Senior Project -- "Dinos in the Desert"

In early May, I completed my senior project for the Visual Arts program at UMBC. As part of the Animation/Interactive Media track,  I enrolled in a capstone course along with other cinematic arts and animation majors.

During the Spring 2014 Senior Projects class, I was tasked with developing and completing a film to demonstrate the skills I learned during my undergraduate career. I chose to create a 3D-animated short film about Dilophosaurus dinosaurs. I created all of the models and animated them by myself.

Prior to taking the class, I periodically worked on a dilophosaurus model between the Summer of 2013 and the Fall of 2014.










When I first developed my story, I initially imagined it being a fantasy story about a young boy who woke up in a prehistoric jungle and gets chased by a Dilophosaurus--only to wake up at the end of the film and realize that he was dreaming during a class lecture about dinosaurs.

I eventually scrapped this idea after realizing that due to time constraints and lack of man-power, I would not be able to complete a project on such a scale by myself with the deadline that was arranged. After re-evaluating my goals and from hearing feedback from my peers, I instead decided to create a more scientifically accurate film in the vein of a nature documentary rather in the style of a feature fantasy film. With this new goal in mind, I did more research about the Jurassic time period and the Dilophosaurus and realized that the setting of the film would not take place in a jungle since the Dilophosaurus habitat were mostly deserts in the American midwest. There is evidence that during that era, the midwest had evolved from mostly jungles into mostly desert plains.

I am satisfied with the direction that my film took. I feel that it is a better representation of my skills given the time I had to produce it. This project was a positive experience for me and allowed me to further evaluate my knowledge of storytelling, animation, and computer graphics in general. I feel that I have a better understanding of what I need to improve on and what my strengths are. Hopefully I can have more professional opportunities to test my skill.

Dilophosaurus Work in Progress

For my senior project, I have continued working on my dilophosaurus rig. I spent the past few weeks rigging my model and I plan on making an animated short film about dilophosauri fighting over a carcass.


Along with a joint skeleton, I have included reverse-footlocks on both feet, and set driven keys on the tail, tongue, and eyelids.

Updated Alien Sculpt

 


I have updated my alien solder Zbrush sculpt since my last post.

Since then, I have added textures and made small changes to the mesh.

My next few steps will be to retopologize the mesh, rig it for animation, and to model its weapons. And then it will be game-ready for GDC's "EMT-Merci"game.

New Addition to My Portfolio! -- Rendered POES 18,19 Satellite

I recently rendered an old model that I created during my internship last year at the IRC.

The low-poly model is the POES 18,19 satellite from the Global Precipitation Measurement mission.

I rendered it in Mental Ray:
- using the blin materials and an aluminum foil source photo for the foil textures
-using the bulletin_bdsf_mirror shader for the instruments
-using specular and normal maps for the Thermal Cylinders
-using the MR Sun and Sky [(no) Background] render option