I enjoy building specific characters for my classes to help them practice visualizing animations for a variety of characters. This includes different types of ball rigs, a squirrel rig (basically a ball rig with a … Continue reading Bob Walk Animation
Every year, my intro to 3D modeling class directs the creation of a hybridized character as we explore how to model organic creatures. After about 5 years of classes, I seem to have built up … Continue reading Fear the Mascot: Ribbon Spine
One of the best exercises for a 3D rigger/animator. Studying the human form is a relaxing and fun pastime that I always try to make time for. I’ve been quite sporadic over the past 2 … Continue reading Live Figure Drawing – recent
Just exploring Mental Ray for Maya 2017 and seeing where I ended up with caustics.
The first demo for our Lighting class of the year. I collected all of the in-progress renders to show the development of the scene.
Having never been a professional lighting artist, I am always conscious of the fact that being in academia tends to isolate artists from the rest of mainstream production. More than anything (except, perhaps Rigging), Lighting … Continue reading Learning Lighting
Making ears can be super easy if you don’t need a lot of detail, however, when you want to bring a certain degree of realism in, the loops can go absolutely everywhere! This makes a … Continue reading Ear Modeling Demo
Modeling in 3D can be fun and occasionally frustrating but nothing is more painful that trying to model a face that can deform without breaking when it moves. If you are studying topology then you understand what I mean when I say that. In my opinion, the true skill of modeling comes in when a […]
Once the grueling process is over and you have officially collected that coveted degree in Animation, life can suddenly seem full of possibilities and yet utterly petrifying. The level of petrifying depends on how optimistic a person you are but I think it is common to feel a little lost. Having been through this process […]
Story-boarding is the art of making sure issues of timing, cameras and composition are sorted out. These are important decisions to make to ensure the readability of your animation. Remember, a story is no good if nobody can make sense of it. Placing a character into a scene is an art, but the bigger challenge […]
