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)