Rusty The Robot

Meet Rusty The Robot....

Yes, for those of you who saw the university Character Animation project I posted up here earlier in the year, you'll know that my odd fascination with designs incorporating battered robot characters continues!! This steampunk inspired illustration looks at the juxtaposition between machines and nature, with a slight nods in the direction of both Pixar's 'Wall-E' and 2004 film 'I,Robot'.

Rusty is my first attempt at character illustration using the techniques I learnt from some Photoshop tutorials, including the Turf Text tutorial (see previous post), that I have been working through. This is obviously a first attempt and very rough and ready. I could spend a lot of time to polish it up, but it was really just a trial to see if I could apply the tutorial info to my own concept.

Playing about with Photoshop...

Photoshop is the swiss army knife of graphics apps. Not only has it become a verb in regards to digital photo editing but it can also produce graphics, animations and probably more stuff I haven't even found yet. You know when a piece of software has an entire range of magazine publications dedicated too it and a section in Foyles that this is the thing to learn, the thing to have on your resume, the monster that needs to be reckoned with.
So, with that all in mind, thats what I've been doing! I have gone to war with Photoshop to see if I can learn the ways of the force and become a Jedi Master... or at least an Adobe Credited Expert (ACE)!

Today I stumbled on a tutorial about making turf text and, in my quest for knowledge, I followed it and produced this....

First Attempt With ZBrush...

Post graduating my college course, I have been trying to up-skill and flesh out my bony showreel by doing courses, tutorials and workshops. To this end I have broken open the Gnomon Workshop DVD-ROM on ZBrush I've been saving!

This was the result of Lectures 1 and 2 on the disc.

Limpy vs the Ball - Character animation

This is the final render of my character animation project for college.



Modelled, rigged and animated in Maya.

Howling Wolf - 2D Animation

This is my attempt at hand drawn 2D animation.
 

Though the wolf was initially hadn drawn, I then used Adobe Photoshop CS5 to create them in to a graphic style and animate them. Despite the fact that this was a time consuming way to animate, especially drawning the wolfs walk cycle, I absolutely loved creating animation this way.

The writing, by the way, is Greek myth of King Lycaon from which the term 'Lycanthrope' derives. The word means wolf-man and has come to mean werewolf. I've put the text in latin in the animation but if you want to know the story check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycaon_(Arcadia

Work in progress... character animation

Meet Limpy, my cursed character animation for a college project. It's been a long and difficult road to get him this far, as both project and character have limped forward, and there is still much to be done including adding lights and UV mapping!



Limpy was modelled, rigged and animated using Maya 2011. I'd not used this software before so this project came with yet another steep learning curve... where have I heard that before!

'Friday Night' - Animated Music Video

This disco inspired song is by Cold Weather

This animated music video is my university FMP. For this I had to model, rig, weight and animate the character and scenery... so quite a learning curve for me!!

It was made using Cinema 4D, Apple Motion, Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro.

Rig Testing

Well, after an epic battle to get the YouTube upload system to upload this without crashing, I am pleased to present my first test of a professional rig. This is my very short animation experiment undertaken as part of my research in to rigging and character animation for a college project. The animation is not perfect but I think it gives the impression of weight and mass to both character and object.



This was great to animate and I absolutely loved working with this character.

The model I used for this was a prerigged model called Whimp that is included for non commercial use with Maxon's Cinema 4D. The copyright for this character remains with Glenn Frey (Bonewire)

Character Designs

Thought I'd share some of the concept work I've created for the college character design project.

These are my character turn arounds:

These were hand drawn then coloured using Photoshop - I have always shied away from that dreaded program before but I confess I'm a convert, I guess there is a reason it's become a verb! Who knew?!

The final character will be created, rigged and animated with Maya. Hmmm... wish me luck with that!!

Satisfying this Craving!

Animated trailer for E.F Morris' book - "Craving"


This is a trailer for the vampire novel, "Craving", by young adults author, E.F Morris. I made this using a combination of Cinema 4D and Adobe Premiere Pro, both of which I have really grown to like.

New Character

Ok, so I know I should be doing the truck load of other things that are piling up in this final sprint towards the end of my college course, but sometimes you just need to step away from the weighting tool and go back to basics... and so I did and this was the result!

Please let me introduce... The Biped!



The Biped - part frog, part freak and all mine!

This is part of a project I started ages ago and left because I wasn't really familar enough with the software to get him finnished. But since recently I've spent a lot of quality time on Cinema 4D it seems I've skilled up enough to get him finnished. 

Any New Ideas For The New Year?

What does animated cinema hold for 2011?

Sad as it is, it looks like there is every chance that this year could hold another crop of animated sequels and spin offs. I’m not saying that that means there’ll be nothing to look forward to, I’m personally quite excited about the new Kung Fu Panda and I know there will also be plenty of those queuing to see the sequel to the Pixar film Cars, but still the lack of brand new titles doesn’t inspire that much enthusiasm.

That said, there are some lights of innovation and originality in animation in the years ahead!

1. Tangled – Disney’s re envisioning of the Rapunzel story sees the studio turn its hand to 3D CG for this musical fairy story.
Watch the trailer

2. Rango – ILM venture in to the land of CG animated films. Johnny Depp stars as the chameleon who has to work his way through a wild west of dessert critters.
Watch the trailer

3. Rio – The makers of Ice Age bring a similar style to this story of a domestic Macaw who must face his fear of flying after being taken to South America.
Watch the trailer