A quick preview

Here's a screenshot from a test render of shot 5 from "BROTHER".
I suppose I'll also post the latest preViz =] Happy New Year! 3 more months of Thesis...





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Updated Fall Reel

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Fixed Test Render

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Scaling the Walls

climbing up the environment of "Brother" and continuing lighting. What you don't see is the many creature rigs and camera angles I am working on as well =].



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Next Environment Test Render

got my render time down by way more than half. better results, new shaders, the works! Still is a working progress. A quick photoshop comp:



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First Environment Test

First ever environment test, yay! The scene is taking a little too long to render, and I should get it down by half. Other than that, I know this will improve by the time I have to render, which is really cool. PROGRESS!



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Expression Test

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Chameleon

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Show Me Your Teeth

In the words of the legendary Lady Gaga "Show me your teeth!"




..just some shader/rig tests =]

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Crane

Brother's crane




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Everything Tells A Story

One of the most important things I learned over the summer was that everything tells a story, every object, every texture. In Brother, I definitely wanted to capture not only the personality of my character, but also the objects around him. I want to tell a story within a story, and even if Brother didn't have animation, my environment could speak for itself. This scene is about half way done, no lights, no shaders yet. As I'm modeling, I am constantly thinking about my story and my main character. How did he build these things? Did he put time into his creations? Does he care for them at all? How old are they? What are their own personal stories? And the list goes on. Things are very broken in Brother's room. I like the concept of him hiding beauty, which was one (there are many haha) theme in this short. The environment I have here is anything but "mechanically built to perfection" and I love that, given the piece is so...mechanical.




making progress

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Shading Update

More shading tests:




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Brother Rig Tests

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And It Keeps On Going...

And so the shading and environment modeling phase begins. IN PRODUCTION. I did a quick test of some shaders for thesis. It's a WIP really. I modeled this prop, and shaded it today.. well, tonight. I'm nocturnal now. So it's 6:50 am, and I think I'll go to sleep soon. I'm really enjoying this thesis project. It's not just a huge senior project we have to get jobs. This is really a story I want to tell, and I am putting all of my best efforts into making this an awesome piece. There's something about creating this world from scratch and developing the characters that really gets me motivated to work constantly. I am loving this.

Steampunk plant:

Concept design by the very talented Zach Brunner.

Shading Test!

Here's a test of my first pass at Brother's shading.

Back to School/Thesis is Production

Well, being at Pixar for the summer exceeded my expectations. It was probably the most incredible summer of my life. I love computer art even more now, which I didn't think was possible. I met the most amazing people, and I am so grateful that I was apart of PUPs 2011 =]. As for school, it's my senior year. Brother is now exiting the pre-pro phase and entering production. This is it! A new story, new previz(which is currently rendering) and new character. There's just something about being able to develop a character from concept to the final rig/animation. Seeing Brother(the name of the character) on screen when my film is finished will be an awesome experience. I'm excited, but nervous to really get into the work. There are only about 190 days left until the due date of thesis, but that is pretty much zero time. Looks like I will have to bust my ass this year.

Brother's base rig/with no pants on



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Main Character IP

Here's some shots of the main character of Brother. My story direction changed, so now my senior thesis film will be completely 3D animation. As interesting as my live action idea was, I have really grown to love 3D art and that's what I want to focus on. I have my model almost finished. I think the most challenging part of this thesis will be rigging this character, but I'm determined! I am also in the process of drawing story boards and working with the amazing Zach Brunner to develop the environment. Being at Pixar for the summer is incredible, and I'm learning so much. Regardless of the very busy schedule, I really want to work on my thesis as much as possible. So HOPEFULLY by the end of the summer, I will have a previz and animatic of this new story at the least. We will see. Anyway, this model still needs a heart rig in his chest, and some more "brain" gears, but thanks to Zach's awesome concept of "The Humanoid", the model is looking pretty good =]. Although, it did take a while to model and UV. Next up, texture tests!

Internship in California!

SO just an update.

After applying for a few internships this spring, I received an acceptance into the Pixar Undergraduate Program! This is very exciting, not only because it's Pixar, but I get to experience the ultimate creative environment of the Computer Art field. I leave for California in about a week and a half. But, I still need to try to work on thesis as much as possible on my down time. Welp, bye east coast, see you in ten weeks! =]

Also, congrats to a wonderful thesis film called Rabbitkadabra that came out of SVA this year, which made it to the vimeo staff picks page. They worked extremely hard, and it shows. You guys are awesome!



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Updated 2011 Demo Reel

I re-did my demo reel yesterday, just in time for the end of the school year. Enjoy!



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Room Composite

I am finally learning how to comp 3D passes in Nuke!



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Room Test 1

This is not nearly close to being done, but I was doing some lighting/rendering/compositing tests over the last few weeks. I still need to populate the environment, add more lights, and fix some of the textures just to even be satisfied with a basic environment test. Plus, this composite is done in After Effects, but for actual thesis, I'll be using nuke. I have to decide soon whether I want to do an all 3D thesis, or stick to my live action idea. I'm not sure what to do, but in the mean time I'll keep modeling.



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Noah's Train Set

I figured Noah needs a train set. (Noah is the main character for my thesis). In this render, I used a z depth pass from maya and composited in AE using the lens blur effect.



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Spring Break WOOOO .. and other good things.

Well, it's Spring Break of my junior year. It's weird to think that I have one more year of college left. Time flies. It was only about a year and a half ago that I really started learning about Maya and computer arts in general. And, now I'm applying to an internship at Pixar... what?? (My dad fedexed stuff today, and I hope that they take overnight packages/ I'm very paranoid about this whole process). I feel so incredibly lucky that I found something I'm passionate about, career wise. I can't even explain my love for computer art lol. It's strange to think that I started at SVA as an illustration major, and randomly switched my major after one week. Especially being very indecisive, I can't believe I made such a spontaneous decision. But, it was one of the best, most important decisions I have ever made. (Kudos to 17 year old Sari). So, I guess as a junior working on primarily my own thesis project I am extremely happy where I am right now. It feels good to work on what you love, and not consider it work. In any case, I made a model today based on my friend's logo as a DJ. She goes by the name Bearbot, and she's awesome.



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Demo Reel 2011

Yay! I'm finally done with my demo reel. Now it's time to get an internship. Hopefully..



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The Whale .. and no sleep

This is my favorite piece so far. I'm currently constructing my demo reel, which will be done in the next few days for internships. I haven't been sleeping much, so I can get it done on time. Well, after all that work, I hope the final product is worth it!




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Alien Texture

Welllll, I thought I'd stray away from the inorganic modeling/texturing for a day. Actually, I'm only doing this in preparation for my demo reel. So, mechanical models and metal textures can't be the only thing I ever do. I didn't know much about the skin shader in maya, but I figured I'd give it a try. After several hours, lots of nodes, a few bump/displacement/specular maps, here's the result. Also, I already had the model and rig which I built first semester.



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The Angler Fish

I figured an angler fish would be good as the main lighting of my scene..with a lantern..




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The Bird

New model, design by Zach Brunner. I'm having wayyy too much fin with thesis =]. It's 4 a.m. and I still have animation homework to do..




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Glass Flowers

I ran some simulation tests with nCloth to create glass flowers. It was a surprisingly fun experiment!





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Lightning Bug Fix

I received some critique about the design of the lightning bug, which always helps so that I can improve the model. The legs are now smaller and thinner, making it seem less like a machine. Although "the machine look" is how I'm doing everything nowadays, I agreed that it would be better for the design. Since these guys are lighting my room for Brother, it would make sense for their bodies to be larger and their legs to be smaller. It'll probably look better as a light source rather than a prop. I also tweaked the lighting of the render (which as of now, is just for show =]).




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Glass Shader

I recently worked on a project for someone involving making glass bottles from a simple illustrator design. Sooo, it came out like this:





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The Lightning Bug

Here's a few style frames of the "lightning bug". It was modeled to hopefully use as a light source for my scene for thesis. Concept by Zach Brunner.




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The Heart

I had an idea for a mechanical heart, so here it is! It's another prop for thesis.



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Giraffe Textured

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Mechanical Giraffe WIP

It's the start of a new semester, so I decided to do some modeling. I spent the day on and off working on this giraffe model for thesis. It's just a prop for the environment, and I'm glad it didn't take very long. There's still a few things I want to add, and hopefully I'll have it textured by tomorrow or within the next few days.






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