Kate Gilliland jewellery

The piece of jewellery in the picture above has been hand made by Kate Gilliland a friend of mine, with her permission I decided to loosely re-create the pieces in maya and here are sum of the results.

the texturing still needs a lot of work but with a bit more time and effort I hope to get more detail by getting to grips with a software called "Mud box" so watch this space

Above are some more attempts at modeling the Jewellery, these also need work as again the texturing is no quite right as well as the shape of the pearls that sit in the claw earrings, but I'm quite pleased with how both pieces are shaping up.

This is my Showreel that I have recently up dated

What the future holds

The cowboy is likely to be the next thing I model in maya, looking to model as much as possible to get the experience, get quicker and faster at it and most of all to improve upon it.

The picture below is a sketch of my stunt pilot from my second year project, on my final character back then had his hat on but i was never pleased with the modelling of the face and am thinking of taking a 2nd shot at it

below is a stock rig i have been trying to make, its meant to a sort of mini me if you will. maybe do some walk cycles and other little animations

The General

The general is another character i have been working on recently, above were some initial sketches. but having carried on working  on it i decided to tweak and add some details.which you can see in the picture below.

In this picture I have the full costume, going for more of an older style of clothing.

Also i have added more facial hair which I feel changes the dynamic, giving him much of harder, colder face.


























Below is a work in progress. the face is almost there but the body still need to be loaded up in maya and modelled

Recent projects

The scientist is another character i have been working on, was a bit of a throw away sketch to start with but I went back and pursued. still have to finish sketching out the body so that I can begin to model him in maya  

What I've been doing lately

Above is a character I had originally sketched up a few years back but hadn't got round to finalizing till now. the idea behind the design was to have a character that had a rather snooty personality about them and maybe you might come across in a very posh restaurant.

This is as far as i have got with modelling him in maya at the moment still a fare bit to go.

Final Major Project

for my final major project i was told to choose an aspect of animation that interested me and try to make an animation that would be focused in the chosen area.  As a result I chose to focus on the character modelling side,   I decided I wanted to play on the saying "as blind as a bat"  so i came up with the idea of superhero bat that was always failing because he was blind.

INITIAL CHARACTER DESIGNS

during this phase it was important for me, to make sure I made the right decision when choosing the design to further develop as the character design and modelling was my main focus.  the above pictures range from actually observational drawings of bats to initial designs.   My first concepts were setting me off in the wrong directions as I was trying to create  more humanoid bat, I was then able to come up with a softer design that was a lot more bat like then previous attempts.

FINAL CHARACTER DESIGN NORMAL VERSION

FINAL CHARACTER DESIGN SUPER HERO VERSION

DESIGN INFLUENCES

The above picture is a collage of some of the character and design influences I researched in order to find a character that would be right for my animation   

RENDERS FROM THE FINAL ANIMATION

BREAK DOWN OF THE ZERO TO HERO PROCESS

RENDER OF BAT

3rd year Professorial brief project

My 3rd year was split into 2 major project, the first of which was a professional brief set by animation company RJDM.  The project brief was to create a short character based animation of my choice.  

My idea was to create a funny dating profile video a bit like the intros you would see on television programmes like "Blind Date", where in it you would be introduced to my one and only character Hammish Magoo, through out the dating profile the voice over would be telling us about Hammish's, speaking highly of him but then turning on him and letting out a few secrets of Hammish that would not help him acquire a date. 

Hammish posed in some of the stances he would be in during the animation

FACIAL EXPRESSIONS

The facial expressions were very important to the animation as they would be the only way for my character to convey and feelings 

Some of the character influences I had looked at during the design phase

Final design of Hammish

3D character model of Hammish using Autodesk Maya

2nd Year Character Design Project

During my 2nd year one of the major projects was to design a character. We each picked out character descriptions from a hat and then had to proceed with designing them from scratch, throughout ,it was important to make sure that character was not just a simply a character for the here and now but that it had a past or a history and so acted in a certain way for a reason and mannerisms were not just there for the sake of it but because of a previous event perhaps.  

                                        MY CHARACTER A 1930'S BLIND STUNT PILOT

                                        
                                                                    INITIAL SKETCHES

FACIAL AND COSTUME DESIGN

FINAL DESIGN

Once we had come with a character and a design  that we were happy with next step was make a model of the character with plasticine, because the next step after that would be to make a 3d computer generated character using Autodesk Maya with the aid of the 3d plasticine model. 

After the plasticine model was made the computer 3d modelling began although I had modelled in Maya before this was the first attempt at creating a character that would have a full human skeleton rig, so that I would be able to animate everything from head to toe.  

Using the eventually successfully made computer generated character I then had to successfully make a a short animation that would focus mainly on the face of the character more to the point the mouth as I had to try and master the art of lip-synch, I had to find a short sound clip and come with a 20 sec animation. 

First year 3d animation project

These are some pictures of my first attempt at modelling and eventually animating in 3d.  through out the process I was able to become familiar with  various software such as Adobe Photoshop, Premier and Autodesk Maya.

A quick synopsis of the story of the animation is that there is a rubber that is obsessed with correcting mistakes that he can rub out,  so one day he peers out of the pencil case to see if there is anything that needs correcting and sees this paper with errors made on it and tries to jump out of the pencil case, but the case has other ideas, so every time the rubber jumps out the pencil case slides under and catches him. The pencil case then tricks the rubber into jumping over the edge of the desk into the dark depths of the bin below

INIIAL SKETCHES

MODELLING TH E ENVIRONMENT AND THE CHARACTERS

FINAL RENDERS FROM THE ANIMATION