A New Direction

After talking with some industry contacts of mine, i've decided to seriously cut back some of the material in my portfolio. I'm going to put up a new piece that is definitely my strength, but uses all the new skills that I have learned from all of these tutorials. And then create a turn-around reel with break-downs of the textures on all of my best pieces. Here is a link to my portfolio as it stands  now: http://slewis21.daportfolio.com/ .

Originally I was going to make my new piece a walk through of a city street. As I was modeling it, it became way too big. I was already cutting corners int he interest of getting it done, rather than taking my time on each piece. So I changed it to just a dark alley with a few pieces that I can really focus on. So far all i've worked on are the boxes. Here are a few screen shots:

I still plan to take these guys into mudbox and create a normal map of fold and wrinkles in them. I'm excited about this project and I hope it comes out as great as I am imagining!

In the mean time, the job search continues. Something is gonna happen eventually, and i'm not going to stop until it does!

Still Life - still no job

So after that last tutorial, I decided to try and replicate it for myself. This is what I came up with. I still wanna re-render it in layers and work some compositing magic before I put it up in my portfolio. But I'm pretty happy with the way it came out. I really need to work on my rendering and mental ray settings in general. That's something that I am still pretty weak with...

On the job search front... whole lot of nothing. But I will continue to look while I continue to develop my skills and eventually something has gotta stick, right?

Gettin back to Maya

So I had been doing a lot of photoshop tutorials trying to buff up my skills there, but now I need to get back to using Maya (and mudbox with this one). So I went to digital tutors and pulled up a still life texturing tutorial. Unlike all the tutorials I did before where I actually created everything from scratch, I used a lot of the pre-made project files to do this project. The bread, lemon, and flowers were all done by me though!

Despite not making a lot of the texture maps myself, I learned A LOT from this tutorial and it took me three days (and an entire night of rendering) to finish. Firstly, I have always used mudbox for sculpting and exporting normal or displacement maps. But for the bread and flower I used mudbox for painting. This really opened my eyes to a whole new (and easier) way of making texture maps. 

I also now know how to properly apply a normal or displacement map in maya's hypershade (I've been doing it wrong this whole time). On top of that almost all of these textures are placed on mental ray shaders, which I have always been hesitant to play around with. I've really learned the different setting and presets and how they can really help me take my hand made textures to the next level. Along with learning how to apply those maps, I have also learned how to layer several bump maps onto one object. That was something I didn't even know you could do (though I am not surprised you can). 

Doing this tutorial has shown me that I still have a lot to learn about the profession and the specialty that I have chosen, but it also proves that I greatly enjoy it and love learning and applying new things! I think my next project will be modeling my own still life and putting it together much like this one. That way I will have something to add to my reel that will be unlike anything else in there. I have quite a few days off of work this week, so hopefully I'll be updating soon! 

Fire!

Here is another tutorial I did on my day off yesterday (finished today). I learned the merits of a clipping mask on this one, otherwise its nothing I really couldn't have done on my own. I think that means its time to move on to different/harder projects.

Well until the new year!

Doin' Thangs

To keep up my skills and force myself to not be lazy, I've decided that on every day off from work, i'm going to pick a tutorial and follow it in its entirety. The last three that I did were all photoshop, and came out with some really cool results. I'm also learning some nice tricks that will def come in handy for my texturing work. Yay!

With this project I learned about making custom brushes, and got a clear grasp on how to work with masks. I dont know why, but they've always confused me before. I also learned how to make special selections like shadows and mid-tones. All in all it was fun, and now i have a really cool facebook profile picture!

I made this one with the intention of having it the header for this very blog (which also got a much needed makeover). I got some cool spray paint custom brushes from the project. Honestly, I didn't really learn much from this one. It was fun though.

This bad boy actually took me two days to finish. It was so long and complicated! I learned about creating your own alphas int he channels box and then loading them into selections to make masks and adjustment layers. Soooo many adjustment layers (which I had never used before)! I really like the adjustment layer, now that I know what it is and how to use it. I also made curve adjustments a lot, where I used to fall upon the levels slider, so thats something new and useful. This is one that I know I wont be able to recreate without looking at the tutorial again. But I like the final product and I can see how it can be useful in the future. I can also easily replace the coke logo for something else and just slap it into a project whenever I need to!

We'll see what I come up with next time... I wanna do some maya and mudbox/zbrush tutorials as well. I need to get better at using mudbox/zbrush in general and in maya I want to get better at basic lighting. Its a skill that can really help me in my work, but that I am seriously lacking knowledge in. That and procedural texturing... but that scares me.

Ja!

What i've been up to...

So thesis is completed. Degree has been earned. What have I been doing with my life since graduation?

Well, besides getting a fun part-time job at a sex shop, I've been working on my reel on and off. In the 8 months since graduation I have added three new pieces, and touched up a few others.

First I made this piece to show off what I know I can already do, and do relatively well. I'm really happy with the way it came out. I just grabbed some random model from the internet and got to UVing. It was fun and I got it done pretty fast. It feels good to do what you love, do it quickly, and do it well.

Next it was time to challenge myself a bit. This was my first attempt at using sub-surface scattering to make a cartoony little girl. All of my other projects are more photo real, so I was trying to show that I can make something like this as well. I like the way she looks, but the way I lit it, she seems more doll like than I'd like. I definitely need to work on my lighting skills.

Finally I made this guy. He was a bitch to UV and even more complicated to texture. So many individual pieces! But that's what i wanted to get from this project. It ended up being more of a burden and less fun, and once again can use the help of much better lighting that what I can provide, but I like it. 

With these new pieces in my portfolio I'm hoping to land a job sometime soon. I had actually stopped searching/applying for a few months. But then an animator from South Park came in to my part time job after pulling an all-nighter to finish the season finale of the latest season. We spoke for about 20min and she gave me her contact info. She really inspired me to start trying again, and so I am.

My friends all around me are getting their first jobs, I feel like its my turn. Fingers crossed!

Screenshots from the final product!

I know that I stopped posting for a long while... but that is because I got into the full swing of production. Now the film is "finished". If I ever feel the drive to, I would like to go back and fix a  lot (almost all) of the animation and truly finish it. But considering this took me a month to render... I don't know...

Still I am very proud of the final product! Here is a link to the youTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR4iTVD2niM

And below are a few screen shots.

What do you think? I really love the way it looks!!!

~Sam