2010 Demo Reel

So I captured this footage in August 2010 and haven't gotten around to editing it into a reel until just like.. two days ago.

I'll be capturing and cutting a more ~current one soon. Just though I'd put this one up though. Especially because I haven't updated this blog in ages.


Enjoy!

Vignettes

Check out these character vignettes Henry McComas put together for Marvel.com! I did the effects for these guys. Go buy them now. They're awesome.

Spiderwoman



Black Costume Spiderman



Scarlet Witch



Valkyrie



Wasp (this was actually my very FIRST character. Most of this was done by my lead, Jeff Selbig)

Space Fire

A little something-something I worked on a while back at Amazing Society. We were trying to come up with a fiery hazard that would damage the characters. It had to look like it belonged on this flat ground, and in space. So here are some concepts I whipped up:



And here's a little example of what we went with - the line at the top is actually the frame by frame of the candle-like flame:



Have you hero'd up, yet?

MGS Logo

Look what I found! A former co-worker of mine at Digital Kitchen, Chris Abbas, updated his reel. He's an amazing designer, and I thought I'd share my personal favorite piece that I saw (and actually helped on, a little!) in production at DK.



Check out the rest of his stuff! Really inspiring!

Edit: whoops, looks like vimeo plus won't let me embed. Here's the direct link.

Hero Up!

Been a while, but it's because I've been terribly busy SHIPPING MY FIRST GAME!

Marvel Super Hero Squad Online!


Proof:



Yep! Those are the credits, and that's me! Listed as an FX artist with my wonderful colleague, Jeff Selbig (who rarely updates his blog, sorry).

If you are so inclined, go to HeroUp.com and start playing!

I feel incredibly lucky that I got to work with a great team, and well within a year of working in the game industry (having graduated college in May, and started this job in September), I got to ship my very first game AND work on a LIVE team.

Sorry there's no art in this post (I mean, aside from the lovely UI and splash pages). More to come, for sure! Especially now that I can post a bunch of stuff from Digital Kitchen AND Amazing Society.

CHEERS!

Key Comps - Roughs

I've been working more on my side project, and I've decided to give her a little more form before I start breaking down. So here's a peak at some of her frames:



Hah, a little difficult to see. Here they are laid out nicely with some color!




It's slow going! But it's coming along.

Karolina Pencil Test Work in Progress

Been a while since I posted any progress on that Karolina animation I started way back when. I've been awfully side tracked with work and snow and the holidays and family and my puppy. So! Here's some frames I've been working on.



Not all of them have been broken down, as you can see. But, it's a start!

Karolina Rough

This is about an hour's worth of work done on Photoshop CS5 Extended.

There's a ton of issues I need to fix with these roughs, but I thought I'd document the progress I've made so far. I'll probably start on Nico before wrapping this up as well.

Styles

PAX was this weekend, and I was inspired. While waiting in lines, I read the sixth volume of Marvel's Runaways. And I got to play some really fun games that made me really want to delve in and produce more work for my portfolio. SO I thought I'd start with some pre production pieces inspired by some of my favorite Runaways Characters.

First there's Karolina Dean, aka Lucy in the Sky.


I've been staring at these images all weekend, so I thought I'd put them in at the top to show the reference I used. I broke down her color palette. Very soft pastel colors, with yellow being centric to the whole pattern. Then, I looked at her actual attacks and broke them into silhouettes. It's a bit like fire, water, and hair all mixed together. It knocks people down, grabs hold of them, acts as a shield. I'm not really sure what it would feel like if I touched it... but I have a feeling it depends on her mood/motivations. So, the silouettes described are: swirly, stretchy, and sparkly, haha. The attack breakdowns describe how it would look compared to her character... how it stretches across and next to that would be a "sample" frame of the animation I'll be doing.

Next up is Nico Minoru, aka Sister Grimm.


Oddly enough, I felt like the centric color in her palette (at least in her ~energy~ because I mainly focused on her big spreads and the panels where she was actually attacking something) was also yellow - but a more dark and dull yellow. I added variations, simply because her palette is fairly limited. Not many cool colors to speak of. A lot of the blue I found was actually the opposite of the rest of her general tone. So, I included a light, more saturated blue. The silhouettes describe the type of attack she deals. Karolina is an alien, but Nico is actually a witch - and her character has a gothic style. So, there's lots of fire - which is what the outer silhouettes describe. The middle silhouette actually describes lighting... which is often randomly interacting with her, her staff, and the environment as she attacks things.

The sample frame is her staff being enveloped by fire, lighting... and the attack itself is a frog. Simply because she has a wide variety of spells that she uses, so I thought I'd take a classic and fun approach to her attack.


2D Animations soon!! Time to bust out some CS5 and get to work!

Avoiding Unwrapping

Been incredibly busy this last week and a half. Meeting up with folks from Studio 343, havin' interviews with folks from Red 5. River Rafting on the Wenatchee with my family and lovely boyfriend. It's been fun!

This last week, I've been working on an FX Test for Red 5 Studios! It's a really cool studio way the hell in Orange County. I'm not sure how I feel about it. Excited, definitely. But torn, as well.

Anyway, I won't be posting the test or anything.

So here's something I was doing before I got the test.

All materials, all the time. Screw textures. Mostly screw unwrapping. If I don't have to, I will not unwrap.

Persona

Peter Moehrle's Ani 400 Class. I decided to call it Persona.



3DS Max Particles (PFlow) and Adobe After Effects.

Happy Middle

Mmm. A real render.

Testing

All day today, I turned this:




Into this:



Upon critique, I've discovered that while most like the second image more, they miss the brightness and saturation of the first one.

Guess I know what my next step is.

Compositing, maybe?

I've been creating a master file for all of my scenes. Something I can properly access, that contains all the textures, effects, etc. It's been a bit more time consuming than I thought, but now that I have everything all together, I now need to make tweaks to make them exist cohesively.

Here's a little concept. The left is what I'm aiming for, the right is what my render actually looks like.

Untitled Ani Project

This is the progress I've made so far on Peter Moehrle's Ani 400 class. It's a lot of fun, but hand animating these fish has been a pain. I'm glad I'm almost finished, and am moving on to the next "scene"

Caution: It's rough





Still haven't decided what to call it.
Evolution? Maybe?

Clouds Again?

I'm really not having the clouds in my project, so I'm redoing them! This render is from before GDC, but I haven't made any progress, because I'm also working on rerigging our character (trust me, it's a long story). Here it is!



Just a quick test, but I like the way it looks in the light.

Demo Reel

Finally.

Sparkling

I've been working on creating a texture for the rain I posted a while back. I think it's going pretty well.



I think the noise probably needs to slow down juuust a bit, but I had a tough time rendering (my material chugs).

I wish someone could teach me some of these concepts. It's pretty difficult trying to figure this out all by myself.

Flood Fixes

So I had to fix up Adam Chandler's terrain a bit (really, I just subdivided it), to fix the hard edges created when the water rises... and I think I like the result.



I still need to create a rain water displacement map, but for now, I really like the quality of these rolling waves. I'll probably use them for the end of the short.

Clouds and Dome part 2

I've been adding color and clouds, and I like the result so far.