08 Adobe Student Film VFX

Here are some VFX ideations I did for our ANI 118B group short film for Adobe (sponsored by Imagination Lab in Adobe Research). In the beginning, there were 5 groups of about 10-15 people. Then towards the middle of the semester people from different groups helped out the other groups. The group I was in, Group 2 "Enlighten", had to come up with a visual story about the future of education. There were many ideas but our group decided to do a lot of holograms and visual effects. I was part of the modeling team, because we decided to go with the 2D route there were no 3D elements involved. Because we were struggling with perspective Michael and I did some 3D mock ups of the school. Later, I was put in charge of the visual effects and the multiplane effects. I had to learn After Effects within a week. Throughout my semester, I had so much work to do that I needed an assistant so Pattie went ahead and gave me Alvin C. as my assistant and I became the VFX lead for the film. Anyways, here are some of my ideas for the film throughout the semester. Cheers.

 

07 Blizzard Internship

It's Winter break and it's time to look for internships. Stumbled upon Blizzard's website and found that they have openings in the gaming department and the CINEMATIC department. Yay! I prefer high poly over low poly. Even though my computer isn't the fastest computer I still have fun modeling and sculpting high poly models....and yes it gets really slow when I render with a lot of lights and textures,  but it's worth it. Anyways, I decided to apply for the Modeling/Surfacing intern at Blizzard. I'm in love with all of their cinematic trailers especially Diablo 3 and Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls.

I wanted to model something that no one / few have modeled before. A lot of research and reference finding took about a week. I decided to model Deathwing, just because he's bad ass and would be cool to model a quadruped this time instead of a biped. It was hard finding a turn around for Deathwing so I just compiled a ton of images of him and other various lizard and dragon images, as well as anatomy of them. Anyways, here is my process so far. Currently at 19 million polygons...

06 Tree house Illustration

What a hectic semester this was (Fall 2013). Learned a lot of things and had fun doing some of the projects. I learned that if you don't have a good ideations, sketches, thumbnails, values, and compositions (pretty much the whole process) then you'll struggle in the end. My digital paint rendering didn't turn out the way I wanted to. I learned that my rendering style looked a lot like "ParaNorman". It almost looks like a set, haha. Oh well, I still learned a lot last semester.

Tree house Project -
Use Gary Soto's writings as inspiration to create visual development on the tree house. Fully explore interior and exterior possibilities, found objects, construction materials, lighting, weather, surrounding environment, etc.

Gary Soto -
"Author Gary Soto's short stories about the exploits of two young boys who live in a small town in the Central Valley area of California (Fresno) are a biographical remembrance, a coming-of-age chronicle."

05_Speed Modeling #2

...So I decided to do a speed model of a tree house for my Intermediate digital painting class. I didn't set a time frame, but it took about 8-10 hours.

The tree house is supposed to be built by a thirteen year old boy and his friend with no help of adults. I had trouble constructing the rooftop so I made a quick maquette (which I forgot to upload from my camera so I'll update it when I get home), and I'm pretty sure kids had no sense of housing construction in the mid 1900's so it wont be as sturdy, but they had a lot of imagination.

It's hard coming up with tree house ideas, because it has to be realistic and not some made up mansion on top of a tree branch.....Anyways, the theme I went with is "Pirate". I wanted to use a lot of wood planks and objects related to "pirate". Also, I want to incorporate the kid's fixing the rooftop, because pirate ships always need repair! But I'm not sure how to incorporate it yet...Anyways, enjoy!

04_Summer Projects

oh summer! spent a few weeks working and catching up on my sleep..but it's time to start modeling! here are a few models i did over summer break...

03_Speed Modeling #1

ah, my first speed modeling...took an hour and a half....to model everything and 10 minutes to set up the lighting and render the shot. i don't think i'll be modeling a robot anytime soon again..placements were hard, because i couldn't use any reference, so i just winged it.

02_Wood Planks

just practicing some wood textures for fun....kinda fun!