ZBrush Noob!

Long time no post!

Since my last post I got the job in North Wales with a company called Gaia Technologies.
My job title is 3D Artist which is great! I get to model, and dabble in some animating too. I've also been learning how to program which at first was a bit daunting but I've gotten the hang of things and it isn't all so bad.

I have been very busy in work so haven't been able to do much work in my spare time as I don't seem to be getting any, but I've recently been going to life drawing classes and have FINALLY been practicing ZBrush.
All my weekends have been pretty busy, but this weekend I was determined to start learning! I got a ZBrush essentials magazine a while back and followed a tutorial from there. For my first ever ZBrush sculpt I am happy with the result. I know I could have added a bit more detail and wrinkles but I didn't want to overdo it first time round ... here's the result:

I finally got to finish modelling my bee!!
I haven't spent all this time since my last post making him of course :P I've been busy helping the other half and some family with bits of work they needed help with because I'm such a good samaritan ;)

The model has turned out a lot better than I thought it would even though it was a pain in the bum connecting his legs and wings to the body!
Hopefully I will get a chance to texture him and put him into ZBrush for a bit of sculpting to finish him off properly.

Handwritten Effect

My brother is on the Performance & Media course and asked me to make a handwritten effect for the title of his 2nd year film 'Losing Faith'
I made this for him in After Effects. The technique is pretty simple to do. I found a quick tutorial on YouTube and added a ripple/dissolve effect at the end, and this is the result ... the background is a still from the shot:



There is a problem with this technique though! If you're lazy with it it won't look so seamless as you might want. If you look carefully at the video below you will see that as the letters are being written you can see part of the stroke of the letter. For example, the "F" or the "t" in "Faith," as the stroke follows the letter you can see part of the dash ... which is not good! I saw this technique used on an advert the other day, I can't remember which one it was but I remember thinking that it looked lazy because they didn't bother try and fix this problem:

The way I fixed it was pretty quick and easy. I made a new precomp and literally just masked over the stroked areas I didn't want to be shown and animated the masks. It didn't take that long to fix and in my opinion the result is a lot nicer:

Very VERY Old Animation

I was going through my Foundation portfolio the other day and I found my old flip book animation from my Art Foundation course back in 2008 (wow I feel old!)
I thought it was pretty hilarious how bad it was and thought I had to put it together and run it on the computer to see how it looked ... it's pretty bad :P

I thought I'd share it with the world for nostalgia. Does anyone remember their first animations?

p.s. this does NOT represent my animation skills now! 

I be modelling a Bee

I had a job interview for a company up in North Wales who specialise in 3D visual learning, so I thought I'd better practice doing more modelling just in case I get the job. I've started making this bee as an organic thing to model. (I've modelled a train already, just need to post on here as well)

I think the company like working low poly so I thought I'd better give that a go cos I like working high poly :) 1,682 polys is low so far, right? Have just given it some smoothing groups so it doesn't look so sharp.

I'm pretty happy with it so far but will keep posting to see how it goes:

Illustration Friday: YIELD

I started this one about 3 weeks ago when "yield" was actually the word of the week, but I got very busy with other stuff and didn't get to finish it off until now, but better late than never, right? :)

I must admit I had to look in the dictionary for some definitions of this word to help with the image because I was pretty stumped, but good old dictionary helped me out!

Hopefully the picture is pretty self explanatory. This robber was trying to run away with the money but Mr Superhero flew in just in time to create a wall of fire with his heat vision which made the robber YIELD and drop the money, therefore saving the day :D

Finished Coloured Character:

 Character Outline:

Original Sketch:

Illustration Friday: INTENTION

"she loved her job, and had no INTENTION of quitting now ... even if her next target was her best friend's husband!"

This is my first EVER Illustration Friday! :D
I haven't drawn for a few weeks so I really wanted to draw something to get back into it. My friend Michaela always draws for Illustration Friday so I thought it would be a good excuse to draw; so I gave it a go too.

I wanted to draw something simple first, just a simple character with a simple standing pose ... so I drew this.
My original idea was to draw a sexy lady, but it turned into something a bit more morbid! The more I drew the more it turned into a sexy assassin, but I am happy with the results!
It did take longer than expected to finish, but it's a good starting point for future drawings :)

Finished Coloured character:

Character Outline:

Original Sketch:

Day 83

After leaving uni about 6 months ago we have FINALLY put our graduate film, Day 83, up on YouTube!!! (I'm not sure why it took so long but it's better late than never)

And here it is! Hope you enjoy:



It was shown in London last summer at the Skillset Animation and VFX Showcase and we've recently found out that it has also been chosen in the Animated Exeter festival in February, and maybe at Ffresh later on in the year too.
We are really happy with the response we've had from the film and are really grateful for all the positive feedback, but obviously we can't take all the praise so thanks to all the people who worked hard on the film too :)