Updates from the mists!

Ok since my last post quite a bit has happened. Firstly I got the results of my MA in 3D computer animation and I passed with a distinction (Woo Hoo! :)), I've returned to the Isle of Man for the time being mostly because I'm flat broke, I will be seeking employment within the computer arts from here on out. I've resumed my old teaching job at the Isle of Man college, teaching illustration, drawing, painting etc.. it's quite fun, which is good. a couple of projects on the horizon that I can't really talk too much about at the moment, but trust me when I say they are very exciting.
for now though, here is my showreel:  Juan Moore showreel from Juan Moore on Vimeo.

FINISHED MY MASTERS!!!

So here we are then, It's the 16th August a date which i thought would never arrive but has snuck up on me rather quickly it is of course the deadline for my masters project. I have handed everything in and feel weird, with nothing to do. I'm fairly happy with what I have produced, I have a debrief meeting on Monday, so i guess I find out then. results will be sent out on August 30th, I return to the island next week and have secured some part time teaching work for at least a year, so whilst I'm looking for work, freelance or otherwise, I will have something. just excited to be finished: here is the finished project:

WATCH THE ANIMATION HERE

Masters project

So I've finished the pre production for my masters which took me all round the houses, I started off looking at computer games, then 3D printing and to what I will actually be doing: I'm going to model the little girl from my werewolf narrative and through the course of 5 models get her to be a werewolf, worst case scenario this will be just 5 models, best case there will be animation and will hopefully be a nice little short narrative.
I have deluded myself a few times, thinking that I could be a digital painter, however now I feel I'm actually getting somewhere with it, though I doubt it will ever replace my traditional work, I can see myself using it more often.
I will endeavour to update this a bit more often, but the masters will likely be very intense, so no promises.

3D printing

So everywhere I look at the moment, I see 3D printing absolutely everywhere, so as part of my Personal inquiry (a sort of research project I had to undertake for my MA, which ends in a presentation of the findings) I chose to have a crack at it, in order to do this I used the imp-like character I used to use a lot for art and illustration (pre welcome to the neighbourhood project).

I then took the simple character sketch and began modelling it in 3D, everything I read about 3D printing stated that as long as the mesh is water tight (no holes) manifold (no open faces or shared edges) it should be fine, there was no mention to ngons or unquaded triangles (sorry for the tech talk, these are things to avoid when creating a model for animation)..

So I deliberately left both of these things in, I kept the model low polygon (it's under 2k polys) and did not equally space the polygons, again this is something not mentioned in any of the write ups I've read about 3D printing and so after an afternoon I had this:

I then took it to see the 3D printing researchers here at the NCCA (who are doing amazing things) and I printed it on desktop 3D printer they have in their lab:

This took 11 hours to print and is around 3 inches tall (i didn't have to be there the whole time, we left it printing over night) As you can see, the structure is there, but that's about it, most detail is lost, partly due to the printer used and the plastic not being hot enough at the start. an unusual wood like pattern appeared on the model too, though unexpected, it has a nice quality to it.

Convinced I could get petter results I sent the mesh to a commercial printing service, who produced this:

The detail is all there, even down to the un-smoothed polygons. this has opened my mind up to all kinds of possibilities. Many people have asked me about sculptures of my work and the main reason why I've never looked into it is because of the spindly nature of my characters, I didn't think they could stand up. when I'm finished with the MA, this will receive a lot of  more of my attention. look out galleries!!

Zombies (again) and How long has it been since I updated this?

Wow, ok I'll admit it has been a bit of awhile since I updated this, The last few (by few I mean many) months have been so busy and so intense, work wise I never would have believed it possible. well since last December< I'm still in Bournemouth, still on the masters course here  at the NCCA, it's been fantastic, we have just completed all work leading up to the final masters project and now have a brief break before that begins, touch wood at the end of August I will be hopefully finished and will then be Juan Moore MA (fingers crossed) so the thing that has kept me the most busy by far was the group project (began in January, ended in March) I got to be the Director and worked with a great team to produce the following animation:

for an HD version go here: https://vimeo.com/65859663
I know, it's about zombies again, it something I keep coming back to, it never quite goes away, though I'm a bit zombied out at the moment so it maybe awhile before I go back to them again. I'm very pleased with the project and I'm happy to say that the team got distinctions all round. so all is good on that front.

Getting to grips with 3D

I know I don't start my course until September but there have been a few niggling doubts going through my poor addled brain of late, the biggest being uncertain of how well I'd be able to learn computer programs in a short space of time (I've always relied more on paint and pencils) the other being actually thinking in three dimensions, rather than trying to make something 2D look like it could exist in a 3D world. so on my day off this week I thought, right I'm going to get to grips with this, so I downloaded a free trial of one of the programs that I would be learning, mostly to see how complicated it is...yes it's very complicated but after a few false starts and a couple of very helpful youtube videos I finally got my head around the basics of meshes and the like and even managed to construct my own mesh ready to sculpt onto:

I decided to work on my zombie character as it seemed like a simple albeit stylised design that I'm very familiar with, now I know that the mesh I built has a few errors, I know the arms are too long, I simply wanted to take a figure through the process, to see how it works, so once I was reasonably satisfied with the mesh I began to sculpt:

I tried to keep it in the style of the original drawing and I think it worked to an extent, I enjoyed the sculpting immensely, I must admit feeling advantaged when sculpting the clothes, having spent practically all of last year painting creases into shirts on 2d paintings, I lean't quickly that regarding the sculpt and particularly the face, that less is definitely more. Once I was done with the sculpt I decided to have a go at adding some colour:

I purposely kept this very basic as not to confuse myself, given how complicated every other process was on this program, i was surprised out how straightforward this was. The exercise did exactly what I hoped it would do, it has alleviated some of my worries about the programs and I'm very much looking forward to September. for a first go I don't think it's too bad :)