2D animation work

Finally had some time to compile some of my favourite  line tests that I have done over the years, a ToonBoom exercise and part of my short film. It's really neat to look back at the work and see how far I've come. Even now just out of school I can look at it and see things I would improve on. I guess that's the same with any art career...you are never really done...you just learn when to step away and say it's what you need.  Click the link below to check it out. It really made me realize also that if you don't use it you lose it....I'm going to go back to ToonBoom now and brush up on some stuff. Try and learn new things. They focused on teaching us how to animate in it...but I also really want to learn how to composite and do effects really well. Again, kind of TD stuff. Well, I must be off to continue some work for Rocket5. I'm so glad I can be one of those people that never really feels like they are working because they get paid to do what they love

:)

2D demo reel work

Work from undisclosed iOS game

Over the last 5 months I have been contract work for a local indie game company called Rocket 5 Studios. I started off with painting some textures in Photoshop and have gradually been taking on more responsibilities such as modelling, rigging, making the UV maps, and most recently some concept work. I even animated a very basic flapping book that attacks the main character. It's been really crazy balancing graduating, planning a wedding and working on the game but it has been a blast. The game was shown along side some of Rocket 5's other work at the recent Bit Bazaar  at Bento Miso in Toronto. There was a big push to get work done for that deadline so actually, a lot of my most recent work was done in this week before the Bazaar. Hopefully some of you wonderful people got out to check it out. There were so many amazing looking games and awesome people. It's very inspiring to see so many successful games coming from local indie developers.  

Main character: painted the UV maps in Photoshop

The Main character's nemesis: I modeled, rigged, weighted, mapped and textured this guy after being provided some concept sketches. In the end he will have transparencies as well, as there are still a couple passes needed on his texture.

Another character: Tweaked and altered the model and rig of the fat ghost above to create this little guy due to time constraints. Also tweaked weights after animation was applied 

Numerous Prop Models: These models are for props that will be used in game and props that decorate the background. Some were created from scratch based on concept art I was given, others I was given a base model and told to embellish it. All were textured and mapped by me. Most of these only have a couple passes on the texture and will be detailed even more as the game progresses. For example we intend on adding rivets and more wear and tear on the treasure chest.

Some in game renders of the environmental props I created. 

Book Rig: Here I was given one of the solid book models from the game and asked to alter the model, rig it and animate it so it could fly and attack things. 

nCloth Driven Chord

An exercise I did with nCloth on the suggestion of my TA who is a technical director. I modeled and rigged the phone, so the buttons can be keyed if a character was to interact with them. To make the chord I created a cv curve and then extruded a nurbs circle along and around the curve to get the spiral chord. I then created an nCloth object from a high res plane that I put inside the chord. I adjusted the collisions on the nCloth so it surrounded the phone chord and then hid the nCloth. I then made this nCloth drive the movement of the spiraled phone chord.

Various Experiments

Finally got this thing rendered out. It took a week to render all the layers. So this is an experiment of nCloth and fluids and particles. Learned a lot from it, mainly how nCloth functions in Maya. I would probably create the robe differently now that I understand it a bit better. Also started to understand all the various nodes in the fluids attributes and what they do. I realize I should probably brush up on my science to get a better grasp of how fire and water works to get a realistic look in the computer.

Finally Finished Rig!!!

Well, it took me a couple days but I finally got this guy rigged and skinned and with IK controls so I can plug him into my alley and get him moving. I'll worry about the dynamics later.