Animation Showreel 2013

The Mad Scientist In: More Than You Can Chew

This is my M.Des Animation final Masters project.  I chose to create my animation through the medium of stop motion and have it study a singular character.  Time was scheduled for the designing, creating, animating and the editing of the entire project - both sets and characters.

The story is about Professor Greedsworth, a  mad scientist who invents a machine that can generate different kinds of food.  However, inevitably he is engulfed by his own greed.

Busted! (3D Character Animation)

This is a short animation which was an assignment I received in university.  The task was to create a simple bipedal character and rig it, creating a short piece of animation that focuses exclusively on body mechanics and investigate principles that explore human motion and emotion through common actions.
From brief hand out to submission, I was given two weeks to undertake this assignment.  Overall I feel that I coped really well considering I haven't really constructed a fully functioning, rigged model before.

The Alarm Clock

This animation was part of an inanimate object assessment, in which we had to model, rig, light and animate an inanimate object and show it doing basic character movements.

Overall I feel that I did rather well with this task considering the time we were given to fully complete the animation.  The rig of the character is quite basic, however I spent quite a bit of time on the weight paints and afterwards, I believe that I grasped a huge knowledge of this tool that I can use in the future.

I took a "cartoony" approach with this character although I tried to keep the movements rooted to a human style.

Gump and Gil: Episode 1

Gil is a pretty laid back young man except when he's being pestered byhis best friend, Gump. During his morning glance at the "Mebay" auction site, Gil notices an item that he would love more than anything - his idol, Chuck Marshall's, baseball cap. However, someone else appears to have also their eyes on the cap...

This animation was completed by me and another animator in our spare time, we did it in around a time of 48 hours (including sleep and some DVD breaks) 

Earth Explosion

This is a simple earth explosion that I created for a client that required this to be added to a short which is about a man who ends the world on his lunch break.

Abstract Animation

For this project I was to select a sound clip from a varied selection and create a short animation around the sound.  I decided to choose this sound over the others as I liked the techno-style beats and the sound itself is extremely abstract. 

The assignment was to explore the use of colour, movement and sound.

I wanted to experiment and explore the use of colour changes and glow within the scene.

I used a basic, plain wall texture in order to let the colours blend together and bleed onto the wall.

Overall I feel like this assignment turned out rather well as the final outcome is how I had imagined it to look from the beginning.

Hopper Nighthawks Project

Our first assignment in Animation and Sound One was to create a 3D representation of one of Hopper's paintings, either "Nighthawks" or "Office at Night".  I chose Nighthawks as I remember it being referenced from numerous TV shows and always looked at it as a great, successful piece.

Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks"

I felt that I recreated the original view of the scene quite successfully.  I added the characters at the end to give the piece it's overall classic feel.

This is personally my favourite render of the scene as I could experiment with the back wall of the diner that can't be seen from the original view of the painting. 

 I added movie posters from the time the painting was created and a newspaper which had a deadline from that year too.

More Still Life Modelling

This exercise was similar to the previous one, no mental ray permitted again, however basic textures were to be added to the set up objects.

N-cloths were used for the 3 fabrics within the scene.

Glass shaders I usually create couldn't be used within this scene as, without mental ray, they wouldn't show up in the renders. a basic glass texture was assigned to give the idea across.

A video montage of the four final renders.

Still Life Modelling

This exercise helped strengthen my skills using Maya after taking a little time off.  A table of assorted items were placed in a room which I sketched and took photographs off for reference and the aim was to successfully replicate the scene.

While doing this assignment, Maya's "Mental Ray" feature was not allowed to be used.  Since I have always used mental ray, initially it seemed to be a little tricky.

I quite like this render which shows the cables quite well and how they fall over the edge of the box in the scene.

The edges of the book and some of the boxes seem a little too "straight edged" due to be rendering with "Maya Software".

A video I compiled with each of the renders.