Industry Night

So I’m done now, completely with my course at BCIT.  It all was over Wednesday Night (Oct 20th) after Industry Night.

The Venue (Radical Entertainment)

Above is a picture of the venue, Radical Entertainment.  Beautiful building.

For those who don’t know, Industry Night is for the Digital Animation, Design Essentials, and New Media Design classes.  They all get together one night (at Radical Entertainment for the last few years) to put up a display to show off their work.  The animation students all handed out DVDs of their demo reels, business cards etc.  It’s a way to get yourself out there.  Industry people come and see what talent they can scout out.  However I was disappointed with the ammount of people who came, that actually worked in the industry.  There seemed to be just a lot of parents/friends of the students.

Me, holding my CD case

Above you can see a picture of me holding my CD case.  Biance (Biance Le Roux) helped me design the case, and stamp all 75 of them.  She helped me throughout the whole year, coming up with ideas, criticizing my work, and just making sure that my reel was perfect in the end.  So I just wanted to say thank you for all the help, it would never have beent his awesome without you.

I also want to say thank you, to all of my teachers and classmates for the help over the year, and I hope to see you in the future (perhaps working somewhere).  And thank you to my family, and my Uncle Ron (Ron Zorman) for criticing my work so that when I do go to apply for jobs, I’ll have a great chance to get hired.  I’d also like to thank him for all the links to tutorials that are going to make my animation so much better.

So what now?  I plan on finding a job somewhere (at least related to the industry) as I work on my animation skills.  I feel that the course is more directed to modeling/texturing, which doesn’t make sense to me.  I mean the class is called Digital ANIMATION.  But I understand why they did it the way they did.  They wanted to get us to try everything, 2D animation, 3D modeling, texturing, lighting, rigging, animating, even in a different 3D program (Softimage).  I definately learned a LOT in this past year, but I feel I could have learned more.

That’s just me.  I’m an animator, so the point of view will be a lot different for a modeler.  I’ll be seeking out online tutorials, and just practicing constantly until I have enough GREAT stuff to put into a brand new demo reel.

My Class

Above is my class.  A lot of the people are missing though, they had left right after packing up so we didn’t get a picture.

That’s all for now.  I’ll still be updating regularly, hopefully with some new stuff to show you soon.  It’s been a great year.
Nick Watson
nick@whatsonmedia.ca

Finished Demo Reel

Finally!  It’s completely finished.

Finally it’s finished.

This is my final demo reel from BCIT’s Digital Animation Course.

Characters:
The older character (Vernon) was completely made by me.  The modeling, rigging, and animating.
The photographer is called Blake, and he’s from HighEnd3D.com (Excellent Rig)

Audio:
Main Background Music, Funky Miracle – the Meters
Photoshoot Scene Audio, Austin Powers – The Spy Who Shagged Me
All other audio is self made, or from Garage Band
Audio was composited by Biance Le Roux

Let me know what you think.

Or contact me at :
nick@whatsonmedia.ca

Demo Reel Trailer

I’ve handed in my portfolio for our industry night website, and we were allowed to upload 5 pieces of artwork.  I handed in 4 pictures, and one video.  Here is that video, it’s the trailer for my demo reel.

My demo reel is basically done!!  All that is left is going though, tweeking anything that needs tweeking, and rerendering anything that needs rerendering!

I’m very excited to release it.

Let me know what you think of the trailer.

Waiting for a render?

Sigh… me too.

Fortunately being an animator, I don’t have nearly as long render times as some of the environment modelers.  But still, with a shortage of computers there is NOTHING to do while I wait, so I figured I’d make a blog post.

My demo reel is nearly finished now, basically, all I have left is the tweeking.  Then of course… rerendering the frames that need fixing.  The deadline is soon, but I’m sure I’ll make it.

It’s entertaining to watch the people in class scramble around trying to get their stuff rendered, trying to find a computer, and hearing the groans of them when something went wrong and they get to do it all over again.

Here are a few quick completed renders I have done.

May have been inspired by Back to the future…

Vernon being sexy

Vernon blasting into space

Final shot in the reel

 

BTW! There is a new blog theme, what do you think?  Vernon is up in the corner (above the search bar).  You can click on him and he’ll link you to all the posts in the Demo Reel Category.  Check it out.

All the renders will be put in my artwork section.

That’s it for now, my render is just about done.  Ahh it’s good to be an animator.

Blake Walk Cycle

So here is a quick little walk cycle for a character I’m using in my reel (Blake, from HighEnd3D.com). I’ll be putting this in the extras section of my demo, along with a few more animations with this rig.  If you aren’t into rigging, then I reccomend this rig, it’s very easy to work with, and there are some great customizable looks.  I made him this hippy photographer for my reel, but there are many more possiblities.

I think it’s one of my better cycles, not a fan of the front view though.

Demo Update!

I wasn’t going to be uploading any more of my progress on my demo reel, but I’ve changed my mind.  I want to get some honest feedback on how it’s going.

So here I have 3 sequences from my demoreel (one or two are not in because I’m contemplating on whether or not to even do them).

These are just playblasts.  You’ll notice some of the animation (most of it) is incomplete. But I wanted to just upload a quick video to show my progress.
Tell me what you think.

The Vernon character (Fat, bald, one with the blue vest) was made entirely by me, rigging/texturing/modeling.
The Blake character (photographer), is off of Highend 3D, I think it’s an excellent rig, very easy to work with.

Vernon Walk Cycle

So here it is, finally.  I had it rendered, but I never put it up.  It’s just a simple walk cycle of Vernon.  I was just testing out the movements so that I could fix any problems that I had along the way (so when doing my reel it wouldn’t be as hard).

I put a low res version on youtube, so hopefully the quality isn’t too awful.

Lip Sync Test

I got this character off of highend3D, his name is Blake.  Biance suggested that I use one of the photoshoot clips from Austin Powers.  So we found this clip (at the end of the first movie in the credits, International Man of Mystery).  So here is a little test I did.

I couldn’t use Vernon for this because Vernon doesn’t have lip sync abbilitites.

Well, that’s all for now.

Vernon – Animated Turnaround

SOO here, finally it is, my Vernon Turnaround (with animation).  I’m FAIRLY happy with the way it turned out.  I ran into a few issues with the rig while working, and I’m very glad that I did, because now I can fix it, and I won’t run into these problems while working on my reel.

The Yawn needs work, something with the stomach (Biance helped point that out), but I think for the most part, it’s pretty good for a start.

I’m going to be doing a few of these little animations with him before I start my reel, get some good practice in.
Thats all for now.

-Nick

PS: I post the videos on Youtube sometimes a little while BEFORE I post it here, so if you want to check out the videos as soon as I post them, subscribe http://www.youtube.com/whatsonmedia

Vernon Textured Turnarounds

Okay here it is at last, my Vernon model’s textured turnaround.  I have already started/almost completed the rigging, but this is just the un rigged version of Vernon.  This will explain the reason why he is still in the boring T-pose (well… sort of T-pose, his arms are at about 45 degrees).

I just put a quick ambient occlusion pass on him, those are the only shadows on him at the moment.  I’m going to have to do something drastic with the render time, it took a very long time to render just this simple turnaround, I think it has something to do with the texture sizes.  At the moment I’m focusing on getting the rigging done.

I’ll post a walk cycle once I get it fully rigged, and I’ll show a video of me using a few of the deformers that I’ve created.  I hope you guys like the model, I’m quite happy with the way it turned out (especially considering I’m an ANIMATOR, not a modeler/texturist).

The golden platform I think was a bit much, it kind of takes away from the model, but I thought it was a good idea at the time, that was probably another reason why the render time was a bit longer than expected.

I’d like to thank Biance again for the texturing help, she’s the love of my life and she helps me with everything .

That’s all for now, I’m liking the way this is turning out.