lady scentist in Max

the start of my Lady scientist

thought I'd make some of the characters from a little short I'm writing. I was think it would be a stop motion piece but it would be good to use CGI bits too, hopefully seamlessly.

nice and fleshy

I'm getting quite pleased with myself now :)

posed monster

Using the new goZ in to Max is giving me some weird results but importing the obj's and applying the bump and textures looks terrible. In max the monster is black like the normals are inside-out, it renders like this but the shadows are not cast from certain parts.

shelby demo head

This is the demo head which comes with escape studio Zbrush course. I just texturing it at the mo.

Zbrush

I need to figure out how to reverse my bump map and my texture is coming out all pixellated. But I'm getting there :)

montauk monster

The start of my monster

escape

I just joined a Zbrush class at escape studios. I've been playing around with Zbrush for awhile now but I still don't really understand it's work flow. I'm a bit worried I need to know Maya to get the most out of class but hopefully I can figure out the Max alternatives or maybe get my arse in gear and learn Maya once and for all.

showreel

This is a rough showreel, still need to edit it down

cheese

Sketches

Here some sketches for a little animation I'd like to made, about a little island and it's inhabitants.

hand drawn

Sorry for the duplicate movie but the youtube embeds are better quality then the blog uploaded vid's

cross over to film

All my 2D clips

This is all the 2D clips from my final project, plus some testers which didn't make it in.

Final Project

This is my final project entry for my MA in digital film and animation.

Arm Knob

The Squid tank will be rendering for 65 hours, oops not looking good for the deadline. I put a looped version on here to see how it fits in to the whole scene. It's bigger then the one I was working with too so there's a mysterious blackness at the bottom and the side bit does some weirdness. After Effects crashes on me when I preview so it's hard to see this when you're just looking at the frame by frame stills. I dream of a 12 core mac, I know it would never let me down. I had a power cut earlier, reminded me of last year when some pikies cut through the towns power lines and left the place with no electric for about three weeks, just before my last uni deadline. All the power surges blow my motherboard, it was a bad time. luckily this time it was just my oven tripping and I've learnt the hard way about saving my work every two seconds and rendering to image sequence, so nothing lost this time.

sorry one more

computers are so clever :)

All that maths, wish I could live in a 3d world with Gaussian blur to make me pretty

Squid Tank

The start of my Squid tank, think I need to thin out the glass. Always with the token teapot!

bit more of my final project

corner part1

I'm not to sure about the colour wash yet, the tracking is really bad but I guess it's because of the poor quality footage.

My stop motion man so far. I'm going to put footage of real eye over his. I have a long way to go, the colour changes to much from cut to cut with the blue filter I put over it.

The bear

The start of the bear for my final project. Just this little bit has taken so long because Toonboom crashes and freezes all the time, I feel like I'm going flip out!! I've just ordered a new graphics card which should hopefully help the situation.

Gutted

I've only just found Stikfas and they're going out of business, think I'd better stock up

hand on paper

This is a tiny bit for my final project. I need to figure out the best way to make the paper look like it's being pulled away and it needs to be 3d later in the film, I may even make it in a 3d program.

more from the bedsit

I should be ready to start shooting my stop motion section soon. I haven't put any miniature lights in this set as I did in my last project but I want to keep it quite dark and I have some special FX to go in post production.

I would like it to look like it's lit from the TV which would be casting changing light and wondered if I could do that with a mobile phone screen, emm we'll see ;P

the bedsit

My bedsit mini set is starting to take shape now. Going to air brush on some more grime tomorrow.

I think I might go and borrow the HD camera soon and get to footage for the eyes.

more food

food

I've never really made mini food before so I was quite pleased with how these turned out.

Lots of left over Chinese takeaway, cereal and old pizza perfect for my geeky slobs bedsit.

kitchen

Just been making my mini set today, still got lots to do but here's another little test. I really need to work on my movement :(

man test1

The clothes look too bulky, when I make a doll I would usually starch the fabric in place so it looks like it's hanging. I think I might have to make him some new trousers. I haven't figured out how to attach the hands either yet, maybe just drill and hole for a wire and not worry about a ball joint for there.

My stikfas armature

This is the 1/12th scale man I built up from the stikfas armatures. The tiny magnets are still holding him up so I'm really pleased.

laser eyes FXs

laser eyes FXs, the laser starts out way too slow and I need to clean up the footage on the left side of the pot.

power blast fx

some power blast fx

fart gas

This is a little special fx clip I did for a friend. I still need to fix the fart cloud and the smoke and the end needs scaling.

stikfas

I just found these really cool stop motion figures from a company called Stikfas. They're only 3 inches tall but the arms are a good length for my 1/12th scale models and I plan to use the joints and make the rest of the figure by just cutting and stretching the other body parts. I brought two different kinds of models, the red one has extras joints at the knees and elbows but actually I think the blue one will work in a more natural way. I'm really please with these little £2.99 figures, I had been looking at professionally make metal armatures which could be cut down to make 5 inch characters but I think the balls for the joints were about 6mm and that would have looked awful and it would have cost about £100 to find out.

Evie big hand

My little cutie niece Evie, I made her right hand really big and I experimenting with making her eyes really big too like they did for Johnny Depp in the resent Alice in wonderland movie. It's just footage from my really poor quality hard disk camera so I didn't want to invest too much time in it, I need to hire a good camera and play some more.

Basho and the frog

A little film I made the titles for.

time

My time project with Jonny Greenwood track

stop motion pug

This is my most watched video on youtube (mostly because it has "pug" in the title I'm sure)uploaded in 2006. Showing the stages I go through in making one of my 1/12th scale dolls house collectibles.

stationary cupboard

This is my first 3D animation made in Max, I got a really good mark and was quite please with myself

peter

This is my first stop motion project for my MA course, I definitely need to return to this project is was such a rush job and I still hadn't really learnt after effects that well at this point.

wait for me

This is a film I made for a Moby music video competition. The film footage was directed by a friend of mine. I think I will return to this project and give it a cool sound track and take out all the romanticised bathing at the beginning and make it more old skool B movie horror.

Hiaku

This is my contribution to a group project on my MA course

My Dorito advert

This is my own entry in to the Doritos Advert Competition. I know it's a bit confusing because I crammed so much in to 29 seconds and the voice overs were left to the last time and perhaps sound too similar.

Dorito FX work

This is an entry for the Doritos Advert Competition written and directed by the guy in it. I had to edit it down to exactly 29 seconds as the over acting made the whole script over a minute long, I added the TV effects to hopefully disguise all the cuts mid sentence. The meteorite should really have been like the third person on screen which would have saved me from having to keyframe every single frame around the jazz hands but heyho, I could have done this alot better but I was only given about three days to do it and I was also doing my own advert.

statue

clip from my time project at early stage, I still need to sort out the flip back to the original hand as the light had changed too much for a smooth transaction and the figure at the end is on screen before she should be.

crack

clip from my time project, still playing with it :)

The End

I'm nearing the end of term on my MA in digital Film and Animation then it's just my final project to contend with.

Sadly I'm studying and the London Metropolitan University which has been an epic mistake as the place is falling apart and hasn't brought any film or computer equipment for at least 10 years. I also had no idea it had stolen £36. million from the government and axed half it's work force just before I started there. If I had know it was the worst uni in the country I would have never gone there but apparently the Met was able to opt out of being in the nationally printed league tables. Jokers...and I've been robbed of five grand.