Monday, December 22, 2008

Monday, November 3, 2008

Primitive Theater

This semester has been insane, I've never felt so challenged. I'm normally a very laid back, stress-free person but never in my life have I had more instances of being faced with the impossible, freaking out and then feeling totally hopeless and defeated. I'm not saying this so I can say, "but somehow I make it work," because I don't. I've let myself down so many times this semester, I almost think it's bad for my health. I am learning though. It's not just about the artistic difficulty. My personality and habits are being challenged. I've been a perfectionist my whole life, frequently taking a 0 on easy assignments because I was afraid of not doing an amazing job on them. I realize this semester, that I've got to distribute myself evenly to make it through this program. There's just no way to give any one class 100% (at least not at the speed I'm at right now). It's so hard and frustrating to have such a core trait that get's in the way. I know this and I think I'm slowly starting to understand, accept and work through it. At least that's what I'm banking on. I'm sure I'm not the only one that feels this way.

Enough rambling, he's my primitive Theater. I had really high expectations when I started this project. Then, a week before it was due, I spent too much time on my other classes and I realized I was really behind and figured there was no way to make it not suck. So even though I had bigger plans for it, I feel it was at least somewhat successful. hopefully I'll find some time this winter to clean it up for my portfolio. C&C welcome.

http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rshowalt/access/CG220/Prim_Rshowalt.mov

Monday, September 22, 2008

Ball Bounce

So, I just recently finished my first major Computer Animation project and the first real thing I've done in Maya. This is cause for a celebration, but first, an update.

I must admit, I was struggling to find a decent color layout at first. My render would have looked pretty crappy if not for helpful criticism that led me in a better direction. That's what's nice about the labs, so much available input.

original render


Altered


and finally the action:
http://webspace.ringling.edu/~rshowalt/BB_RShowalt.mov

C&C welcome and appreciated.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Digital clouds

So a while back I was toying around with different methods of creating seamless textures. The technique itself worked out pretty well, although I found my use of image-based textures and displacement needs a bit of work (I usually favor procedural textures).



While doing this I stumbled across something I thought was pretty neat. When starting the seamless-ness between different images- or in this case altered versions of itself- I generate a black and white image; The black is where it blends and white is where they're too different to blend. While I was painting away the different areas I started seeing shapes and faces and characters like you would with clouds. It seems like it might be a creative and unbiased way of designing characters. This was the original character I saw when working on the texture pictured above:


I haven't had too much time to play around with it but I did do a few more. These were from scraps of nuts, bolts, and washers.



What's interesting is how much the principles of design and rudimentary elements come into play. If I were looking for warm, fuzzy characters I could create these abstract black and white images that were generated from warm fuzzy textures. Then as I search through these random blobs they tend to take on those characteristics. Same goes for sharper more aggressive characters. I really don't think my examples do this method much justice. It might be very good to help break someone away from their habits and create some very unique things, but that's just a theory.

Another theory is it's a lot like a Rorschach ink-blot test; the sort of mood or frame of mind you're in will determine the type or style of characters you might find. I haven't had the time to really explore this, but I thought I'd share anyways.

Friday, June 6, 2008

pre-summer dribble

been really busy and yet, there hasn't been much for me to share. I feel like I haven't been firing on all cylinders since I got home. Regardless, I've been overdue for an update.

Here's an interior sample I did for Stage 3. I'm keeping it low-res as there's still some details I would like to add in when I get the chance.

Andre LaRoche directed the lighting and staging for this render. The model was provided. I mainly worked on the textures and shaders on this one.

And a slightly more detailed shot


I've been doing a lot of reading, particularly on animation, also some drawing... I've been trying to sketch occasionally too, which reminds me- it's really hard to spend time on things your not good at.


I've been trying to loosen up, as well as more volumes/less contours, but I've got a ways to go. I've been wondering how beneficial it would be if I instead focused on copying the sketches of really talented people to build up some confidence and technique- but I hesitate to do so.



PS. Kung Fu Panda= must see. IMO, it's Dreamworks best animation yet.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

Semester wrap-up

Learned a lot this past semester. There was a lot of new things to learn.

Observational Color assessment still-life (2 hours, Caran d'Ache crayons)
Beginning of the semester:




End of the semester:


I wish I could show the advancements I made in acrylics but I didn't geat around to taking a picture of my last piece before I tossed it in storage.

My characterized walk:



Maybe it's just me but the frame rate feels slightly different when it's on youtube.

Because I've neglected uploading work for it, communication in design. one of my satire pieces:



Lots of stuff to do this summer.

Saturday, March 29, 2008

"animal" jump

We got animals to animate at random. I got a beetle.

This was my first time creating a character,

and my first character animation

I definitely challenged myself a lot more on this one- it didn't come out exactly as planned but I did learn a lot.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Flour sack




Now, on to my first real attempt at character development. I'm pretty excited.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Ball bounces

Anybody else having trouble with youtube having insane upload times? It finally dawned on me that blogger has it's own video uploader stuff. Long story short, I meant to get these up sooner. Here's some of the stuff I've been working on in Traditional Animation. I figured I'd omit the plan bounces.




Monday, January 14, 2008

My winter break: now online

I'm long overdue for a blog entry, there's been lots of things I've wanted to share but until today there was nothing I had to share. So I've taken a break from homework to promote the 2009 Ford F150. Why? because I spent many hours over winter break creating a full-sized, horizon to horizon dirt environment for the launch site's exterior 360:

http://www.fordvehicles.com/2009f150/


It bums me out to see how compressed the images are. The irony is I was trying so hard to keep the displaced dirt from being affected by low-resolution artifacts, that I had to save the layered source file out into multiple parts because photoshop can't save files bigger than 2 GB. Oh well, it's probably not that noticeable if you didn't spend a lot of time perfecting things with the art director. It was a fun project, I've gotta admit.

p.s. it looks better on a non-blown-out macbook monitor.