12/30/10

2010 in Review!

So! This year was my 'animation curriculum' under-taking. Last Dec I made a 12 month animation schedule, to do different animations every month. At first the focus was to be exclusively on animation, and not pay so much attention to camera work or anything else, but around the 4th month I started to stray, and in August I decided I wanted to model 3 characters for that piece - so needless to say, I ended up abandoning the rest of the curriculum and working on that one. :) I got it to a reasonable stopping point just in time.

In the end, I'm happy with what I made! In the next month or so I will be going back into my favorites from the last year and polishing them up.

Here are my animations from this year!:

Jan: Ball Bounce Month










Feb: Jumping!





March: Walk Cycles







April: Character Walk



May: Run & Sneak





June: Obstacle Course



July: Takedown


August - December: Weapon/J-Pop Girls

J Pop Girls

Calling it done for right now!! Made it just in time. :)

12/27/10

Fanart Calendar

Now that I have a real website, I can post more fun stuff on my blog! Here's my progress on the fanart calendar I've been making for 2011! (I'm really picky about wall calendars, and so this year I decided to just make my own)


Game Journal Launched!

Game Journal

For a description, read the Introduction!

New Website!

I finally got around to making myself a new website. You can find it here:
Portfolio

12/17/10

Girls, Inc. Presentation

A friend from work and I are giving a presentation next Tues at the Albany Girls, Inc Summit! I just drew these images as part of our exercise, which will involve creating a level from the pieces below, coming up with moves to help the characters (a rabbit and a turtle) navigate them, and balancing the speed of the characters. I'm looking forward to it - we're teaching the girls about how we use STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) as part of our jobs in the video game industry.

My friend and I split the work in half - these images are the level pieces which favor the rabbit, as well as a couple of the neutral pieces.



11/18/10

J-Pop Girls - More Progress

Some progress on the first chunk of my JPop/Weapon animation. :) Working out Sakura first, then I can use her bip as a starting point for the other two. My goal is to get this animation done by the end of the year - I'm pretty sure I can make it.

11/14/10

VV Game Jam

Yesterday was Vicarious Visions's first Game Jam! We had from 10am until 12am (14 hours) to work in small teams on a game. It was a blast!

The theme was "the pixel" so we made a sort of puzzle/adventure game where you lead a heard of pixels through a series of levels. Based on the color of your group, you can transform them into different objects to traverse obstacles. You can either combine with other pixels, which makes your group bigger (to traverse larger obstacles) and also mixes the colors of the 2 groups which prevents you from transforming -- or absorbing pixels, which changes your color without changing your size, but also leave behind 'dead pixels' which remain on screen throughout the level.

All art assets besides the animated sprites were made by Brent LaDue.




We might try to do a little more cleanup work on it so it's more easily playable, but for 14 hours we did pretty well. :) My time was spent in the initial brainstorming with everyone, figuring out the puzzle progression with Rob (who is a designer), creating level designs (my first time - and it was fun!) and creating animations. Unfortunately most of the animations did not make it in game, but I've posted them below because I think they're fun. This is my first time creating animated sprites. :)

Pixel swarm animations! Idles (3 sizes)




Dying (there are hazards in game)


Ladder transformations (2 sizes)


Bridge transformation (only time for one, but there would be 3)



At home, I've also been working on some games of my own in Game Maker. I'm excited to keep working on them!

Sun & Moon (puzzle game)


Bollywood (music rhythm & platformer)

11/3/10

J Pop Girls - Progress

Look - progress! All 3 girlies are in the scene and I've just started touching up the old bip from the animatic I made back in July.



In fact! Since I mentioned it, I've just uploaded the animatic (technically a 1st pass animation...). There's still some timing that needs work (hold on robot is too long - but then, he'll probably do something cooler than hanging upside-down), and some of the action after is too quick. Also this is back when there was just going to be one girl. :)

Note: The song is "Ai no Senshi (Soldiers of Love)" by Serizawa Rui from Sailor Moon!

11/2/10

Game Maker

Today I took a day long workshop at the office to learn Game Maker! I made 2 games: breakout, and my own game, where you are a mommy dinosaur who is protecting little baby dinosaurs from being eaten. :) I look forward to creating more games!!! (I will give them better art - and try and actually make them fun. ;) )

I will try and post links to the .exe files soon.



10/25/10

T Shirt Contest

My design was one of three to be selected in a company design contest! It's the Bala brothers (who started and run our company) making the VV logo. It's going to be available to VV employees to put on shirts, mugs, etc. :)



This is the VV logo for reference:

10/17/10

Sune is skinned!



Now I just need to give everyone accessories like Mo has, and some small final touches like hair rigs and a final color palette.

10/12/10

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile! Making a costume for NY Comic Con took up a lot of my free time lately. :)

Sakura is rigged!


Sune is modeled, textured and UVed (Updated tonight)


Robot is started!

10/4/10

For my first experiment with fondant I made Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock cupcakes for our GH: WoR + cupcakes party on Sat! It was fun, but I think some of my designs didn't come out as readable as I would have liked. Next time I'll put some more planning into it. :)

Still - I know how to use fondant!



9/19/10

Jumping around a little bit over the last week.

Progress on Sakura:


Also started animation exercise for Sept, which will be a Take Two exercise (same action two ways):


I also got most of the modeling done on the 3rd JPop girl, Sune - but I left the file at Issam's and will be uploading an image soon. :)

9/15/10

Design I made for the new VV store. This is based on a t-shirt idea I drew back when I first started working here - now that there's an official chance for someone to make it, I thought I should get on it. :)





There's a color version too:

9/6/10

Quick pose to show that UVs and rigging are done! Now I just need to actually decide on a color palette. :)



8/31/10

Color makes me scared and weak.... (but once I get past it, I really enjoy texturing). I'm posting this now so I can show it to Anim Forum... which starts now. ;)

Here's what I've come up with for the group's color scheme. The challenge is giving them all a distinct color of their own (you know, since they're super heroes), and keeping them unified.)

I started somewhere around here, and didn't feel like they looked like part of the same group at all:


So then I unified them more, but it was boring:


This is what I've got right now. I ended up changing the outfit of the one on the right since she was sticking out the most (her clothes looked too formal). Right now I'm using the exact same colors on everybody, but I plan on varying these up a little more, so it looks a little less.. juvenile?


I've pretty much finished UVing Moe and will start texturing her tonight! The Max UV work flow isn't too much different from Maya, but it took me a little bit to figure out some differences. :)

8/25/10

Still a few little pinches here and there, but I'm happy enough with her to move on to texturing.



8/22/10

Some modeling progress - I'm almost done with my first JPop girl! Just need to get in there are start doing some asymmetrical stuff. I should come up with real names for them.. so far I've just been referring to this one as "Mo"





And, since I didn't post it with their character designs, this is the sort of look I'm basing my designs off of. This is the Japanese pop group "Buono!" The dance moves they will be doing are going to follow this style of dance.