First Animation Job! Captain America: The Winter Soldier

The new Captain America: The Winter Soldier trailer came out today during the Superbowl. So this is a good time to share what I've been doing the past few months - I got my very first animation/VFX industry job, and it was on this film! Between November 2013 and January 2014, I worked at Scanline VFX in Vancouver BC as a junior animator on this movie. And it was an amazing first experience.

This shot was one of about 50 or 60 that I worked on (fun fact: that shield isn't real!). So, technically, this "Damn right" is the first piece of dialogue attached to any shot I've ever professionally animated on. And hundreds of thousands of people saw it today. I think that's as awesome as it gets. This is a great way to start off my journey into the animation industry.

Once the film comes out, I'll go into more detail on what I did. Until then, enjoy the trailer! I linked it above.

2013 Character Animation Reel - Think Tank Training Centre

It's the big one! And it's finally done!
Also up on the TTTC Website if you'd like to visit.

Demo Reel Piece 1 - Lindy Hop Final

The full version is done! Piece #2 is not far behind. Moving at a good pace...

Bonus Dialogue Animations

Three extra animations from our 'Acting for Animation' class. Very quick exercises - not as polished as the final piece below, but still fun!

Anim 200 - Lifting a heavy(?) object

Assignment 1: Show a character lifting (or trying to lift) a heavy object.
It's good to be animating again!

Modeling 100 Final - The Raptor King

This guy is the culmination of everything I've learned in my first semester at Think Tank. Concept art, polymodeling, MudBox sculpting, texturing/painting, posing, lighting, and rendering... the whole shebang. Duration: three weeks. A lot of work, but a ton of fun. On to semester two. Cheers!

Flash Animation Final - Hamsters

Final animation for Flash class at Think Tank Training Centre. A hamster discusses the past... Audio from "The Big Bang Theory."

Figure Sculpting - Female

More adventures in Mudbox. This time we had to model a human base mesh and sculpt in the extra details. Females are actually harder - their muscles and curves need to be more subtle, unless you're making a female bodybuilder, I guess? Most of the people in our class sculpted extremely buff guys... Haha.

Model and Textures - Old Safe

An old, beat-up safe, modeled and textured with diffuse, spec, and bump maps. Sweet.

Creature Sculpt - Suicune

Our first sculpting assignment in Mudbox is to create a realistic-looking Pokémon of our choice (best assignment ever? probably!). My favorite is Suicune, so I had to give him a try...

Jumping Flour Sack

Back to the basics! An oldie but goodie. Hand-drawn is tedious but it comes out way livelier than flash...

Environment Modeling: Trine 2 Tavern

Definitely not 100% accurate in terms of perspective/spacing, but pretty darn close. Never done an environment before... The stuffed moose head was an essential element for sure.

Have some life drawing

Because you can never have too much life drawing...

First week of TTTC... and a hippo!

I've just started a year of postgraduate school at Think Tank Training Centre in Vancouver BC, to help polish up my 3D skills (as well as all the other ones too!) to professional standards. College really wasn't enough to get me where I wanted. Hopefully this place will do the trick :)

Our first modeling assignment was to make some kind of bulky animal — hippo, elephant, rhino, etc. I did a hippo. Switching into SoftImage was so incredibly easy after learning the basics in Maya. They're remarkably similar — just some different functions here and there. So far, I definitely like it more than Maya, at least for modeling.

Going through old files...

I rediscovered these guys as I was backing up my laptop. This was the first sketch for the men from 'Remedy.' I thought they looked awesome in this style, but with just five days to animate the entire thing, I had to make some cutbacks. Maybe I'll revisit this motif someday...

 

Rough Stuff

Just getting back into the swing of things. And I managed to crank out a neat little rough animation too. :)

SPE and Movies from the Hill

Two surprise updates for Coyote. Back in March it played at the SPE Film Festival in San Francisco, specifically in the Women's Caucus Film Festival (I had no idea it even played out there... huh). And more recently it played at the outdoor Movies from the Hill festival in Norristown, PA. Thumbs up all round!

Facial Animation Final - Salieri's Plan

Final project for our facial animation and lipsynching class. We had to choose a short voice clip to animate to. I picked one of my favorite performances of all time...

Sound Design Final - Colorblocks

I took a sound design course as one of my final classes at Penn. Our final project was completely open-ended, so I used the opportunity to do another animation, but something more abstract this time around. Several people suggested I should look into doing video graphics for electronica concerts. Which I think would be completely awesome. And super easy – this took me about two days, max. It was fun. :)

2012 Animation Demo Reel

College was fun. But it was only the beginning. :)