Business Cards: ORDERED! :D

They're not brilliant... and not plastic either (which is a shame) but hopefully when I get more money coming in I can sort them out a bit nicer.

Here's the front:

And the back:

So I ordered 250 glossy finishes for thursday/friday morning!  Should be here for thursday I'm hoping, which would be cool.

Anywho, I've decided to apply for the MA Animation degree.  I feel like I  learnt a lot during this final year but feel I have room to learn more skills, like scripting!  So I'm pretty keen on the idea.  That's if I don't get a job... :P  I'm meeting Gerald about it next monday, so I'll update on that on the day to let you know! :D

Evaluation!

After the three years of learning through the University of Glamorgan, this final year really proved to me what I wanted to do for my future. I have enjoyed following the animations strand for the few years and finally settling on rigging I’ve thoroughly enjoyed learning this new technique to help better myself.


I have learnt a lot these past few months on rigging, researching and carrying out different ways to play out the techniques on making the animator’s workflow easier on them. Collaborating on other projects (which was my main focus) really helped me understand my role and work load as a rigger and also gave me a huge taste of what industry will be like which I’ve loved understanding from this course.

Thanks to the course, the people I’ve met and the new techniques I’ve learnt I feel I have become a better person and can’t wait to go into the real world to increase the levels of entertainment for others.

So all in all, I've enjoyed my experience on this course as I've learnt so much in all the different modules, including this final major project, which i've experienced a small fraction of what industry has in store for me.

Wowzaaah!

I honestly can't believe its the end of university.

Where have all these years of education disappeared to?  It's ludacris, but finished.  Although, in a way, I've been offered to do the MA course, or at least encouraged to go for it.  I'm tempted to go for it, but I'm not sure what the future will hold for me.  Personally, I'd much prefer to wait for a job to come along and offer me the £££'s but education does come first.

But I have great news!  This is the first time ever that I have a show reel.  I've never been so excited/nervous in all my life.  Although it's still a WIP, but generally for the guest speaker tomorrow.  I'll hopefully be able to include some rendered footage from the Alien VFX film and put that in my show reel also.

Update 2

Here's the final DaniSaur overview link:



I like how it looks and the rendering didn't take as long with the resolution settings on the screen and the input into Premiere.  I'm pleased with how this is going!  I'm hoping to sort out the rest of the files tomorrow whilst finishing up the Tinman rig tonight.

Until then. :)

Update DaniSaur as promised.

Here you go, after that long winded post before I've finally worked out the camera capture software and had a little go at exporting files with it.



It's not the compressed version, but I'm planing on (for future reference) putting the captured data into Premiere and rendering out the movies there.  I think it'll work out a lot better.  Only thing I'm hating is the downgrading resolution of my monitor to 800x600.  I feel so 90s!

Updates

Hello everyone!

I've got good news and bad news.  The bad news is I don't have any videos uploaded to show you my progress so far.  So I'm afraid it's going to be a long winded post of me chatting away about work.

The good news is I've almost completed my DaniSaur rig!  I'm so chuffed!  I have had this going on for almost a year (modelling it last year - thanks to Aled Matthews for that and the texturing) and finally my little personal project is coming alive!  Firstly I'll say what's left to do;

• Skinning the facial joints to the mesh
• Check all the skinning
• Create a video showing all the controls and how the mesh deforms (which is what you'll be seeing up tomorrow :D)

Phew!  Not that much really.  Haha, and the textures are on it and it's all looking great.  Finally, I'll be spending most of my time tomorrow completing the Tinman rig, although, I'm quite sceptical about it and don't really want to deal with it any more...  Oh well, pushing through it really.  I've done a lot of the rigging already, I think it's a few tweaks on the arms, including stretchy joints on the left arm for the grappling hook and the head/neck controls, but the legs are done and the main body.  It's just the case of un-attaching the mesh pieces and skinning them to the bones again.  Sorry, just can't be bothered with it really, but I think it'll look cool in the end.

Anyway, enough with work, deadline is Friday so I'm quite confident I'll be able to get it all done and handed in before my miniature presentation on my blog, website and final image.  Then after that's done, off I'll go to buy L.A.Noire!

Until the next update, guys and gals.

Ciao!

Design a Character - Expressions

So a little break from uni work as I gave in my final business module work.  I joined a group on dA called "Design-A-Character" or DAC and what they do is have challenges every week to help design new characters, for yourself, your work or just leisure.

This week's challenge was about designing a character and giving it 4 or more expressions.  I jumped into this idea and this was my initial sketch up:

This is Tak.  He's a weird alien creature who's skin changes colour with different emotions, like a chameleon.  I gave him an oversized snout and a bit of a long neck.  I really wanted to push the faces of the character so I really tried to stretch the features about.

Then I moved onto the line art.  I used the pen tool in Photoshop (scanned in at 300dpi).  Took a few hours but it was worth it. :)

Added in the colour.  I don't know why, but yellow was the first one to come into my head.  At first I wasn't thinking of making Tak into a chameleon-like creature so originally he was going to be all one colour.

I decided to have a go with the black and yellow theme initially.  I kind of like this idea and may consider using this as a future modelling/rigging/animating project for myself after university is complete.  Just need to do some turnarounds of the little bugger! :D

Then onto the final submitted image!  You can see the colours I used to demonstrate the following;

Yellow - Neutral

Red - Anger

Grey - Shocked

Orange - Happy

Blue - Sad

Kinda cliché I know, but I liked the theme ideas.  Anyway I'm pretty happy with the results!  Now I'm done for my break and it's back to working on my personal projects. :)

Ciao!

DaniSaur and Website.

So I've finally finished the Alien VFX Collab.  YES!  So now I can focus on my personal projects which are;

DaniSaur
Tinamous

Also, I've had the time to re-do my website (for the 3rd time now) and it's looking a lot better than it did before. I'm not 100% pleased with it, but it's a working progress for me. :)  Here's the link:

Danie Parness - CG Rigger

Anyway, onto what I've done for DaniSaur.  It's on my website but I'll post the embed of it here.  Since this video I've done more work to the rig, like adding a stretchy spine, and I'm working on making stretchy arms, legs and tail.

Final Image... How Different It Is to my Initial Idea! :|

I'm too tired to write a lot right now.

I've almost finished the business work due in for tomorrow.  Just need to scan a few final image development pictures and I'm done. :)  WHOOP!

Anyway, final image is in my header...  but I'll post it up without the text.

It's really simple, I know, but the work I do is quite limited.  I make a skeleton, I make it move with controllers, I skin.  Pretty simple procedure.

Okay, the other version I have (with the font) is a lovely .png version with transparency, which allows me to post ontop of any background.  Will probably use it in my website.

Until then!