En Garde!

So about a week or so ago, sjsu had a guest speaker come in and give a pretty cool demo. His name was Chris Duval, and he was an actor, teacher and fight choreographer with the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He was quite the character....pretty funny guy. So he brought with him some actual sword props along with some pool noodles and grabbed a handful of students and taught them a little thing or two about putting together a believable stage fight.

Not everyone was able to participate, and those that didn't (myself included), got to record all of the action in our sketchbooks. There was a lot of movement, so we had to draw fast and just get the gestures. It was kinda like a figure drawing session, only with less posing and more action, but it was fun overall.

As a result, Courtney decided to make an assignment from this experience and made us turn our sketches/gestures into an actual character. So these were a few of the gestures I was able to get.





This is the character I came up with. I really wanted to avoid the typical "hero" character with a sword, and attempt to make use of the prop in another way. I basically wanted to eliminate the use of a weapon all together and have the prop be something else. So, this is what I came up with.







haha, these were fun too. Enjoy!

-jeff

Another One Bites the Dust.....

So this past weekend, I'm pretty sure mexicans weren't the only ones celebrating.



Another victory for the Pacman.

Way Overdue

It's been sometime since my last post, but the end of the semester is winding down and I think the pressure might be getting to me. I don't know. So much stress, anxiety, excitement, nervousness, fatigue, insomnia, etc, etc. The list goes on and on. But even with only a few weeks left, I'm still keeping myself really, really busy. Hence, the very late update.









So this is the most recent version of my tree house project. I spent most of my time revising the exteriors that I didn't have much time to focus on the interiors. I basically bumped up the contrast on a bunch of things and added some details in certain areas. I also did some color studies, but those will probably never be seen. Hopefully I can go back and work on these some more and push them even further. Perhaps even redo the color versions. Enjoy!

-jeff

Animaya...

So this semester, along with vis dev and bfa, im also taking a digital animation class. I originally wanted to take the class just to become more familiar with Maya and animating in 3D. The only other animating that I've done is the traditional paper flipping and vector/symbol based in Flash. I have used Maya before, but it was mostly just modeling and surfacing....barely any animating. So I figured, since I was just taking the class as an elective, I thought it wouldn't hurt to try something new.

So far, the class has been pretty enjoyable. I was struggling a bit at first. It took me a while to develop a steady workflow, just because I had to familiarize myself with all the tools and funcitons, and just figuring out how everything worked. The assignments went by fast....we started with a simple ball bounce, then immediately moved onto more complex stuff. By the third or fourth assignment, we were already animating human rigs. Pretty crazy.

So it's almost the end of the semester, and I'm just now starting to get a grasp of how things work. I'm starting to get the hang of it, and the process is becoming a little bit quicker. We're already working on our final, which is an acting/dialouge test. It's still a work-in-progress, there is a bit more refining I have to do, but overall, I like the way it's going...and my teacher does too.




It's my first semester animating in Maya....I must say, I'm pretty impressed with myself.

More Trees and Houses

So these are the more recent versions of my treehouse designs. I added a bit more to the exterior and completely redid the interior. They definitely still need to be touched up. Some are more successful than others, but I got some good feedback and I really need to bump up the contrast. Make the lights lighter and the darks darker. While I'm working in photoshop, the values seem to read ok, but whenever I have them printed out, it ends up being lighter. Still working on improving my digital painting skills. Gotta get back to work, enjoy!

-jeff

Tree Hizzouse

So these are from Courtney's vis dev class. We're designing a tree house as a continuation of the Gary Soto project. These sketches are still pretty rough, as I am still trying to narrow down my decisions. I have experimented with a little bit of lighting, but I can't really take that next step until I tighten up my drawings and make sure everything is refined and solid. Enjoy!

-jeff


Tree house exterior


Tree house Interior

kitchen designs

This is for Courtney's viz dev class. Our assignment was to design a kitchen based off of the short stories of writer, Gary Soto. The scene takes place in the late 1950's to early 1960's in Fresno, CA. Our requirements were to provide two different shots of the kitchen, each with a different lighting scenario...as well as provide an orthographic view or schematic to show how the kitchen is laid out.

While I was painting these in photoshop, the values seemed to read okay. But when I printed them out, the gray tones all looked similar. I could definitely bump up the contrast and go darker with the shadows. Had a lot of issues with perspective-both linear and atmospheric. I think if I had a bit more time, I would have liked to play around more with the lighting scenarios. Overall, I felt that this one assignment was very beneficial in that I learned a lot about just basic fundamentals and the design process. Enjoy!

-jeff