Christmas and New Years

Hey everyone,

This is officially my first post outside of tafe studies ~ yay =D

Sorry its been a while,
I have done some work ~

i did this sketch :

I know its not very "christmas-y" or festive, but thats what came out when i said to myself "draw whatever you feel like" 

Anyways, I plan to be doing a drawing (fully finished) each week next year, so make sure to look forward to that. 

Also, I will be going away for the new years holiday (and a bit after that) so i won't be able to post anything for a little while =) so i apologise in advance for that. 

But you should be able to see lots of stuff after that holiday.

Anyways, thats all i really had to say,

All the best, 

Season Greetings~!

Until next time, 

Ariane

New Webpage, New Showreel, New Drawing & End of studies !

Firstly, I apologise for such a long absence but the end of tafe has been taking my attention ~

SO much so that i don't even know where i should start =D

~ Soooo much exciting news =P

I guess i'll start with the most important, my 2013 showreel =P

There were so many stumbling blocks to get this showreel together, so I'm just happy that it's done xD

Next, My new Webpage ~ www.apicsstudio.com

It's finally done =D! it took soooooo long to get this webpage up and running ~ once again, i kept running into walls with it, but its finally done.


Next, My drawing -
I've finally finish this drawing :

=D yay =D

Lastly, tomorrow (wed) and thursday ~ are my last two days of study =D yayayay =D 

Also, here is my guardian character that i made in 3D, i've finally put him together: 

Thats all i really have to say right for now 

~Until next time,

Ariane ~

Setting

Just a quick post this time :

My setting is slowly (much slower then i wanted) coming along ~ 

i've still got lots to do, but its looking a lot better then yesterday =)

I want to add a layer of subtle fog on the ground as well as having some fog light coming through ~ but anyways, thats all i wanted to post for now =P 

Until next time ~

~ Ariane

Nearing the End

Yep, thats right, i'm nearing the end of my 3 years of study in animation. Only 2 weeks left to go before the Expo. 

So for things i've done since the last post : 

As you are all aware of, we are working together with the film students in making them an animated title sequence. 

This week i worked on our new version of the animatic

this is the direction guide and shot guide that i drew up quickly (the drawing is also mine) 

Also, this coming monday we have to do a presentation on something we learnt during work experience. I've decided to do mine on DaVinci Resolve, a software that we do not have at tafe. 

I've also made a drastic decision to stop my idea of using 3D characters for my short story, instead using 2D characters for my short story : 

Also, i took a break and started a new drawing : 

Obviously its not finished yet but I hope to make this the best drawing yet =P 

Thats all i've really done this week. Hopefully i'll have lots more to show you by next week. 

Until then ~ 

~ Ariane 

The past three weeks

Sorry i haven't posted in so long, but i believe it's all worth it ~ because i have some awesome stuff to show you =P ~!

So i'll start with some stuff that is unrelated to TAFE and study. Last saturday i attended a fashion show for charity that i was commissioned to do some work for.
I did a quick video and three pieces of artwork (all wearing Mauricio Alpizar, the fashion designer's, clothes) ~

This one was just simply one of the commissions ~ the red dress is one of his dresses ~

This drawing (minus the dress) had been in my mind for a while, so it was good to get it out of my system ~ i enjoyed it.

This one was the drawing used for the invitations and tickets. It was based off the model he used in his photographs ~ I had quite a lot of fun drawing this because it is a completely new style to me. Usually i draw more like the one above. But in turn, i've learnt how to make a digital drawing look like water colours. I really enjoyed this one. 

So back to tafe ~ 

Something i was quite excited about ~

I've finally finished modelling my Guardian Character ~!! yay =D

Now to rig, and then begin animation =P 

I used Maya to model him. I will also use maya to rig and animate, but i will most likely use Max to texture.

Next, i finished modelling the tree for the end of my hallway ~ I used Max for the base shape and then mud box to finish it ~ 

I've also started to fix some of the modelling of my setting as well as thinking about the texture of the setting ~ although i'm still not entirely sure what type of colour's i'd like to use ~

Lastly, I've  finished one of Anthony's assignments ~ a robot animation. 

The basic plot was set out for us already ~

 the robot walks in, light bulb breaks (or something along those lines), robot can't reach glob, robot gets chair, something happens, ends. 

this is what i did (sorry no audio) : 

The Beginning of the End

Hey everyone,

So this week at tafe was the 'beginning of the end' ~

What I mean by that is, i've started to finish the final assignments of this term =P
~ yay ~

there is still lots to do, but i'm a lot closer than before.

But before that ~ We are having an EXPO soon ~ and i made the Facebook page for it, so go take a look, and perhaps have a look through the student gallery ~

the link : www.facebook.com/Ethereal2013

Going back to assignments ~

This week i finished one of anthony's assignments ~
the rigging and skinning assignment ~ it's my first time rigging and skinning in maya so i was pretty happy with the results ~

This photo is to show the way the arms bend without horrible disfiguration

This is to show you all the controls on the rig (the foot can be IK and FK) 

The way the back bends

How the leg bends and moves without disfiguration

and what the entire rig set up looks like 

The other thing i did lots of work on this week is the Green screening we did at ABC with the film students. 

I've done an Style Guide - 

and a very very rough animatic in Nuke X -

I also started building the teleportation machine in 3D, but i didn't take any screen shots of it. 

Lastly, I got some audio examples from the sound students that are doing the audio for my short story ~ i'm so excited, it's finally coming together slowly haha =P 

My goal is to have all modelling, texturing and lighting done by the end of these holidays coming. 

anyways, 

Thats all for now, 

Until next time ~ 

Ariane

Tafe catch up ~

So it's now been two weeks since i went for work experience and i've been catching up with assignments and continuing others ~ so i thought i'd just do a general blog update today of everything thats been going on over the last two weeks.

So i'll apologise now, because this is going to be a long blog ~ but it will have TONS of photos and a few films ~ so it shouldn't be too bad =P

So at the start of last week, I broke apart the first frame of the film student's storyboard so that we can start working on the animatic ~
and although you can't see the layers in this you'll just have to take my word for it ~

The other thing that happened at the start of last week ~ i finished my pre-vis for my short story ~ I even added a quick title/end credits sequence at the end to get a sense of how long the entire thing will be. 

I've sent it off to the sound students and hopefully i'll have a music sample sometime soon 

Going onto Anthony's section of assignments ~ 

This week i finished the constraints assignment, 

although it ended up in a rather poor condition, because after the 4th time re-starting the assignment and STILL running into gimble ~ i gave up hope hahaha 

Some screen shots -> 

In more exciting news ~ i finally finished re-rendering my library~! yay =D ~!

I also built a magician's room yesterday ~ because we are doing an assignment for Anthony where we have a robot character who attempts to exchange a broken light glob ~ So i thought, why not have a magician's robot (cause as an animator ~ i can)
I will also be adding a hat stand with the wizard's hat on it ~

Also in one of Anthony's classes ~ i've finished rigging ~ more or less xD haha
I just have to ask him how to constrain the foot ~ then i can start learning how to skin =P

Here i'm showing how my thumb (and other two fingers) have set driven keys

for curling and stretch for both knuckles as well as spread.

In this one I'm just showing how my main hand-control's set driven keys

are fist and spread ~ so you don't have to do each finger individually.

Also, if you can recall, a while ago we did some green screening at ABC ~ the film students have finally sent us the footage and we can start green screening and adding CGI ~ I've done a quick storyboard so far ->

the teleport machine opens both vertically and horizontally ~ and will be the only 3D element in the scene. 

and Lastly (in terms of tafe and study) ~ i've been working on the expo ~ 

In these last two weeks i've designed a few logo's ->

and collected 3 'best pieces' from students in an attempt to make a gallery page for the expo webpage. 

And as the very very last thing ~ 

I don't know if you guys remember, but at the end of last year i was lucky enough to get work experience working for a guy named Mauricio Alpizar. 

He's a fashion designer and he wanted me to make a 'fashion look book' for his cloths that were being displayed in the New York Fashion week. 

Here's the video i did last year: 

And now he's come back asking for more work ~ very very exciting but also slightly stressful as he need everything done at the same time as all our assignments are due ~ but thats ok, ill manage ~ even if it means a few nights without sleep =P 

Anyways, until next time everyone ~ 

~ Ariane 

Work Experience ~ The Office of John Cheese

First of all let me start of with a link to their youtube page: 

http://www.youtube.com/user/OfficeOfJohnCheese

So ~
where to begin ...
well, i've been at John Cheese for 5 days now from 9.30 till 5 everyday ~

On monday, I mainly took notes ~
because i was being shown a software called Smoke ~ its a software made by Autodesk, and its a compositor and editor ~ so, in other words, it's sort of like Premiere Pro and After Effects smooshed into one.

(This isn't a shot from Cheese, this is just something 

i found when i typed in "autodesk Smoke" on google haha ~ 

just to give you an idea of what it looks like.)

Also on monday I was shown a few new things about Maya ~ they have a hair and fur plug in called Yeti and it looks pretty awesome ~ as well as a renderer called Arnold ~

These are the photos that Peregrine Labs (the place selling Yeti) has up: 

As you can imagine, i was given tons of advice on Maya and my modelling, lighting, texturing etc. I learnt Heaps on Monday haha

On Tuesday I was introduced to a software called Da Vinci Resolve ~
omg... i love this software ~
and the best part is ~ the lite version is free~! yay~!

Resolve is a basically a colour grading software that has a very very basic editing ability ~

Here's a shot of the software (another shot from google) 

For the second half of the day i re-did an add that John Cheese had done a while ago ~
it was for Collie ~ and I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post it ~ so instead ill post some screen shots so you can get an idea of what it looked like =P

I also learnt TONS of short cuts for AE on that day

as well as a few helpful codes/expressions =P 

On wed I was in Maya again, and was shown tons of things ~ 

but one thing that stood out was a studio I was shown called psyopn 

~ http://www.psyop.tv/ ~

I highly recommend giving their webpage a visit and watching their stuff ~ its awesome to say the least xP 

Thursday i got an opportunity to use a program called Mocha ~ apparently there's two types ~ one that comes with AE and another that doesn't =P 

and its basically a tracking/masking software ~ 

I got to remove two people from a concert =)

here are some screen shots ~ 

 (before)

(after)

Also, i got an opportunity to do some colour grading in Resolve ~ of my own ~ i was given an old clip and then let loose on the software ~ it was lots of fun haha

Unfortunately i don't have a shot to show =/ 

Friday was ... well, friday ~ and there wasn't really that much going on but i was given lots of tips on where to study, what to look for, where i could go with my career ~ some awesome artist's  

like this guy ~ 

(his website - http://www.minart.net/) 

Or this Guy ~ 

(his website : http://www.androidjones.com/)

So, in summary, 

This week I used After Effects, Maya, Smoke, Davinci Resolve and Mocha ~ 

I'm extremely happy and grateful for the opportunity ~ i definitely enjoyed my time at the office of John Cheese ~ and appreciate all the time they took to show me so many things ~ 

With that said,

Until next time, 

Ariane ~