November 1st -- 2D Animation

"November 1st" is a short animation that I created. It follows a boy walking through his neighborhood until something catches his eye.

The boy's cycles were animated on pencil and paper. The character was inked and colored in Photoshop and Illustrator.

The backgrounds were images that consisted of houses, trees, and a street that were modeled in Maya, and a far background matte that was painted in Photoshop.

The foreground elements (pumpkin bag and candy) were created in Illustrator and Photoshop.

 All of the background and foreground elements were then composited in After Effects.

CG Clouds

A recent mini-project of mine was to create clouds in Maya.  I achieved it by creating a fluids container and toggling with the textures and shading attributes.

 

I also created a sky using Mental Ray's image-based-lighting. 

 

I then used the expression fluidShape1.textureOriginZ=time*.02 to animate the clouds.

I rendered the sequence as .JPGs and then composited them in After Effects.

Final Project--A Character Animation

My final project for my Advanced 3D class at UMBC was to animate the character rig that I've been working on for the semester.  Above is the final, fully rendered, result.

 Steps for creating it:

1) I extracted audio from the film Born In Flames (1983) for the soundclip.

Here is the portion I used.

2) I imported the audio and used my character's blendshapes to lip synch with the audio.

3) Once all of my lip synching has been completed, I modeled a simple microphone to use as a prop and for eye-tracking purposes.

4) I then animated the character's torso, head (head, neck, eyes), lower body, and arms.







 5) My next step was to create a scene and render it. I created the radio station using Photoshop and bumpmapped it using Crazybump.

6) I added lighting and arranged the wall textures for the final scene.

7) Lastly, I batch rendered the scene as .PNG files and then composited the images with the audio in After Effects.

Mockup for a game

My "Group  Game Development Topics" class requires of every student to pitch a game that is to be considered for development by the class.

So far, I am currently working on the pitch for my untitled game. It is a first person horror game in which the protagonist is a mechanic for a spaceship that is infested with aliens that cause havoc on the ship's utilities. As the mechanic, the player travels through the dimly lit ship in an attempt to fix the failing parts and exterminate the galactic pests with only the aide of a flashlight and whatever tool they come across (hammer, blowtorch, etc.). The game Slender and the film Alien are just some of the influences for the concept.

I plan for it to be in 3D computer graphics, modeled and animated in Maya, with textures created in Photoshop. The game engine will most like be Unity.

For the mockup itself, I created it entirely out of 2-dimensional images in 2 steps:

1) I drew out the basic outlines of the walls and hands as separate Photoshop documents and I used photographs of metal as textures for the walls and floor.

2) I arranged the separate files in 3D space using After Effects and then created a spotlight, which I arranged on top of the layers.

Keying/Greenscreen

I recently created my first keying/green screen composition using Adobe After Effects.

I created this by first, creating a background. I used Autodesk Maya and Autodesk Mudbox to create a 3D model of a fantasy landscape.

 I then shot footage of my actor in front of a green screen.

I then used the "Keylight (1.2)" plugin in After Effects to key out my actor into the footage.



Here is the final, and completely edited composition.

"Flux"

"Flux" is my first animation created entirely in After Effects. I mostly used the shape layers and the scale, rotate, and opacity keyframing buttons.

Tagline:
"Flux: Things aren't always what they appear."