Been fairly busy these past couple of weeks. Mainly working within after effects for the Virgin ident project we have been set. I also did some work towards the live at 5 project, namely the two planets which I am sure can genericlly appear somewhere, but I'm sure we can find uses for some of the particles.

I'd like to take this oppertunity to thank the guys at videocopilot.net, their tutorials and presets are awesome!!

You will have to excuse the the thin red lines, they are there because I am using a demo effect to help generate the swirly stuff.

This first particle is some very early stuff I tried.

Here is a sort of vizualizer thing, basically it is particles that I have assigned to null objects that are linked up to extracted audio data.

Here is a particle similar to ones used in the Apple i-pod adverts.

Here is an early demo-run for my virgin ident. Still much to do but more on teh way...

Here are some 'Earth' videos for the Live@5 project.

Here it is again with a little bit of movement to spice it up.

And here we have my final shinyness. The text is going to change and I need to work out how to make the particles react in 3d space. This is just a light demo to show what I am after. I still nedd to make a logo and design fanciful text stuff and maybe more shiny stuff. I also nee to get on my musicians and kick them until they make me some sweet music.

Been fairly busy these past couple of weeks. Mainly working within after effects for the Virgin ident project we have been set. I also did some work towards the live at 5 project, namely the two planets which I am sure can genericlly appear somewhere, but I'm sure we can find uses for some of the particles.

I'd like to take this oppertunity to thank the guys at videocopilot.net, their tutorials and presets are awesome!!

You will have to excuse the the thin red lines, they are there because I am using a demo effect to help generate the swirly stuff.

This first particle is some very early stuff I tried.

Here is a sort of vizualizer thing, basically it is particles that I have assigned to null objects that are linked up to extracted audio data.

Here is a particle similar to ones used in the Apple i-pod adverts.

Here is an early demo-run for my virgin ident. Still much to do but more on teh way...

Here are some 'Earth' videos for the Live@5 project.Here it is again with a little bit of movement to spice it up.

Wow, it really has been a very long time since I updated this. There are several videos I wanted to get on here but youtube is being a little.... tricky would be the polite term. So for now, here's some of my digital backgrounds, plus the beginning of my flash sketchbook for andy.

Enjoy!



This background is my crowning achievement for the background project. The only image that wasn't one of my own was the sky which i nabbed from a stock photo site. I created this in photoshop, working from several tutorials. While there are some noticeable flaws I am generally happy with the outcome, and I learned a fair amount about blending within photoshop and using dozens of adjustment layers. The theme for this background as I see it is a nice floating city that could have numerous air ships or crazy giant flying things (like the bird-creatures in avatar) flying too it, around it and away from it while the camera zooms in.



This one was drawn entirely within photoshop. About halfway through I began experimenting with using perfectly straight lines, which in theory should have looked better than my rough scribbly ones, but for me the straight edges look a little too computerised. I am happy with the overall effect however.

This one was a preliminary experiment for the image above. While I think it uses some interesting ideas and a fairly unique/dynamic light source it definitely lookes under-worked. Also the light beam could do with some tinkering but enough babble...



This next image is simply a photograph of somewhere in the french countryside (a location from which a large amount of my stock images come from) which I then put through several filters. This was never intended to be a final piece, but it was an interesting experiment. I think if I were to go back to it I would play a little with the contrast and try and tone down the brightness thats coming from the sky as it kind of ruins the whole water-colour effect.



This next one is just more photoshop fun and completely unrelated to any work ive been doing. But look how purdy!



Now we come to the flash project. Essentially we have been asked to do a 'Creature Comforts' homage/rip-off. I'm not quite at a point where i know exactly which direction I want to go with this as I have a few ideas taht I feel will work. I do have enough premise to start animating soon though, so I guess it will be up to my flash skills to decide which theme I choose to go with.

For these characters I decided to stick to the standard animal theme, which while satisfying to draw, doesn't really fulfill my desire to have something a bit querky. But nonetheless...







Here's some rough background ideas, nothing fancy


Notes and research:

Unfortunately blogger seems to be cutting off some of my images, so I am going to leave the rest of my notes in the book for now.

Found an old video in the backs of the computer that I forgot to upload a few weeks ago.


The timing sucks, but it was an early project. I'm definitely getting better with maya since this was made.

Hey, some more stuff here, nothing amazingly fancy, just playing around with the burt model to get a "sneaky" walk.

Been pretty busy lately. Finally managed to get Maya to do something close to what I was asking it to do. Here's burt taking his first steps...

I think the timing could do with some tinkering, but overall I am happy with the general effect.

Here is a 2D walk cycle that I did this evening.

This looks ok, I think I am going to do some more walk cycles as this one doesn't quite look right yet.

More to come...

This week, we had to make two cubeys of different sizes interact with one another. Did somebody say Pixar lamp animation? No. Defiantly not...

jhvg