New 2013 Generalist Demo Reel

Over the past few days I have been working on my updated demo reel for this year. Now, my computer is really not the greatest, so it has taken me a few days to bang this thing out. However, I am getting a new computer with in the next couple of weeks and I am sure that once I take a few days away from looking at it I might want to change a few things. But for the moment here is what I have so far! I hope you enjoy it!

Character Update

New Knife

I know it has been a while since I have posted any new updates on my character but here is what I have been working on. At first I wanted to keep the original knife design but after a few considerations I decided to change the look of it.  There where a few factors that played into the changes that I made. First off I tired using the JSMulti Layers shader node by Jan Sandstrom and I realized that if I was to render it on any other machine besides my own it would not render correctly. So, I decided to rebuild the knife so that I could add multiple shaders of my own creation that could be rendered from any machine. The second reason that I changed the design was because even though I liked the look of the original knife I didnt think that it really fit with the character. Plus I wanted the knife to feel like a "real" knife the first one left me a little wanting.

I am pretty pleased with the way the new knife turned out but i might continue to work on the shader for the metal hilt later on down the line. But since you wont be seeing much of it up close in the film it might not truly matter.

New Knife

Old Knife

Side By Side Comparison

New Character Update!

Cloak Designs

Happy New Year!!!

Starting the new year off right I am sitting at my desk with my dog at my feet, working on my film and enjoying the day off from work. I have been going back and forth on a few of the designs that I created for my characters cloak.  I am leaning towards the blue and green color schemes but I am still not entirly certain if I want to stick with it.  I really dont want to have anything flashy, but I will have to admit I am really liking the two green cloaks with the Tree of Life on it.  However for now I am going to jump back onto working on the knife just to keep moving forward with the process.

Leave a thoughts below if you want, its always great to get other views on the creative process.

Enjoy!

 Blue Twisted Snake with Celtic Band

 

Blue Twisted Snake

Blue Celtic Band

Green Celtic Band

Green Tree of Life with Celtic Band

Green Tree of Life

New Character For My Short Film

Here is one of the characters to my new short film that I am working on. Actually its my old senior film that I created during my senior year at SCAD but it didnt turn out nearly as well as I want it to. However now I have the time to sit down and really think of all aspects of the film and really give the story the dedication that I have been wanting to give it for some time now. Also I am learning so much now that I am in the career field and I am itching to tryout a few new things that I have picked up so far. 

Now some of you might have seen this character before but for those of you would havent here she is.  The main model itself was created by a close friend of mine Travis Overstreet about a year ago. She looked a little different at that time, and no she didnt have hair then either hahaha. That is one of the many things that I will be working on over the coming weeks. I changed the cloak to be thin instead of the fur covered one that I had orinally had on her. The fur was just an added headache to get looking correctly and the time it took to render was nuts.  She originally had decorative flaps in the front and back of her dress but after careful consideration and knowing what a pain it will be in the future to turn everything into cloth I decided to leave the flaps off.  I will be making tiny tweaks to the model either adding or modify existing geo in order to make the character fit the world that she is from and I will be posting my progress as I go.

Working in 3DS Max

So every since I spoke with Trick 3D and local animation / VSFX company here in Atlanta (who does awesome work btw.... check em out!) I have been working, when I could, in 3DS Max.  I have been a Maya user for years and I hate to say it.... I think I might convert! I was really wanting an excuse to use the Ivy Generator plug in by Thomas Luft and I needed a project to play with in Max. The scene is done with the Mental Ray sun and sky function and the control you have over the sun is so much easier and more user friendly than in Maya. On top of that I love the fact that you can change the exposure and mess with the shadows, midtones, and highlights in max. You can see a small preview of what your doing then when your are happy..... Render that bitch out! So much easier than moving a light..... rendering, raising the intensity.... rendering....blah blah blah. The more I use the program the more I like it, but I believe that Maya will always have a place in my heart considering it was the first 3D program I EVER learned.

And as always, after I rendered the image, I brought it into Photoshop for a little tweaking to finish it off. My screen is a little dark at my house but I think it still turned out pretty well..... hope you like it

Enjoy...

After looking at both images I decided on this one. I added a few rocks under the water just to give it a feel that it was a lake bottom along with a small amount of color correction in photoshop. I didnt want to add to much to the image because I thought that "less is more."

Sometimes in life the simplest of things are the most beautiful.

Work in Progress

So years ago I came across a picture of the reflection of a few blades of grass protruding out of water. It was a simple picture, but the way that it was taken stuck with me. For years I have been a nature photographer hobbist and I thought that I could merry my love for photography and 3D together by recreating that image that has stuck with me for so long.

The only problem is, I have created two different versions of that image and I can't decide on which one I like the best. However the first image is more of what the picture looked like and the second seems to have a little bit more interest to it.

Tell me what you think.....

New Vue Render

Continuing to work in Vue in my spare time and I am finding that I am liking it more and more.

Here is my newest Render....

Updated VUE Render

I wasn't really happy with the last render that I did so I worked on the clouds a little bit more and I think I am happy with it now. After the render was finished I did a few tweaks in both Lightroom and Photoshop just to clean up the image.

Tell me what you think!

Enjoy!

A Room With A VUE

So I have been teaching myself e-on software's VUE 10x-stream lately and I figured that I would post what I have done so far.  As a lot of people know I am big into snowboarding and for the past three years due to school I haven't had the money to go. SO I made this image because I am missing the snow and the feel of the cool breeze on my face as I fly down the side of a frozen mountain.  Also my screen are not color corrected.... which I am working on fixing, and the colors might be a tad off on other screens. But here is my first render out of VUE and stay tuned cause there will be more..... I think I am addicted to this program hahaha

Cold Country

  is to be featured in the 

Educational Film Market 

in the

14th Hiroshima International Film Festival!!