animation i like: Jean-Luc

developing deer deborah

deborah becker approached me about creating a commercial for her state farm insurance business. i promptly agreed. it turns out that state farm requires their agents to stay within some rather strict guidelines when creating advertisements. one of the main rules is that the 30 second begins and ends with state farm supplied motion graphics; it's called a 'donut ad.' i had to stay in quite a few lines, but deborah wanted me to color as close to the lines as possible.

i pitched a few ideas and we narrowed it down to one. i then thought of something completely different, and she wanted to go with that (hopefully all future clients are this accepting). my concept was that we film the commercial that state farm wants, but rather than using a human, we use an extremely cute, but grumpy cartoon character. other than that, nothing is really special about the main character. it's just a guy who needs insurance... and it's good service that makes this cartoon magical.

next i needed to figure out what the heck this thing was. i played with some imaginary creatures, as well as some animal based things. i luckily(?) drove by a dead deer on the side of the highway one day and knew exactly what the cartoon will be. what's better than the cause of so many insurance claims? and how wonderful would it be to have a deer need insurance because it hit a human?

at this point the commercial went off as it would be expected to. i made storyboards for a 15 second and 60 second version (which i didn't make... yet). after deborah's approval, i moved to animatics, and then we actually filmed the thing. this process didn't take very long and didn't involve many issues.

the whole project was surprisingly uneventful. modeling, animating, and compositing the deer over the video footage was grueling, time consuming, and rather fun (for me, not my girlfriend). the only real issue i suppose would be the fact that deborah wanted me to do the narration. i narrated the animatic and she thought that it should stay my voice since i have such an "unusual tv voice" and the commercial would catch people's attention better. i suppose she has a point... but that's just a nice way of saying i have an ugly voice when heard over speakers. sad.

here's the animatic:

here's the final project:

creating a morning show

i created this animation a while ago, but i thought i would write a little blog about the creation of the project.

when i was interning at minnesota public radio, my boss and i were talking about my focus in animation and came up with a project for me to do. i think he was making me feel better about being unpaid... and it worked. i came up with the idea of short videos for each of the main djs a 89.3 the current (the best music station in the twin cities). the morning show was first.

i wanted to do something that was reminiscent to the old days of radio. i wanted to go back to when men were men and women served men. i found this to be a great juxtaposition to the actual on-air relationship of steve seel and jill riley.

like any good animation, i started with a script and a storyboard and then an animatic. originally, jill wanted her line to include the "f-word" but after the animatic, i think it was pretty obvious that we should keep it clean.

i voiced the narration in animatic, but man, i do not have a good voice for 50's animation. i needed an adult voice. luckily, my boss had just the voice. thank you michael wells.

here's the animatic. sorry about the swear mom.

nicaragua

they sure liked frisbees

i haven't made a blog post for a while. some of that is due to me being busy with summer school projects and now fall semester projects... but most of it is due to me spending two months in nicaragua. ashley and i lived in granada, teaching english at elementary schools and exploring the country. nicaragua gets a pretty bad reputation, and some of it may be true... but it's a pretty decent place full of really great people.

hitting the fan

the most ridiculous thing i did? my friend brody and i ran with bulls. we didn't really want to. we just wanted to watch... but there are no spectators in nicaragua. four bulls are released into the streets and no one is safe.

true art

i had a meeting at minnesota public radio this afternoon (in regards to creating an iphone app). on the way home i took advantage of passing trader joe's in woodbury. there was a mighty fine looking pizza in the frozen section, but i thought to myself, "alex, you could make a much better pizza for less. don't be a chump." well... i ain't no chump.

whole wheat dough. organic mozzarella. organic basil pesto. organic roma tomatoes. crust with a light glazing of spiced olive oil from mallorca, spain. baked at 360 degrees fahrenheit.

if this doesn't deserve to be on an art blog, i don't know what does.

pigzilla lives

the final project for my 3D modeling class was to create a short animation within a group. everybody in class was supposed to create a little art concept to present to the class, then vote on the projects they wanted to work on. i was in spain a missed a few days of class and forgot about the assignment, so before my presentation i did a quick photoshop drawing of the first thing i thought of... which would obviously be a giant pig. only the best digital artists are able to create the quality image i managed... and for some reason my concept was voted for and selected to be on of the 5 group projects.

after the group was formed, i came up with a storyboard and one of my group members came up with a good idea to go with a ertle farm toy look. i was the more established character modeler and animator so i delegate that task to myself (i was the group leader. i could do what i wanted). my first task was to make a pig. i started with pigzilla first but it turned into some sort of fat, ugly, pork pig and i scraped the model. i decide to create a regular, cute pig first and then just mutate it into some angry. i knew render times would probably become an issue near the end of the semester so my goal was to create really simple models that would render quickly but still have a very distinct and interesting style. really that just equated to taking an egg shape and morphing appendages to it. i consider the pig a success.

creating pigzilla was rather easy once i had a pig that i like. all i really did was stand the normal pig on its feet and give it some resemblance of a neck so it could look straight. most of the time spend on pigzilla was readjusting the geometry. bending an egg in half creates a lot of overlapping and messy meshes. also, getting the legs to be under the pig took quite some time to adjust. initially after moving the legs down, it just looked like a crumple mess of pink flesh. i suppose it might have been easier to just create an original mesh, but i really wanted pigzilla to be the exact same thing as a normal pig... and aside from some added polygons to make the eyebrows, it is the same exact mesh.

after creating the main characters, i needed to add some more things to the farm to make it more of a scene. a chicken was definitely needed. again, it really is just an elaborate egg and very quickly rendered. and due to some group miscommunication of tasks, we needed a farm house so i made one quickly. the house was pretty easy to make since i wanted it look like a plastic toy. that really helped me to limit the amount of polygons put into the model and the texture bump maps could be really simple.
so after compiling other group members pieces (and quickly creating pieces that were missing), i spend an entire day animating (in maya and modo), rendering (modo), and composting (after effects) the whole mess into something fairly interesting. enjoy:




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EA_FnmiWrs

bullet hole

the semester is coming to an end and printmaking is done (until i take it again during the summer) and i made one last print tonight for kicks and giggles.

ashley had a couple little boards that were covered with a cheap canvas  and i thought that one of them would make for a nice collagraph... so i straight up stole one... after nicely asking permission.

an artist generally doesn't give away his or her trade secrets but i am not an artist... so... i took the cap from my bottle of gesso, centered it on the board, painted gesso around it, played plants vs. zombies while waiting for it to dry, inked it up with a raspberry color, smeared a black-ink-cover-cheese-clothe around the center, wiped it clean, and pulled the print. tah dah.

i find it kind of interesting that my best print of the semester (in my opinion) won't actually be used for a grade since i had already turned my portfolio in... i just did it for the fun of doing it... i guess i am an artist after all. please ignore the previous paragraph.

walking woodcut... for the dogs

here is part two of my two part woodcut animation prints (that is just as hard to type as it is to say). i decided to go with a walking dog. why? i've never animated a dog before.... doing it with a piece of wood seems like the logical choice.

i have come to the conclusion that this new media could make for some really interesting projects and i plan to explore combining printmaking and animation more in the future... probably this summer since i signed up for a printmaking summer course. woodblocks are fairly easy to do and have a very distinguishable style and texture. it could be interesting to see what other styles of printmaking could create in terms of animation.

i am aware that i could most likely recreated everything with computer and save myself a ton of time... but gosh darn it. there's just something about seeing an animation that's created from a piece of wood that is much more satisfying.

here is the final animation of the dog walk cycle:



www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG2L3Vr12bY

walking woodcut

one of my final projects for my printmaking class is to make a two different prints with the same theme, each with an edition of four (eight total). i decided to make my theme 'animation' since that is my focus in school and i thought it would be interesting to try and combine printmaking with my major.

it all started with a piece of wood. i then created a grid on the block and drew a human walk cycle. all the space on the print that is white was carved away and i pulled four prints using the green color. after cleaning the block, i carved away the parts of the block where you see green showing up on the print and pulled four prints using the very dark purple (which just shows up as black on the computer screen).

i let the print dry for a while then captured it digitally, created cropped layers in photoshop, and then compiled everything in after effects. here is the final result:

collagraph

my last project in printmaking was a collagraph. i wasn't a big fan of the process at first, but i've grown to like the odd details you can get from very few light marks. for the first print, i started with a thin piece of particle board a painted the background pattern with gesso (canvas primer and glue substance). i then glued on an m&m wrapper. i finished the plate by cover the wrapper with gesso and tamping my brush on large gobs of the stuff to create the pouring effect. inking the plate takes quite a bit of time. the goal is to spread ink across the surface and get it into the recessed surfaces and then wiping away the ink from the raised surfaces. it's time consuming. but it looks nice when it's all over with.

the assignment was to explore the theme of memory. the majority of my class explored specific memories about vacations, family, etc. i wanted to be a little less obvious with mine. my thoughts were about how memories dissolve like sugar in water. it's there... but rather diluted.

my second print is a monoprint AKA one of a kind print. i need to make six of them in total, so stay tuned for that. my first monotype was complete experimentation. i took my plate out into campus commons and attached a bunch of grass with gesso. there wasn't really a great way of achieving this that didn't rely heavily on the use of my hands. i made quite the mess. after allowing my plate to dry, i inked the plate similar to my collagraph, but then i used a brayer to put different colored ink onto the raised surfaces.

i wasn't completely satisfied with the finished project, mainly because it didn't work exactly how i thought it would... but how often does that happen?

run piggy run

i taught myself how use maya, specifically, how to rig characters in maya today. i modeled my pig character that i'm working on for a class assignment in modo and then brought it over to maya for rigging. the process of rigging and animating isn't so terribly hard... but maya really needs to work on their interface design. it's miserable being a new user. i understand how powerful the software is and how many functions are available... but holy crap. just take a look at the screen shot i took of maya. you're not even given a button label when you hover over anything. it's a complete guess. i'm sure with time i'll become familiar with everything and navigating the endless drop-down menus and tab bars will become second nature. but until then, i will continue to be hit and miss.

but i figured things out enough where i could start animating a running pig. considering that i am a maya/character-rigging virgin, i did pretty well. my pig still needs to get smoothed out, shaded, and put in an environment... but i shall leave that for another day.

block of wood

i made a good decision this semester by adding polar opposite art classes. most of my classes, since i am a multimedia design major, involve staring at a computer for long periods. i generally forget to blink. to counter balance this, i am also taking printmaking which, up to this point, has generally consisted mostly of woodblock prints. it really is a great combination. manually carving a plank of wood is very relaxing and a nice change of pace. there are no key frames to concern myself with. their isn't render times to manage... although... pulling prints and editions can get lengthy... but at least i am doing something as opposed to just staring at a computer monitor.

i really enjoy the look and texture of the prints i have made, especially the one i attached to this post. the digital version does it no justice. this printmaking process has given me some good ideas for animations as well. look for that in the future.

3d job application

i am applying for an internship with an established marketing company in minneapolis and part of the process was to create a blog post that discussed how i thought in social circles (company motto). my original concept that i began working on before spring break was a video about brain tweets. i had a bunch of footage shot, but for some reason i decided not to upload it to my computer before i left for spain.... and for some stupid reason i left my camera bag on the plane in madrid. needless to say, i never saw it again. so i got back from spain (which was awesome!) with no camera, no great blog idea, and a week and a half before the deadline.

after a couple days of going from new idea to new idea, i somehow landed on the thought of doing an anaglyiph 3d animation (the blue/red kind). i'm not sure why. i have never done anything like it before... but i guess what better time to go for the gusto than with a job application?

current projects

to begin this blog, i will list projects i am currently working on. let's see how many i accomplish:

• new website and branding for myself so i appear somewhat legit


• a short video and motion tracked graphics project for an internship application. it will be about expressing yourself in the freest manner possible


• i am making a computer model of a bunch of legos for class.


• i am working with a car insurance agent with making her some commercials. we need to hammer out the business aspect of everything, but i want this to happen, so it will.


• getting ready for spain. ashley and i leave in four days!