it is, cause that was some shitty annoying feeling that really pissed me off sometimes.

But enough about my life, on wards to the work. My Mad scientist Lab! MUHAHAHA!



That is the most recent render, as well as being the render that I handed in for the final grade of my independent studies class. I say most recent because it's just that, it is NOT the final render of this piece. I do plan on adding more to this since I feel there is a lot more potential in this.

Currently, things like the color, the lighting, whats outside the window (currently nothing), animating more in the video posted below, adding a creature strapped into the seat getting blasted b that laser. And that laser, bothers me because its so geometric, and while I don't want it to look organic, it needs to not look so blocky. I want to animate the computer screens in the background to make them more dynamic. Those glass canisters in the back, I would like to put some aliens in there, increase the overall creepy factor, like a lab at area 51. These are just a few of the things I would like to fix, I have a long list. Like I said earlier, there is a lot of potential in this scene and I want to pull every ounce of that potential out.

At you can see in the video, the electrical animation was a good start, but without the electrical discharge from the orbs, it loses its luster in the video. Not to mention those stupid shadows, which at first I thought were nice, breaking the scene up, but at the end of the day, they do nothing but distract your eyes.

I'm just going to break the scene down really quickly so my fellow peers can see how I achieved the final render. First I rendered out an ambient occulsion pass which is nothing more then a nice ambient shadow pass that grounds the scene nicely adding contact shadows wherever they are needed.

Ambient Occlusion Pass (AO)

After I have the AO pass I then rendered out the beauty pass, which includes all the texturing, lighting, and models. While this looks good, the additional passes increases the overall quality when you composite them together using a multiply mode. Additionally, you can tweak the levels to gain a harsher or more subtle effect. Also note that I could have rendered out a specular pass which is nothing but the highlights given off from the lights, as well as breaking the lights into individual passes. But for this project I did not, but I will for future pieces.

Beauty Pass

Now for the glow I did something a little differently, I did not want to increase render times generating a glow effect, so I did it in post. I took the original beauty pass and blur it, cutting out what sections I need (in this case, the electrical beams) and used a Color Dodge mode to increase its overall vibrancy. This achieved the exact look I was looking for while only increasing overall render times by ~5%.

"Glow" Pass

Once you compositing all the layers together, add some lens flares, color correction, and some additional post effects you get something like this. Pretty nice minus the issues I've listed above. But as you can see, you achieve a much better render if you composite multiple passes together, while also decreases render times, it's a win/win all around.

The final result.

But I'm not done yet! I also have some more compositing stuff from the visual effects class I took late 2011. I had a blast in that class and did a lot, but, a lot of it didn't get rendered, and since I don't have access after effects 5.5, I wont be able too. But I did get some stuff rendered, and Im going to post it... now.

This was a simple green screen composite, nothing difficult. In addition to the keying, I also added some additional effects to make it appear like police were chasing the car. I plan on adding this to my compositing demo reel where Ill break this shot down too, showing each pass in progress to get an idea of how I achieved the final results.

Another project that I had fun on was a kinetic typography assignment and boy was that a blast. I used a segment of dialog from the 2005 film "Hitchhikers guide to the Universe". At some point in the future, I would like to come back and do another one of these to a song, seems like it would be a lot of fun timing events and such. The results are very pleasing to watch.

Well, at the moment, that's all I got for you guys, next week when class start up again Ill be getting the rest of my work rendered out and posted on here, so stay tuned. After that post I plan on not adding another post until I finish the next semester of classes, its much easier to update this during my breaks when my workflow dies down a bit. Until then I want to continue enjoying the rest of my break, playing video games, hanging with family and friends, and just all out relaxation. Speaking of video games, time to enjoy a game of DOTA2.

TILL NEXT WE MEET
Wolf Gang - The King and all of his Men

Spacecraft Engineering Bay, broken down.

This project was an assignment for a class I am currently taking. I was given the task to create a scene using a few of the concepts learned in while taking the class. I had a lot of fun working on this project, and the outcome was really incredible. Here's it is;

Here is a link to the deviantart website where you can see the render in it's full resolution, you can really see the details in the image. Well, that's it.

BYE

Wilfred and the Lip Sync

After watching one of the latest episode of Wilfred, Conscience, episode five if I am not mistaken, a scene caught my eye when the protagonists friends boyfriend tells them a story of his past. Something about the way he said it got me inspired and in the coming weeks I will be putting together a short 10-15 second animation using that dialog. The results should be interesting.

MORE TO COME

I should update this more often...

Been a while, school and other things keeping me busy, but lots of work came out of it. So I really can't complain. Updating my blog isn't high on my list of priorities at the moment.

In my studies over the past few weeks, I have learned a new program that I've never dabbled with before, Adobe After Effects, a very fun visual effects programs. And I can tell you one thing, that program is very addicting, I can't get enough of this program. One of the first things I created was assigned in my current Motion Graphic class. We had to create a five day weather forecast animation, here was the outcome;



The night after I returned from class I was motivated to play and tinker with the program and some 3rd party plug-ins to make a music visualizer with particles that 'danced' to the beat of the song. Without sleep I worked for a few hours through the night and created the following;



Credits to the song of course, "Professor Green feat. Example - Monster (Camo & Krooked Remix)" While the animation plays to the whole song, some parts did, in my opinion, work much better with the song. I recommend watching from 0:25 to 0:55 and 1:45 to 2:45.

Later that week I was assigned a project in another class to quickly model a 3D mechanical 'robot' and place it onto a flat background, composing them together. After finishing the assignment I was looking at the image and a thought came to mind to tinker with composting smoke into the image and turning into a short video, little bit of camera shake, and dust, for added effect. Using my knowledge from what I learned from class I put together this short piece;



'twas fun.

Then that show, through the wormhole, on the science channel came on. Here we go, flying through space time, it was a quicky', but a well enjoyed one at that. I had two test with it, the first one didn't quite hit the scale I was looking for, the second, ehh, came a little bit closer.

le first attempt


le second attempt


I think they both have a different feel, but they are both progress in a secret project that I've had in mind since I was younger.

While that's all I have at the moment, but sometime at the end of this week I will be finishing up an animation I have been working on for the past few weeks and I'll have a whole post dedicated to that. I also made a twitter, so follow me.

LATER
Red Hot Chili Peppers - The Adventures of Rain Dance Maggie

What a month!

God damn, Im exhausted. The past three or four weeks, just work, work, work, thankfully its over. Lets not forget I almost fucked up and failed my first class, but I believe I cleared that up and fixed it, so everything is smooth sailing. Just going to have to wait another week until they post the grades.

But, in other news, I've completed two pieces that I feel came out pretty darn good, one was a short 11 second animation using audio from the 11 second club, the other was a short presentation piece showcasing a virtual art gallery as well as a few works from the show.



This one was a real fun one to work on, acting it out was a blast and I'm very happy with out it turned out. But I personally feel like there are some fixes that I can do on it to make it smoother; as well as the acting which needs some work. I might also possibly come back to this just to add a background, the idea of modeling a cave-like environment sounds like a fun challenge. With a bridge, and a ravine. Oh yes, I can see it now.



This is the other animation, for my Art History III class, quite a bit longer then the first one, but also lacks renderings of the art gallery, which is the real star of the film. I know that I will come back to this to add more scenes to showcase this the art gallery. I also noticed the film on vimeo is quite a bit darker then the file I have on my computer, why that is I don't know, probably just an issue with the upload, might reupload it next week.

Well, I'm out, there should be another post coming in a few days once I get a digital camera to take pictures of a sculpture I completed.

PEACE
The Heavy - How you like me Now?

la galerie fiables (sneaky peaky)

HHAAaaAA-ZAAAAaaAaaaa, Well Hello there! My newest work, la galerie fiables, its an assignment for my Art History III class. While this is only a screenshot, there will be a video that goes along with this that will showcase all of the artwork in the gallery. A sort of virtual tour. Interesting fact about this one though, the sole reason I am doing this is because I was called a single word, I wont specify the word, but if your smart (and can read french, assuming the Google translator works) you'll figure it out. Once I finish the entire assignment Ill post it on here along with the process of how I did everything.



AU REVOIR
Graffiti6 - Stare into the Sun

Run Cycles at 3am

The best time to do a run cycle in my honest opinion. I dont know what happened last night, but at around 3am I got into bed and was ready to fall asleep, but my mind wouldn't let me. Five minutes later I jumped out of bed, onto my computer and started getting to work, about two hours later I was finished. Here are the results;



I feel it was successful, however I must cut this entry short, my league game just started and minions are coming down my lane, time to kick ass and take names.

ARRIVEDERCI
White Lies - Bigger Than Us