Favor for a Friend

I have a friend whom I met in my first Digital Media class. He's in for game design and is using his schooling to recruit modelers and animators. He has already started making some games for the xbox360. I have begun making models for his future plans.

The first model he asked me to make was a gunship. the way he described it over the phone, it sounded like he wanted a submarine shaped spaceship with a gun attached. The more I thought about it, I decided what he really needed was a big gun with a spaceship attached. I know it sounds the same, but the distinction is kinda important.



This is what I sent him. He dropped his idea in favor of my design. Next up was deciding upon a color scheme. I had this idea that soldiers of any kind like traditions. To that end I decided that the fleet should look like it came right off the Pacific Ocean in World War Two. So, three color schemes, two variations of Battleship gray;



and the blue color scheme of the battleship on which the VJ Day treaty was signed.


The Dark gray was decided upon and work commenced on detailing. This is the first ship I have finished, and I post it here with Permission. This is the Gun Ship, kind of a space floating sniper rifle. The fleet using this ship are not the good guys.



I'll be posting more later. Currently I am working on the fourth ship in this series.

UVU CS Building

This semester I am also taking a basic drawing class. We just finished the section on drawing perspective. We had the assignment to pick a place within UVU's Computer Science Building and draw the perspective we saw. Upon seeing my finished product, The teacher explained that what I had done was what he would expect from his second and third year students. I post it here for you to see. Click to see it bigger.

First Character Animation

First block of summer semester is over, and second block is well under way. I thought I would take a moment to show you what I did in my Principles of 3d Animation class.

The Instructor had us each purchase a stuffed animal that we would first model, then texture, then animate. Here is the Stuffed Animal I chose.


And here he is again on the computer.

The model has a skeletal structure hidden inside. Both the model and the skeletal structure are real easy to mess up if your not careful. One of the ways we prevent this is to make them untouchable, and instead we give ourselves "Controls" to work with. That is what those colored lines are. Since it is easy to get turned around when animating, my controls are color coded. Red for Right, Blue For Left, and Green for anything down the center. This makes it easy to identify certain body parts using a shape, then add a color for the side. Then you can move him, like so:


Here are a couple of animations I made with him. First we have a walk. Note in the final 3 seconds the moving colored lines.






Next I have a run sequence posted. Initially, I liked the walk better, but in retrospect, I think this run is best.






In related news, The senior Animation project is floundering and several of us new to the 3d program were recruited to assist in the animation portion of it. I really don't know that I'm going to be able to contribute very much, but I'm giving it a go anyway. It's not for school credit or money or anything, but having my name in the credits as an animator won't hurt a resume.