Batmobile Work in Progress

Its 2012 and I have decided to finally post on my blog again.  One of my resolutions being to post here more often.  Another is to make more art (3D, 2D, Sculpting, whatever...)  so these resolutions should go hand in hand fairly nicely.

Anyway...  Let me just start this post off my stating that I love Batman.  He is a badass.  From Adam West to Michael Keaton, from Frank Miller to Batman: The Animated Series, he is the man.   With that being said, I saw a bitching Batman poster on Les McClaine's website www.evilspacerobot.com.  (the particual post was this! :D )   My friend and former classmate, Mike Wytrykus, had posted it on his Facebook.   After looking at it for sometime I noticed how cool the Batmobile in the Batcave was, and I wanted to model it!  I mentioned this to Mike and he said "Do it!"  I hadn't really had a chance to model anything outside of work for quite a while, so I definitely wanted to give it a go.

I started modeling fairly quickly after Mike posted it.  But of course, things quickly ate up my free time to model.  I finally had a chance to do some preliminary textures, and rendered out a WIP turnaround last night!  And as I mentioned before I am trying to post more often, so I figured this was as good a time as any!

60s Batmobile Turnaround Work In Progress

Here is the first textured render of the car.  Its mostly just shaders, aside from the Batman symbol. I need to make it a little less pitch black, I think, as some of the body lines are harder to read than I was expecting.  But no worries I rendered an occlusion pass as well.  ;D

60's Batmobile Work In Progress AO

This is the AO pass.  I multiplied this over the previous video to see what the model looks like so far with AO, but it is so dark already it was even harder to see the model. So I made them separate videos.

Since the videos are a little low res, I posted some higher res pictures below along with the Les McClaine drawing I based it off of.

Anyway, I guess that is all I have to say about this for now. But as this post's title states, this is a WIP.  So I still have more to do.  The modeling on the car is almost done, just have to work on the ass of the car and tweak some proportions to make it a little more cartoony.  After that I will make a little platform for it in the style of the Batcave! :D  Got plenty to do, but its been extremely fun to try and get this design down in 3D space so far, and there's still more to come! 

John K's Simpsons Couch Gag

So it has been far too long since my last post. But here's why!   

Up until now we were sworn to secrecy about John K's most recent project.  But as you are probably already aware it was a couch gag for the Simpsons!  It was a blast to work on and I have been itching to tell people about it!  Although having to wait for it to come on TV on the west coast (3 hours after friends and family from Chicago had already seen it!)  it was well worth the wait!  

I did all the CG backgrounds and objects, as well as editing (pre-Film Roman)  and all the other technical BS.

Sarah Harkey did assistant animation, like in-betweening and clean up. She also painted some of the BG elements!

Tommy Tanner was also an assistant animator.

And of course John Kricfalusi was the brains of the operation doing all the key animation, boards, and creative decisions.

Here are a few still from the final copy as well as production:

Final shot.

Brain aneurysm story board. Drawn by John K. 

Screen shot of the brain's CG model in production.

And here is what it turned out to look like in the final short.

John K's Blog

Sarah Harkey's Blog

Tommy has no blog... lol

New job.

I recently moved to Los Angeles with my girlfriend to both find jobs in the animation industry.  Not only did we both find one only a month after moving to LA... but now we both work for at John K. Enterprises, for none other than John Kricfalusi!!! :D 

He initially was looking for technical help.... well he got that and more! Cuz now Sarah is doing Ink and Paint for him and working as his Photoshop assistant (creating brushes and other fancy things). I am working as his technical administrator basically.  I manage his servers and networks as well as other odd jobs like editing animatics and soundclips and other geeky stuff that I love doing! When I'm not doing random technical jobs he has me experiment with some of his ideas in CG.

Here's a quick sample of what he's been having me do in CG.

(Stimpy ready for rigging.)

(Huckleberry Hound bubble bath toy)

(First pass at Pharmacy in Comic Book Day)

(Beginning stages of George Liqour's car)

That's all for now.  Once I render more stuff I'll put up more pictures of cool stuff :D

Gazebos!!!

Here are two gazebos that will be going into the Japanese garden! :D

                                  

Japanese Garden WIP

So I was unsure what I should add to my portfolio.  My current demo reel lacks two things: A cartoon environment, and an organic environment.  So after going to a Japanese garden recently, I decided to model a garden.  It should give me a wide variety of things to create. Fish, trees, pagodas, rocks, and lots of other cool things.

This is my first installment of what I have started creating. 

Small decorative house on a rock.  (pretty much speaks for itself, lol)

 

A stone pagoda statue

 This might be the only thing that need an explanation (in case you have never been to a Japanese garden)  This is a bamboo rocking fountain.  When the bamboo tube is filled with enough water it will tip into the bowl and empty, after which it returns to the top of the fulcrum.

Thats all for now :D

Demo Reel

Okay so my previous post got too compressed during the upload to be worth taking seriously. Soooooo, here's that Vimeo hyperlink again, you should just look at this instead as its compressed well (thank you Vimeo :D )

--->My Modeling Demo Reel<---

Environment Reel (First Pass)

Here is the first pass of my reel for the position of CG Modeling.  While it is primarily for Environment/Hard Surface Modeling, it still demonstrates my Character Modeling abilities.

 

Here's a link to my Vimeo as a back up.

Demo Reel

Bladerunner Buildings WIP part IV

Here are the renders of the right half of the street completely modeled, textured, lit and rendered. I used mental ray to render. Its only my first pass at a final render, so there are plenty of tweaks that are still needed, but its starting to look really nice.

Bladerunner Buildings WIP part III

Here is the set with more neon lights, and more buildings modeled and textured.

Bladerunner Buildings WIP part II

Here are is the first completely textured and lit building of the scene.

This is the building I initially completed before realizing I wanted to update it and create more.