My History with 3D

I had a look through my old backup hard drive today and I came across my first ever 3D 'artwork' from 2003. Most of this is complete rubbish but I quite enjoyed going back through these old renders.  The first few images were made with a piece of software called Amapi (I'm happy) which I got free with a magazine.

I've only ever really been interested in modelling characters.  This is my first attempt at a human head... although I sneakily avoided having to model the ears by colouring him green and calling him an 'Alien'... you'll notice that this is something I do a lot!

An early 'Pig Boy' perhaps?

Pfft, a Purple Dinosaur character would never be popular!

My character designs were getting a bit lazy by this point, this is basically a bogey with arms.  I think this was modelled in Amapi but rendered in Blender making it my first Blender character.

Still no ears though.

This is my first completely modelled character with arms and legs.  HULK SMASH!

I just had a look on BlenderArtists.org and the thread I started in the feedback forum is still there!

My second attempt at a character from the movies.  An Uruk Hai!

This was made long before Blender had any kind of decent hair system.

The eyes look kinda cool though.

WTF?!!!  There's no way you made that Bro.

Uh, yeah I did.  And stop calling me Bro.

The reason this one is so much better than the dross I had been churning out before was because this is the first time I ever used reference images.

Lesson Learned: Use reference images!











This little green fella is Bob!  He was the star of my first ever half decent piece of animation.  This clip also contains some of my lame attempts at walk cycles and I've also included one of my first ever (rotoscoped) Flash animations, just because I thought it was funny.

Pretty Awful!  In the end I decided that 3D animation was just too difficult, so I started looking at 2D animation instead and I discovered Anime Studio Pro.  I switched over to ASP and focused on 2D animations for the next few years, but during that time I always had Blender on the back of my mind and I regularly kept up to date with it's development.

Around 2008 I started looking at Blender again, this time however the software and documentation had improved a lot.  Also I had a couple of years of 2D animation experience under my belt which proved to be invaluable in understanding all the concepts.  I made a quick test animation with Blender just to see if I could do it... and I could!  Well, sort of.

And that brings us right up to where I am now with Brian Park, the X-Wing and Sarlacc sketches.  I may not be the best animator in the world... actually I think it's safe to assume that I'm not!  But I'm very happy (Amapi) with the direction things are heading, mainly because I never thought I'd make it this far!

Captain Jack Sparrow

There's a new Lonely Island album coming out soon :0)

April News Update

April was a bit of a weird month, what with having no deadlines or projects to motivate me for the first time in years.  I've been spending a lot of my time learning some new animation techniques by watching the awesome video tutorials over at blendercookie.com and blenderguru.com.  I wish those sites had been around in 2003!

I've also been watching lots of Freddie Wong videos :0)

TV Stuff

At the start of the month I finished off the last of the scripts I was working on.  It was a lot of fun but it's a relief to get my weekends back.  There's potentially some more exciting news on the TV writing front!  But it may not pan out so I'll shut the hell up for now.

My Projects

In no particular order:  I've been sketching up ideas and thinking about some characters for a new animated web series.  I'm also still planning to write some song lyrics.  But I haven't really started any of that yet.

The Interview
And Finally!  The interview I did with my friend Danny for a local arts magazine was published.  The interview was good  although somewhere along the line the text got screwed up and they double printed half of the questions so it doesn't read very well.  You can read it here (6Mb PDF)

The bit I wasn't expecting was the photo!  Look how big my head is!

I have been compared to a bald Colin Firth (really?!).  I think I look more like a big, pondering, Melon Headed fool!



Oh and...
I spent several hours today rigging the ED-209 model that I downloaded off of TurboSquid.  What this means is that I can now use him in a sketch!  No wonder he's happy!

ED-209 Quick Test

ED-209 is probably the coolest looking film robot ever designed.  But then that's not really saying a lot when you compare him to C-Bloody-3PO or Johnny Five.  Either way, he's pretty cool and I wish I had his voice.

I downloaded a free ED-209 model from Turbosquid.com tonight, then I set up some camera tracking with PFHoe Pro and then I rendered this short test video in Blender.  I'm quite pleased with how it came out, especially having him obscured behind the wall at the start.  That took ages to do!  Hopefully I'll get some time to rig the model so I can animate him a bit, and then who knows?!  Perhaps he'll star in his own sketch.

Check out this test video... you have 20 seconds to comply (Sorry, I couldn't resist).