Animation Week 5-7 Assignment: Walk Cycle

2D Week 09: Artist Discovery Shape Language

2D Week 08: Artist Discovery

This week we began work on a long-term project - to reimagine and reinvent the Wizard of Oz characters in the style of artist Tim Burton.

I joined lead Paul Salas' team to focus on the poses, attitude and animation for the character. We were assigned to work on the Cowardly Lion character. This first week, we focused on populating a Pinterest board to nail down our artistic direction.

I worked on populating the board Animation/Poses/Attitude as seen below.

I then narrowed the selection down to four poses that I felt emulated the feel of the character we were after. The lion will be poses in a crouched over position, looking anxious/fearful, holding his tail in and keeping his hands near his face (perhaps biting his nails?)

I also included an interesting GIF I found that served well to conceptualize how this lion might be animated in the future. I proposed that his animation style would be stylized in the fashion of smooth, crisp, controlled arcs paired with an uncontrollable shakiness.

3D Week 08: Working in a Game Engine with a Final Prop

This week we pushed our final asset into the Unreal game engine. First, I exported the baked maps from Substance Painter 2.

The material was then pushed into Unreal and applied to the cannon within a blueprint. Extra details such as fresnel and ambient occlusion were added into the blueprint.

Shown below is the final asset within the game engine.

2D Week 07 Assignment: Basic Lighting

This week's assignment had us practicing using basic lighting techniques to give the illusion of depth.

We were told to choose an object, perhaps a decoration above our desk, and illuminate it with a basic three-point lighting setup. For an added challenge, we were told we could incorporate a colored light and see how we could implement it into the digital painting.

I chose to use a sculpture created by my friend, Boo, and used a violet light in my setup. Here is the original picture.

For the final result shown below,  I chose to go with more of a photo-realistic style and am pleased with how it turned out. I really enjoyed working on this piece and spent about 7 hours on it.

3D Week 07 Assignment: Bake Maps and Digital Painting for a Prop

This week we continued work with the cannon and used a new software, Substance Painter to paint realistic textures on the piece and give it the illusion of age.

In Maya, I exported out the low-res version of the cannon along with the sculpted high-res.

I then imported the cannon in to Substance Painter and, using new techniques I learned from Nick, brought it to life. We learned how to use various brushes and materials in the program as well as how to bake normal maps onto the model.

Shown below is the final result.

This assignment took me around 4 hours.

2D Week 06 Assignment: Value

This week in 2D we learned about value and how to create visual interest with it.

We were given a piece of linework by artist John Carter and instructed to give it value and depth.

Below is the final result. This process took me around 3 hours.

3D Week 06 Assignment: Digitally Sculpting a Prop

This week we continued with the cannon model. First, the UV's of the cannon were laid out in a coherent manner.

Then the cannon was refined to the hi-poly model as shown below.

The model was then loaded into Zbrush and details were added to give it an "aged" appearance.

Shown below is the final decimated version.

This assignment took me about 6 hours.