Riddlin'

Travis

Just another animation test in preparation for Animation Mentor. This one is a gag I was thinking of as part of a short I'd like to do. The bullet holes were all created using booleans, although next time I may use textures, as booleans can cause serious geometry issues. Worked pretty well for me here tho!
This test was also a chance to take my new rig, Larry, for a test drive. In the hands of a more proficient rigger, he would've been much easier to control, but he works well enough for my needs.

Enjoy!

I finally have my first published title! Iron Man (the game) came out yesterday. While there are versions for the psp and the Wii, Secret Level (my studio) was only responsible for the PS3 and XBox360 versions.

Here's the trailer released at this year's Comic Con.

Strangely, this trailer was never released publicly, and, in my opinion, it's a much better trailer than the ones that were released:

http://www. youtube. com/watch?v=rFYTVR3jwQM

And as a bonus, it has four (maybe five) of my shots in it :) Yay for getting onto Youtube (which is mostly controlled by 12 year old American Idol hopefuls with webcams)!

Here's a shots list:

-Directly after the Fighter Jet shot, there's a quick slow-to-turning shot of Iron Man with his air break wings out.


-(I think the shot directly following this of Iron Man flying down into the camera is mine, but if so, they tweaked the timing to look cartoony... BOOOOO!)
-Directly after he takes out a helicopter with his pulse blastin' chest, there's a shot where he does a barrel roll.


-Directly after it says "In Air or On the Ground", this is a sequence of the final boss battle Cinematic I did.


-Directly after it says "You are a One Man Army", when he flies past the camera, this is another clip from a Cinematic I did.



Hope you like it! I'm just excited to have been a part of such a great game! The movie's DEFINITELY worth checking out in theaters! It's so awesome!!!

Pocket Bike Concept

Just a quick post, but I have an idea for a simple acting piece I'd like to do, and it involves one of those funny little motorcycles called "pocket bikes" that grew to incomprehensible popularity for about a week and a half a few years back. I spent yesterday coming up with my own version. I'll be modeling it soon, but for now, here's the concept!

Drowning with James Cameron...

Here's the other test I did over the weekend. Just a simple clusters test for a dialog piece I'm thinking of doing, based on a really intense sequence in "The Abyss." Hope you like it! Again, please be forgiving of the proxy animation, this is simply a test:

Time to Kill...

This weekend I had a bit of time to kill, so I thought I'd get a jump start on some things I could use for AM. The first is a "proof-of-concept" test I put together. I have been watchin AM reels for a while now, and I know that one particular assignment is to do a ball with a fox-tail bouncing across the screen. I've seen people do some really clever stuff with it, and I wanted to think up something original that would allow me to do the ball bounce while still putting my own creative twist on it. There's a longer idea to this, but in short it involves a mouse trap. I built and rigged the mousetrap, and then couldn't resist giving it a test run. Hope you like it! (Again, just proof-of-concept... the animation's a little crappy, please be kind ;)



Then my wife came home, and had to do some homework, so I thought I'd do some more Maya-ing. I've seen a lot of box lifts through AM, and while the animation's usually very impressive, there's still something boring about a Lambert cube. So I thought I'd build a pumpkin to use for my lifts. I'm going to give it clusters and whatnot to make it feel inside-heavy and "fleshy." This is just one render (ignore the "hay," I was bored) of how it looks, but I'm decently happy with it! Hope you like!



I had one more project this weekend (besides rigging an accorn, which isn't very exciting) but sadly my connection's not letting me upload the video, so I'm afraid you'll just have to wait for it! Until next time!

Back to School...

I've officially been accepted into Animation Mentor! Yippieeeee! Pending finding the financial means, I will begin classes June 30th. That gives me a nice long time to sit on my butt... Actually, it works out well, as Golden Axe is currently in "crunch" mode, and things will be crazy until around May or June.

So from here on in, this blog will be solely dedicated to my progress through AM. Things'll get a little nuts, I imagine, so I may not be able to post as frequently as I'd like, but we'll see what happens!

Wish me luck!

Introducing Bambalina!

I've been planning a short called "The Magnet Vendor" for a little over a year. I'll give a synopsis a little later, but I wanted to show a bit of the progress. I've begun modeling one of the key characters, Bambalina (Italian for "Little Girl"). She will not be introduced until the last segment of the short, but is very important to the overall feel, and I wanted to start her before the title character, as I feel she'll lay down a lot of the groundwork for the short's style. Here are a few renders of her head thus far. Enjoy!