Back from the dead

Well it's been quite a while since I updated this! Alot has been going on especially with school. To break it down I'm very close to graduating. I can only hope the final review panel will be merciful. Below I've added some new animations I did this quarter and all the new things I've done are on my new website. www.christascribbles.com





There's been some mutterings of Wacom's new product out and frankly I'm really, really, reeeally excited for it! It's called the Inkling. Basically it allows you to draw with a pen on real paper. You can then attach the device to the computer and download your sketches and it automatically turns them into vector or bitmap images.
For people like me, who prefer to draw with pen and paper than draw digitally it's a Godsend lol! It's really affordable too. I can't wait! Here's the promo video:

Easter Island

An assignment for my Advanced lighting and Texture class. We were required to follow contest guidelines on DigitalTutors.com and also submit our piece for the contest. The basic gist of it was to create a background/landscape in 3D or 2D but since this was a 3D class we were required to do a 3D piece. Here's a couple wireframe renders along with the final piece. Click the images to see the bigger versions please.

Shadow of the Fallen King

Alright, so I meant to get to this sooner but I've just been a bit lazy.

Here is the final render of the short opening movie for the senior game Shadow of the Fallen King.



The story break down of the short is, Set, the red hippo guy, plans
to over throw Osiris, his brother and take over the throne. He hands him a scarab which is triggered to stab him and inject him with
poison. The poison weakens Osiris allowing Set to kick Osiris down the stairs and dismember him. He sends Osiris' body
across Egypt in separate canopic jars.

Our team was much smaller than a typical animation team. There is usually about 12-15 people on a team there were only 5 on our team
so we had alot of work to do.

So with that here's a list of everything I did specifically on the short:

the storyboard and animatic:



The animation for these scenes:






Designed the team logo as well as the animation for the opening logo:


All the color textures for both character's clothes and armor:










the anubis model and texture:



the knife model and texture:


the color texture for the scarab amulet:



the color texture for the pillars:



the color texture for the throne:


And contacted and commissioned the very talented voice actor Joshua Tomar


Thanks to my teammates!! Keron Arthur, Chelsea Shirahata, Alex Munguia, Korsyca Oya
and of course thanks to our very patient instructor Rocky Bright.

And that about sums it up. Members from my team I intend to keep working on this to finish up parts that we didn't get to during the actual class. I hope you guys liked the short :]

jump!!

In my Advanced 3d Animation class we've been working on portfolio pieces for our demo reels. The instructor gave us free reign to pick what we wanted to do. I chose to do a leap and a roll.

There are still things I'd like to go back and tweak before I put it in my reel for instance the lighting, the anticipation of the jump at the beginning, as well as the fast bend he does while he's in the air. But for the assignment this is ok for now.

Untitled from Christa Carpenter on Vimeo.

This was my reference video



I've also been hard at work with my team working on our cinematic. I'm really hoping we finish it since we've got a really cool story but we're a little behind and I'm stressing out about it. Here's just a look at something I textured for the environment. it's just one of the background pillars. (also keep in mind I really have no clue how to read hieroglyphics. I was just going for something convincing heh ) Click the image to see the bigger version.

Finally finals!

Alright so the quarter ended yesterday for me but I didn't get to finish rendering my full video for one of my finals (it was taking ten minutes a frame and I had 265 frames D: ) and it made me really upset because it was turning out beautifully. My instructor saw what frames I had rendered already and said that they looked legit enough to give me a good grade which was fantastic because I was all kinds of worried about it.

So here are some of the frames that I had already rendered. When I get the chance I'll finish it off and put up the full video. This was for my 3D Visual effects class. (when the particles hit the grass flowers spring up)





My Character Animation final turned out better than I thought it would. There are still some things that I'd like to go back and fix though as per usual like the feet sliding around so much >:[ I'd also like to make it longer, but anyway here it is!


Here's the ref vid! I posted it before but I didn't feel like linking again so here you go!



And last my Anubis statue for Team Production is FINALLY done. I'm glad too because I was just getting sick of looking at that thing. I like how it turned out overall there are still anatomy issues that bug me but it'll do! Click on the image to see the details better!

Mudbox sculpting

So here's a bit more progress on my Anubis statue. I'm adding some finer details in Mudbox which is a 3D sculpting program. It's alot of fun to use because it's more like actual sculpting and drawing than anything you might do in Maya or 3DS Max. However, I do wish I used Zbrush instead only because I've used Zbrush before and there are more people and teachers at my school who know their way around Zbrush better than Mudbox. And also I've never opened Mudbox before so that was a bit of silly move on my part lol Although moving and navigating around in it is identical to Maya and all the tools are there up front and pretty self explanatory so it wasn't too hard to pick up.

Here's a quick little vid detailing what Mudbox is all about:



I wanted to record the entire face sculpt but the computer was lagging too much from the recording so I had to cut it short to get more work done on the model. It's a little hard to tell what's going on as well :\ Anyway here it is! The vid is about 4 minutes long.

Anubis Mudbox sculpt from Christa Carpenter on Vimeo.

Here are some stills:

Anubis model progress

I've been working on a prop for my team production's animation. It's an Anubis statue, I'm not really proficient in modeling but there's only five of us on the team so we all have to do some modeling. I'm actually a bit surprised that it's overall turning out alright considering how horrendously bad I am at modeling. The backlegs have been giving me issues. I think I may just redo the legs. Hopefully it doesn't come to that though because we're on a pretty tight schedule. Anyway, here's a video of me working on the face it's about 7 minutes long along with some stills.

Anubis model progress from Christa Carpenter on Vimeo.

At this point, if my instructor tells me the backlegs are ok I think I'll take it into Zbrush or Mudbox to do some sculpting.

Light my fire

Another assignment for my 3D visual effects class. We had to do a fire simulation. I think I'll go back and tweek the flame a bit and add more lighting to the torch so it doesn't look so flat. I did this really quick in about 20 minutes or so because I didn't have alot of time the day I was working on it. I haven't turned it in yet so I've still got time to do some noodling about with it!



Also, for my final for my character animation class we have to animate a dance for our chosen rig. I'm gonna do this little 5 second clip I found on youtube. Fun times!

Master copy

My finished master copy of a clip from 9. It was an assignment. As always I'm not completely happy with it. I didn't do the rest of the hand movement at the end and he still looks really stiff but as for the overall finished product I'm ok with it.



Here's the clip I was supposed to copy.

Storm's a brewin'

An assignment for my 3D visual Effects class. We had to create a storm with lightning. I'm not completely happy with it I couldn't get the rain to look right it looks more like snow. The clouds came out decent and the water as well. The lightning could use some work too though.

Hey Taxi!

An assignment for my Character Animation class. The assignment was to animate a character walking forward and talking. I think the walk cycle turned out alright the legs are still a bit jumpy. The point where the character waves still needs much work and I'd like to incorporate more acting in to the animation as it seems the character itself doesn't really have a ton of life to it. So I'll be working on it over the next few weeks, shoot I might even redo it with a different audio clip (...yeah that's me talking in the vid ha! ) Also, sorry for the poor video quality alot of small detail in the face and body movement is hard to see.



Here is a sketch I did for another artist on Deviant Art. We did an art trade and this was my half. The characters belong to him but the drawing was done by me.

Here are just the lines-


And with colors-

Dynamics

Been playing with nCloth and Dynamics in my 3D Visual Effects class. We've been working on a pirate ship for the pass week or two. We were to make the sails billow out and the ropes swing around as well as animate the ship bobbing back and forth here's what I have so far.



Here's also a test I did before working on the ropes for the ship. It's just a simple bridge breaking and swinging down.

Lipsync warm up

Just something we did as a refresher in lipsyncing in my Character Animation class today. About 45 minutes of work, it could use improving especially with the face overall, but since this was just a warm-up, it's ok as-is.

Finals week and possible comic concepts.

Well finals week has finally come and gone, this was by far the toughest most mentally/physically straining quarter I've had while being in school. I had four project heavy classes and I couldn't put 100% into either of them because of time and program availability. Many sleepless nights, issues with money, Life in general got in the way as it usually does. I overall only came out with mediocre assignments that I'm not all too proud of and barely passed my classes by the skin of my teeth. Not too happy with myself at the moment.

I already put up my Materials and Lighting final a couple days ago so here's my Advanced 2D Animation final and my Intermediate 3D animation final.

Advanced 2D is far from being finished and it's very unpolished. I have to step away from it for now because at the moment I'm tired of looking at it.

Advanced 2D animation final from Christa Carpenter on Vimeo.

Intermediate 3D final actually didn't come out too bad but I still think it could be improved on.

Lipsync Final from Christa Carpenter on Vimeo.

In some lighter news a friend from school and I are planning a comic project. It was actually from a group project from this quarter and we liked the premise and the idea so we decided to take it further. Here's a few sketches I drew up, it was originally for the group presentation, these aren't final designs for the possible comic but something along the lines I was thinking for these two clans. Anyone from DA might think these look familiar to the Civil War Red vs. Blue idea but...that was purely coincidental. These guys aren't really fighting each other anyway.

Materials and Lighting

My final for Materials and lighting. I really really don't like how it came out, It's garbage ugh... I'm definitely NOT a modeling/texturing/lighting artist, but I spent alot of time on this and stressed for eleven weeks over this class so I figured I may as well put up what I worked on. The model itself is not mine it's from 3Drender.com. The texturing and lighting was done by me.

There's artifacting on the walls and table because I didn't have final gather turned up high enough X[

Kitchen from Christa Carpenter on Vimeo.

Watercan

An assignment for class. Basically light and texture a simple exterior scene with a water can.

I'm pretty satisfied with it. The shadows got a bit blown out I'll need to adjust those later but for now it turned out ok. The textures were nabbed from CGtexture.com

walk cycle

Here's a walk cycle done for my Intermediate 3D class. It needs some work but here's what I got so far. Also, it's pretty fast I forgot to loop it, my bad.

Photons

Hey! I have a materials and lighting class this quarter which means I'll be doing lots of 3D work in Maya. We played around with photons and global illumination today. So here's the result of that. The bedroom scene is actually a work in progress. It should look much nicer in a few weeks time. The ball and square room, however, was just some practice.





Also, here are a few marker sketches I did over my summer break for some friends over at DeviantArt. The characters are not mine and don't belong to any franchise or company.