Beatrice Solas!

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Beatrice is a bachelorette who lives alone with her dog in a small townhouse. She is very unlucky in love, but it's likely that she's looking in all the wrong places. Will she find Mr. Right?

My Little Quetzal - Finished Renders

I just realized that I never uploaded any of my finished renders of My Little Quetzal! My Little Quetzal is a friendly, vegetarian version of the fearsome Incan feathered serpent; during the summer of 2008, I took My Little Quetzal from concept to finished model. He is the protagonist of a fictional video game.

To refresh your memory, here's his concept, and a final render of him next to his checker-map:


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Aaaand now, here's the final renders. You'll notice that he's a little more refined than his squishy, fly-swatter-spots concept; this was partially a personal preference and partially due to critique and feedback I received during the course.


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And these are his texture maps:


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Parakeet Legion WIP

Just one today, a snapshot of my latest painting. It's a little bit quirky, but... well, what isn't?



Not too much to say about it now, other than "It's a parakeet." Specifically, it's a budgerigar - Melopsittacus undulatus, literally "small striped parrot." The term 'parakeet' can refer to any small, long-tailed parrot, so it's important in aviculture to be specific!

I'm excited to work on this. :)

The Linebacker

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A little something from this weekend. I had an image of horses fulfilling the high school stereotypes - the jock, the geek, the art student. This fellow is the linebacker, all muscle-bound and showboat-y. He doesn't know that he's running towards the wrong end zone.

I don't think I'll tell him.

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Next on my list is this crazy idea of an attack parakeet. I don't know where (if anywhere) that'll go, but I'll be sure to let you all in on it if it winds up being something!

Evelyn portrait; Crayons!

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Just a little portrait of Evelyn wearing her hair-towel. At one point, Radar's stomach growls mightily, but she can't hear it over the noise her hair dryer is making.
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My Advanced 3D class was given an assignment: Produce a 7-second animation that tells a complete story. We worked in groups of three; my group produced the following video. My responsibilities included modeling the crayons, animating the coloring-page scene, and post-production. My groupmate Melissa animated the texture on the page to make it seem like the crayons were really coloring, and my groupmate Kat was responsible for the scene with the pencil sharpener. We had three class sessions to complete the project.

Early Concepts

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Concepting took a while. What kind of dog would Radar have to be? What kind of woman is Evelyn? My final result, as you can see from a few posts ago, is somewhat of a mixture of these two ideas - she's homely without being dumpy, and she's pretty without being a power-mad psycho woman. Radar is a fairly stereotypical hound, with the long ears and the lanky build, but he's a little more clever than your average beagle.

A fantastic dog/owner reference, for anyone looking to drum up some characters, is Disney's 101 Dalmatians (the original one, not that live-action re-make with Jeff Bridges, ugh). At the beginning, Pongo is looking for a date for Roger, and surveys the local women as they walk their dogs to the park.
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On Tuesday in class, we watched several of the animations from Siggraph. They were beautiful, and so inspiring. The French animation schools have really become a force to be reckoned with, and Tree Robo was immensely moving and thought-provoking. If you haven't seen them yet, you should definitely check the DVD out!

Dog Reference

As I worked on Evelyn and Radar, I realized that despite having two big, goofy dogs at home, I really had no idea how a dog was built and how it moved. I looked up some dog anatomy on Google, and discovered that they're constructed pretty interestingly!


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I've been watching my own dogs more closely now, and they're pretty inspiring. They'd be better models if they did something other than sleep all the time.

Updates!

Been a while! I've got some shiny new stuff to share this week, including one of my animated projects, so stay tuned!

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I've been hard at work on my senior thesis here at MICA (eek!), and have generated quite a number of sketches and peripheral-type pre-production artwork.



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My thesis involves a young woman named Evelyn and her dog, Radar. Evelyn is preparing for a date, and realizes that she's late. As she rushes to prepare, her dog Radar keeps begging to be fed. Will she make it to her date? Will she remember to feed the dog? You'll have to wait and see!

My Little Quetzal

For my Video Game Art class, I've been creating an original video game character. Mine is My Little Quetzal, a friendly, vegetarian version of the fearsome Incan feathered serpent.


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He's still a work in progress, but he's almost done. I am very pleased with him - check out how much more awesome he is than Naraya!

3D Character Model - Naraya

Naraya's low-poly model is complete! This is my first-ever actual model in 3DS, and I'm pretty pleased with the result. The only catch is, it has to be completely unwrapped, Z-brushed, textured, and rigged by next Tuesday. It's not like I need sleep!