Animation WIP

So, it's been quite a while since I've posted anything. I have been hard at work with animation for our senior project. Here's a WIP render preview.





There is a lot I need to improve though. My profs are trying to help me with perfecting this one. So, things I have to fix are:

- Mara is a little floaty against the wall at some parts
- Need to add a hold on her knees coming up
- Falling timing is a little slow on first soldier, and lunge is a little slow for second soldier
- Legs on first soldier have an odd midair stop after landing, need to fix
- Add a subtle slide after first soldier lands
- Redo second soldier's gun draw. It also twins in some parts

Uhm... That's about all I can think about right now, though I'm pretty sure there's more to deal with. Hopefully I can finish this soon enough to have time to work on the other scene I need to do!

Some paintings to fit the Halloween month spirit

Been working on some paintings the past couple weeks for my team's animation. These are mainly to fit our look-and-feel for the film. I like how these came out. I think I'll try to spruce them up a little more sometime down the road when I've got time. :)

Couple character splashes

Drew, inked and painted two of the three characters that are in our team project/senior animation for PRJ400 and PRJ450 this year. I did these in my "usual" style, which I guess would be kiiiind of similar to an american comic book style. I'm gonna be doing the color comps for this same project in my painterly style though. Anyway! Just showing these two characters I just did as part of our production art. Btw, we're doing a sci-fi noir style thing.



This is Mara, an assassin/mercenary.



This is Tammy, Mara's daughter, and also an assassin/mercenary. It doesn't get much cooler than a little girl with a shotgun (in the fictional sense of course). :D Went for more of a subdued color scheme for her, even though they are wearing suits close to the same hue. Tammy is a lot more badass in her level of assasinry! :P

Logo Design

Last week we went over designing our personal logo. Something to make people remember me by. :)



This is what I came up with after going through a few iterations. I guess it takes most people a feeeeew moments to read what it says, but hey, at least it looks pretty cool.



I made a shorter version too, since my name is pretty long. Normally people call me Sal, so I abbreviated my last name too to go with it.




Ultimately, I'm just going to settle with the simple design of my first letter and last letter being symmetrical. It looks pretty cool, I think. I might play with it a little to see what else I can get out of this, but all in all, I really like it. :) Kinda looks like a little bat cartoon covering his body with his wings while his little eyes peek out above them, hehe.

More portfolio stuff

I wanted to add some animations to my portfolio too. Here's a few short animations I've done in the past year and a half.




A mouth syncing animation I did for a class. Sound clip that was provided to me for this is from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The class called for using the Generi Rig for Maya, so that's why I'm using it. It's a really good rig! Fun to work with.





Another mouth syncing animation I did for a the same class. I took the sound clip from an episode of Freakazoid, featuring The Huntsman. :D Again, using the Generi Rig in Maya.





This one I did exactly a year ago. I made all the art assets myself (albeit a bit quickly since I only had a week to do the assignment. Admittedly, it was a tough assignment just because I put a lot of content into it). Made in After Effects after using my art assets done in Photoshop. Not bad for using After Effects for the first time the week before, eh? ;)
Anyway, I really like those old, classic arcade style intros to arcade games, so I tried to replicate it with this compositing assignment. All the stuff in the video is made-up, of course.





Lastly is a simple animation of a blimp inside a hangar. All done in 3dsMax. There's a screencap of this in my previous post. All this really is is just showing that it can be animated. Hehe.

First Portfolio Iteration

So, for portfolio class the other day, we were told to bring in some samples of professional quality work. Basically work we've done over the years at Digipen that show what we can do. I looked through all the assignments I've done over the last 4 years and picked a number of them. Here's a few of them. :)




These two are from a painting class from last year. I learned a lot from this class, and it really helped me start to hone my skills in digital painting. I'm pretty happy with how I'm progressing.






These two are renders from a couple of projects I did last year. Environment modeling isn't my forte, but it is enjoyable. It's something I plan and hope to keep working on. I learned a thing or two about lighting too, and I've finally gotten the hang of material shaders, I think.




These last two are sort of an old-new thing. I took a character design I did for my sophomore team animation 2.5 years ago and gave him a new, updated look. I have gotten a lot better in just 2.5 years. :) I'm pretty happy with my update for him. Character design is my favorite thing to do, I think. I think I'll be redesigning a few of the other characters I designed for that animation and throw them into my portfolio when I have time. Anyway, the new one shown above is just a WIP and is at the lineart stage, so I'll make a new post and show off the finished version when it's done.




P.S.: Dunno what it is, but the quality of the images being uploaded has been reduced and there's a tiiiiny bit of artifacting, but it's not THAT bad I guess. Could be worse. . I don't know if there's a way to get around that, but ah well.

Starting Out

Mostly, this blog is made because my professor Monte Michaelis said it's important to have a web presence... Honestly, I should have done this years ago. This is a damn good idea. Not only for getting my work in one place for my friends, family, and potential employers to see, and adding my thoughts on my process and inspirations, but also for being able to look back on how I thought about things and how I've evolved as an artist.

I'm gonna try to keep this fairly updated. I hope I can actually get some decent amount of work outside of school done. School is important and all, but I like to do my own thing too, ya know? Who doesn't? :) I do enjoy the school work, though. Art is always fun to work on. The years I've been at Digipen so far have been invaluable, all in all. I have learned a lot, and the knowledge I've gained will help me continue growing after I graduate this coming May.

Anyway, it's time to start sharing stuff with the interwebs! Hope anyone who comes across this blog enjoys seeing my work. Thanks. :)