From the Vault: 2000

I want to get in the habit of posting at least once a week on here. Unfortunately, it's been a busy week. Tonight I've been scanning older pieces to post when there's nothing current to show. Here are a couple selections from back in 2000 at the Evergreen State College:

Publish Post

Tricky, 2000, mixed media, 11"x14"

You can see the word "Tricky" spelled out in the folds of his right armpit. It didn't show up in the scan, but I put "Lange 00" on top of the lizard tattoo.

Kevin Spacey, 2000, pen and ink, 8"x8"

I think this was from an Entertainment Tonight magazine. No grids were used on either piece, though.

Iron Giant Project submission: Class of '66

This week my side project has been a piece for the excellent fan art blog The Iron Giant Project. I'm titling my piece "Class of '66," since it is an imagining of Hogarth's high school graduation in Rockwell, ME.

The original idea was of Hogarth walking along the lake where he swam in the movie and holding the Polaroid photo first taken of the Iron Giant. It evolved to a piece that contained the two other main characters, as well as the Iron Giant statue, which is showing some signs of age by this point (notably in the form of "visits" from birds). In the sky is the recycled glowing star of when the Giant exploded with the nuclear missle at the end of the movie. I thought about framing the piece as a Polaroid picture at first, but I wanted the full Iron Giant statue with the glowing star, and the aspect ratio was too rectangular this way. The background started with screenshots I took of paused YouTube clips, combined with a lot of Photoshop painting to establish the trees and grassy hill.

Here are my "model sheets" for the reconceptualized characters, which were made by digitally painting over the existing ones from the movie (thanks to the amazing Ultimate Iron Giant site):

It was very enjoyable making the clothing and style choices for the reimagined Annie, Dean, and Hogarth characters, and I did a lot of research into 60s clothing to help the accuracy. Dean's look was heavily inspired by the Beatles, who I think he would be listening to in '66--jean jacket, bell bottoms, round John Lennon glasses, and shaggier hair that's greying at the temples. Annie has a Jackie Onassis haircut and a fairly straightforward bright '60s outfit with a color palette similar to the waitress uniform she wore early on in the movie. Hogarth is in his high school graduation cap and gown--his ears remain big, but his jawline was reworked to be a bit more square like Dean's. Line quality is always crucial to making animated drawings like this successful, and it was tricky to accomplish it on a tablet.

Big thanks to Dan at the Iron Giant Project for continuing to allow submissions after the original deadline.

Happy Halloween!

One the Senate's scariest...

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Wow, what a film! This movie was so rich and packed with bright, detailed scenes that the 3D glasses were almost unnecessary. The producers picked a great story, and the filmmakers did a great job. I loved the humor, the snappy timing of the animation, and how the scenes just kept growing in scale and excitement without losing their heart or sense of pace.
Up and Monsters vs. Aliens were examples of great animated movies that came out this year, and CWACOM took the medium in another great direction. With so many great 3D movies coming out, there's more reason than ever to go out to the movies. Tina and I decided that when this comes to DVD, we'll make sure to have some burgers, pancakes, ice cream, and gummi bears to eat while they're featured on screen (taste-o-vision?).

Jack O' Lanterns of Years Past

It's almost Halloween, and although I normally don't dress up for it these days, I've started to enjoy carving pumpkins. Since I might not have time to carve one this year, I thought I'd post some pics of the ones I've done recently. Hope you enjoy them.

2008
Barack O'Lantern (Yes We Carve.com):



Heath Ledger's Joker from The Dark Knight:



2007
Pale Man monster from Pan's Labyrinth:


2009?
If I end up having time, I'd probably stay with my "movie I've enjoyed that year" theme and do a pumpkin of Dr. Cockroach from Monsters vs. Aliens:

Hm, that was easy. Maybe I'll just Photoshop pumpkins from now on...

Thom Yorke: Analyse (WIP)

Thom Yorke: Analyse (work in progress). 2009. Oil on canvas. 20"x24".

This weekend I painted the portrait portion of the next piece in my "Illustrated Music" series. The series will continue to explore the idea I had for painting how I visualize the sounds in of some of my favorite songs, which was first entertained in the Bjork: Bachelorette piece I did back in 1999. Much more information on the concept behind the series can be found in that blog post.

Photoshop was used to tone down some of the shadows that showed up when I took the flash photograph. Right now this canvas is sitting in front of a fan set on full power in order to speed up the drying process. When I tried painting the colored shapes over the black and white portrait of Bjork, some of the underlying paint mixed with the song layer, which desaturated the colors a bit. Hopefully that won't happen this time when I come back to this once it has dried.

This is the third time I've worked on a piece with Thom Yorke's image, the previous two being the Weezer vs. Radiohead piece in 2002 and the graphite portrait in 1999. For this new painting, I'll be painting the sounds and shapes that come to mind for the Thom Yorke song "Analyse," off his 2006 album The Eraser. It's a very haunting and melancholy song, and so the lines and shapes for the song will reflect that when they are later painted in the vacant areas around his head and shoulders. For now though, I thought I'd post the portrait part of the piece to give some background into the next painting in the Illustrated Music series.

I'll be painting The Eraser's LP version of "Analyse." The song starts at 4:55 in the video below:

Camus Drawing/Photoshop retouch

Albert Camus. 2005 (touched up 2009). Graphite on paper with Digital Touchup. 7"x8.5"

One of my wife's favorite writers is existential philosopher Albert Camus. I drew the cover of her copy of Notebooks and touched it up in Photoshop. Normally I just draw and scan, but lately I like to add some selective gaussian blurring, and for this I also copied/pasted/rubberstamped certain areas to get his overall proportions a bit closer to the cover of the book (like pushing the volume of his hair more and matching the tones of his face better). Here's the original picture so you can judge for yourself:

Red Dead Redemption

Red Dead Redemption Screenshot

Although Red Dead Redemption is Rockstar San Diego's follow-up to 2004's Red Dead Revolver, it has new characters and a new story. It is my current project, and contains an enormous world full of dangerous situations for your character John Marston. It will be on the Xbox 360 and the PS3, but currently doesn't have an official release date. You can read more about it on other websites, and here is the debut trailer:

Video Games | Red Dead Redemption | Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

I'll follow up with more videos and news about RDR as they come out. The official website is here: http://www.rockstargames.com/reddeadredemption/

Midnight Club: Los Angeles/South Central

Video Games | Midnight Club: Los Angeles | Trailer 2

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Midnight Club: Los Angeles (2008)

I was the Lead Cutscene Animator for MC:LA. This put me in charge of coordinating cutscene assembly, mocap editing, laying down and polishing camera shots, importing and tweaking facial animations (the original files were from Image Metrics), placing/animating pedestrians in cutscenes, and script editing files associated with the cutscenes. The "What'you here for? Race some cars, man" shots were part of the first cutscene. In the beginning of the project I also animated and polished driving animation sets for some of the vehicles. The game was a 2008 Video Game Award nominee for "Best Racing Game."

Video Games | Midnight Club: Los Angeles | South Central Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Midnight Club: South Central Downloadable Content (2009)

For MC:SC, I was in charge of the new vehicle animation sets as well as setting up the character animations and cutscenes for the new "hangouts" and the new garage.

See all Midnight Club Los Angeles/South Central Videos: http://tinyurl.com/nlshol
Official site: http://www.rockstargames.com/midnightclubLA/

Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis

Video Games | Table Tennis | Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Rockstar Games Presents: Table Tennis (2006)

RSTT was my first project with Rockstar San Diego. I was mainly doing mocap editing of shots and navigation, with a combination of keyframing certain shots as well as a few short between-point cutscenes. The game was a lot of fun to make and involved many real-life table tennis games between the developers (after all, animators have to know these moves inside and out). The game ended up being nominated for a 2006 Video Game Award for "Best Sports Game."

See more Rockstar Table Tennis Videos here: http://tinyurl.com/mmlbqw
Official site: http://www.rockstargames.com/tabletennis/

Lady in the Water

Lady in the Water. 1998. Oil Pastel. 22"x28".

This piece was done on black paper with white oil pastel, and is a copy of a photograph from National Geographic magazine. It was of a statue that was just excavated, and it was bundled and lowered in a pool of water. This pastel drawing won a ribbon in a county fair art show.

Pope vs. Castro

Pope vs. Castro. 1999. Pen and Ink. 22"x17".

This was another piece taken from a National Geographic article and copied in pen and ink. If I could do it over again I would lighten up Castro's skin tone, since he's hard to recognize with the heavy hatchwork.

Kaiju Gaijin Kaijin

Kaiju Gaijin Kaijin. 2001. Maya.

Sony was a classmate of mine at the Vancouver Film School, and asked me to help out with the animation on the intro to his student reel, "Kaiju Gaijin Kaijin" (he handled everything else). It was fun to get more experience with Maya, since my reel was all done in Softimage.

Tao Feng: Lip Synchs

"I've been waiting for you, now let's dance."

"Forged by revenge and tempered by fire-the Phoenix will always burn bright!"

Lip Synch animations for Tao Feng were done using Lightwave visemes. These two videos show the Jade Dragon and Fiery Phoenix characters during a warmup and a victory cutscene scenario.

Tao Feng: Throw Cleanup

Raw mocap.

Cleaned-up mocap.

In Game capture.

My first job after film school was working as a 3D Animator for Chicago developer Studio Gigante. Their first project was Tao Feng: Fist of the Lotus, a fighting game exclusively for the Xbox. It was a great learning experience that gave me experience in areas like mocap refinement, cutscene animation, and lip synch/facial animation. This sequence of videos shows the raw motion capture progressing to cleanup, then to how it looks in game.

Robot & Pit Droid

Robot & Pit Droid. 2004. Maya.

Short segmented scenario using a couple borrowed models. I added a wet dog shake to the Robot as he reaches his master, the Pit Droid. I handled the Animation and Rigging.

LAISFF Commercial

LAISFF Commercial (Sci Fi Channel). 2001.

Along with Vancouver Film School classmates Ian Cumming (modeling, texturing) and Mark Driver (compositing), I worked on the storyboarding and animation for a promo and commercial for the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival. The festival flew Mark and I down to L.A. for the premiere and we got to hear David Hyde Pierce laugh from behind us during the promo.

Obo-San

Reference images of Obo-San character from comic "The Path." Art by Bart Sears.

Obo-San with battle gear. 2004. Maya.

I'd long enjoyed "The Path" and when I had some spare time to try out some modeling in Maya, I took some images of the main monk character in his armor and built him. The original idea was to make two other soldiers that he would fight in a short film, but my time was cut short before it came to rigging.

Bjork: Bachelorette

Bjork: Bachelorette. 1999. Oil on Canvas. 14"x30".

This is the first piece I painted with a synaesthesia motif, a phenomenon where music and text are assigned inherent colors. The condition exists for a small number of people, which I learned during my research on a paper in college. In making the Bjork painting, I would close my eyes, listen to her song again and again, and create shapes that represented each part of the song. After that, I would assign each shape a color that best represented the sound to me. The final piece is a straightforward portrait of the Icelandic singer Bjork surrounded by swirling colored shapes that each represent an instrument or sound effect in the song. Here is the key to each shape:

light blue line: vocals
orange lines: violins
green shapes: "scratchy" sound effect
red line: piano
purple shapes: bass
maroon dots: jingle bell

The shapes along the "song stream" were placed with respect to when they actually are heard during the song's timeline. It is my goal to do a series of paintings using this concept, through the lenses of different artists and songs.

I didn't have an easel or worktable in my college dorm, so I had to put the canvas on my bunkbed and paint it while standing. It makes me appreciate my current drafting table all the more.

To hear the song, click the link below. Try isolating each layer of sound in your mind as you listen, and see what shape and color appears for you:

Bachelorette (Family Tree Version) - Bjork

B-Boy Student Film

So here it is, my student film at the Vancouver Film School. The game he's playing at the beginning is Super Bomberman for the SNES and the song that he dances to is "Voodoo People" by The Prodigy. All of the elements (modeling, texturing, lighting, animation, etc) were done by me in Softimage.

"B-Boy." 2001. Softimage.

Storyboard page/Final Render Comparison for B-Boy. 2001.