Things I've done and stuff.

Here are some things I've done. And stuff.



This is a dinosaur. Were it an actual dinosaur it would make dinosaur sounds.


This is a grumpy redneck fisherman. Were he an actual grumpy redneck fisherman he would make grumpy redneck fisherman sounds.


This is Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2. Were he an actual Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2 he would make Dr. Breen from Half-Life 2 sounds.


These are some drawings. Were they real blah blah blah drawing sounds blah.


This is the animation I've been doing, off and on (more off than on) for the past 3 months.

It's still a WIP, not even a full polish pass yet. (ignore a lot of the face, especially the eyes which jump around a couple times.) There's a lot of things I hate about it right now. Several times I've wanted to scrap it, because I went about things the wrong way. I didn't do enough blocking before diving in being the main issue.

My goal for this one was to make something energetic, a little on the cartoony side. That's starting to come out. I'm working on making holds cleaner and making things less floaty at the moment. I probably won't be able to get to this for a while, since I'm going back to Ohio for a week and a half or so. I'm thinking I'll just try and get this to a point of being passable, and move on to something else. Probably something more subdued and subtle.

11 Second Club Update

Brakdown poses and lip sync blocking added. Hands and ponytail posing is not finished, and I haven't made a pass at the upper-facial region yet.

Aside from that, critiques are welcome.

Some Musicing

I'm finishing off a song I've been working on for about 6 months on-and-off. I've added some stuff to the end, and I'm going to start thinking about recording soon.

Here's the song:
NewtrackUpdate by Ryanimation

I want some feedback on this song, but first, some things to note:

- 3:15-3:50 is going to be a lightly-distorted improvised guitar solo.
- The transition at 4:44 will blend a bit better. There will be more overlap between the parts.
- 5:01-End is going to be a clean improvised guitar solo. I might repeat that section a few more times depending on how the solo comes out. I kept it short because listening to it without a solo is a bit tedious.
- There will be a bit more at the end eventually. I haven't planned how I want it to end, but I don't want to fade out like I do on basically every other song I write.

Basically the goal in writing this song was initially to write a clean, jazzy prog-rock song. As it evolved, it showed some post-rock influence. I wrote the last bit today to merge some elements from the whole song. It has a jazzier feel than the parts before it, but there are other musical similarities to those parts.

So if anyone wants to give feedback, I'd like to hear what people think about the song as a whole, if anything sounds wrong or out of place or what have you. Also, I need a name for it, something that makes sense with what one might hear in the song.

11 Second Club - Blocking Pass 1

http://vimeo.com/30259105

First pass of blocking.

I improvised the ending a bit. It was hard to do what I was thinking before of the girl sort of startling the guy, since her accent on "phobias" wasn't hard enough. My solution doesn't have as much to do with the actual dialogue, but I've turned that extended silence into her noticing the guy isn't listening. I think it works better than what I was going for.

Obviously you'll notice I haven't done anything with the faces yet. Plans are to do a pass of breakdown poses, then go in to do face blocking, then rough lip sync, then polish.

Also, you may notice the camera isn't positioned too well by the end. My plan is to animate the camera like it's subtly handheld. Just enough to keep it moving and keep everything in frame.

I'll have an update probably after the breakdown/face poses, sometime this week.

11 Second Club thumbnails

I'm going to be doing the 11 Second Club this month. You can find the audio clip on this page here.

I've already thumbnailed my version:



That arrow next to #6 is indicating a camera move, since that's probably not too clear. The last 2 frames, I'm not sold on what I'm going to be doing yet. It's gonna take some messing around.

Drawings: 9-30-2011

First one's just something off the top of my head. The guy on the bottom is a caricature of some random picture I saw, and then pushed the caricature to something more simple. I think doing this might help my caricaturing.

Caricaturing

So I've been killing time watching Top Gear (I know nothing about cars and care about them just as much, but it's entertaining enough for background noise). I've been doing loose caricatures of people in the background. I've been challenging myself a bit by not pausing to get a look at who I'm drawing, and just going by memory.

More people doodles.

2 shots from Episode 1 of Game of Thrones, doodled quickly, and then some shading. Second one's a bit wonky because the lighting was kinda strange. Also as bad as I am at drawing hands, drawing that bow hand-guard thing was stupid-hard. So it looks like a mess.

Run Cycle Test

Just trying out an asymmetrical run cycle. Nothing too special. It took an hour or two more than it should have, but I wasn't focusing too intently. Some of the asymmetry was lost in polish, but it's still noticeable in the arms/chest.

TV drawrerrings

I felt like sketching a bit for the first time in a while while catching up on TV shows last night. The first several are from Weeds, next several from Torchwood (which has been really bleh this season, although I'm not surprised. I think I'd really dislike the show if it weren't for Doctor Who) and last one from Breaking Bad.

^Clicky Clicky^

Temporarily Willingly Unemployed

In order to stay employed in the near future, I need to take some time off of work. We don't have any big projects currently, so I'm taking August off so they don't have to pay me, and thus don't have to fire me. So I'll be entertaining myself with personal projects, or at least that's what I tell myself.

Anyway, here's something small I did today for a .gif challenge project thing on reddit.com's animation subreddit. The idea was to make a quick gif over the weekend regarding the word "spell." This took me far too long (3-4 hours?), and is proof that I'm not really a 2D animator.




I will have plenty more useless projects coming along the next few weeks. Hopefully finishing my Cowboy Western model, and probably a lot of music related stuff. We'll see how that goes.

Another quick thing

There was a request on reddit for a wallpaper of the logo I did for the Progressive Metal subreddit, so I threw this together quick. Nothing much, and I'm mainly posting this here to have it hosted for people.

Things I do when there's no work at work.

I spent a good portion of the day combating some conflict between this mac and my tablet which was making the pen crazy-jumpy today. We're out of shots to work on so I'm just killing time.

Here's a thing I made practicing photoshop painting. Only using the brush tool, aside from the circular selection tool to get the sphere perfect. 10-15 minutes or so.



And here's a drawing, loosely caricaturing Gavin Harrison, as I was watching a Porcupine Tree DVD for a good portion of the day.



I had a bunch more sketches and such from today, but nothing worth showing. This might be happening all week, and then I'm off work for August on a semi-mandatory vacation of sorts.

Sketches.

These are sketches. That's about it.

Drawrerings on the computator-box.

I felt like actually doing something productive after work for once. First one was developed from a doodle I made during work while I was rendering stuff, second one's a newswoman on some episode of Louie that I caricatured and tried to copy the lighting, with limited success.




I'm bad with color. Meh.


And here's a really dumb drawing I did of the Pyro from TF2 in about 15 minutes, at request of some random person on Reddit. Not sure why, I was just bored.

More modeling stuff

An update on where I'm at. I'm pretty far along currently, considering the small amount of time I've had to do this.

All colors are temporary, and the hair needs serious work. I think the beard is going to be done in the textures.


EDIT: Hair looks even worse than it actually is right now from this angle. I know about it, don't worry. Because, you know, I'm sure you were worried.

I Hate Hands

Hands are the worst. They're awful to draw, and awful to model. We should all evolve flippers.

Here's 1 1/2 days work of frustrating work on modeling the hands for my sheriff character. This is the slowest modeling job ever, as I didn't touch it for a month or two. Or three. I'm on month 5 or 6 or something in total.






I'd like to add that I did this without tutorials, surprisingly. Well, maybe surprisingly until you look at my geo. Not sure if it's acceptable.

The Ablogcalypse!

It's been a while, so here's some stuff I've done in the recent past, during rendering downtime at work, and whenever else.

1. Old-timey guy


2. Slightly less old-timey people


3. The Spy from Team Fortress 2, not using any reference.


4. Various heads, 2nd last one is an exaggerated Simon Pegg, and last one an exaggerated Mark Heap (I was watching Spaced at the time)


5. A crazy squirrel-thing.


6. Concept sketch for a Richard Dean spoof/homage digital painting I plan on doing for the r/progrockmusic subreddit. Eventually.

Musicings

HDCwk5update by Ryanimation

An updated song I started recently. It's all MIDI right now, but I've got big plans for this in the future. It's sort of a relaxed but relatively complex beginning half, and it builds to something fairly intense. I don't really have any specific inspiration for the first half in mind. I just wanted something light, but complex. Inspiration for the second half comes from a Sigur Ros/ Anathema (album: We're Here Because We're Here) kind of feel. Sigur Ros in that it builds to a big sound, which I will have strings and piano parts eventually. Anathema more for that post-metal/rock vibe it has.

People doodles.

These are sketches I did of characters from The Walking Dead as I was watching it yesterday. Some more and some less successful.

If only I was productive during the day...

I was doodling in Photoshop late last night, and I took this one sketch to completion.



I was experimenting a bit, and some of this worked and some didn't. At some point I was going for a Mass Effect-type suit, but didn't quite get there. Also, the gun is under-detailed because I did that last and got tired and lazy.


Oh, and here's a bonus creepy guy-thing.

Sketchbookery

I've decided I'm sticking to pen for my sketchbook. Pencil smudges too much, especially the way I hold a pencil. Pen also forces me to not consider erasing, which is both a good and bad thing, but probably best in the long run.

MODEL UPDA- wait no, just sketches.

As usual, some good, some bad. Just a page front-and-back from last night.

Festival info! (And, of course, a model update)

First off, Lunch Breaks is finally in a festival!
Lunch Breaks Blog


Second, model updates:



Made the face skinnier, and made adjustments all over. Mouth, brow, a bit to the ears, the jaw, the neck. This model is actually looking decent smoothed, which is cool (last image, obviously).

If anyone knows any really good 3d hand modeling tutorials, I would be very appreciative. I gave two attempts on my own with hilariously awful results.

Even More Model Updates! (Oh, joy!)

This is probably starting to seem like spam, posting tiny updates every day or so, but I'm doing this to make sure that I keep up on this.



So, obvious change is the first pass on the ears. They're a bit rough right now. More subtle fixes are in the mouth/chin area. I changed up some stuff in the jaw to match the drawings a bit better, and fixed up the mouth to make it not look as much like he's puffing his lips.

Also, I'm really damn slow at modeling.


UPDATE:



(Don't judge the brow/mouth to harshly, they need some work)

Per request from Dave, and a response:

I like the ears at the size they are, it makes his head a bit less tiny compared to his body. I do need to adjust the placement a bit, but there is something I like about them being further back. That, in combination to the way his brow/nose looks, gives him a tiny bit of a bird-like face. I keep thinking of Sam the Eagle actually. Which is awesome. The ears probably do need to come forward a bit and fan out slightly. But this is just a first pass on ears. I want to fix some stuff in the eyes/brow first.

I'm also thinking the head is too wide right now, might squish it a bit.

More Model Updates

Did some more when I woke up today. Much better now that I have the whole head blocked out. He really needs ears though. The front view is kinda weird without them. You can see my probably very sloppy geometry on the first image. I'm making this up as I go so don't judge. I haven't modeled a head since Intro to Modeling.

Model update

Worked a bit on the model tonight, instead of wasting my night doing nothing like I had expected I would.


Only one angle because it's late and I'm too lazy to get more.



I tweaked some face geometry and made a rough pass at the side/top/back of the head. Really rough, basically just spent the time working out where the edge loops were going. And probably making way more difficult that it should have been. I'm making up my own modeling methods as I go it seems. Because of that, I'm in constant flux between genuine surprise at myself, and absolute frustration. (More towards the latter.)

I have some temporary eyes in there. I'm gonna have to work out some stuff in the eye-area later. I want to get a complete first pass done on the head first.

Sketchbook numero zwei

Here be some sketches from last night. Click to embiggify.

Even more billions of things

I forgot some things in the last post, which were the concept drawings for my 3d model.



Sorry for the lopsidedness.

Also, just as a reminder, check out Half-Dried Canal weekly for new stuff.

Ten billion different things

Well, more like 2 or 3.

First, just a sketchbook page from late night doodling last night. Some decent stuff, and some not-so decent stuff:



Here's 2 small drawings I did while watching QI a week ago or so



Here's a work in progress for a 3d project that is in the works. I haven't touched it in like 3 weeks though. It's all really rough right now, and I'm learning/re-learning face modeling as I go.



I want to try and do something artistic every day (sketchbook page, digital painting, whatever else I come up with), but I'm not going to hold myself to a strict schedule. We'll see what happens.

Set Your Phasers to Shut Up

Set Your Phasers to Shut Up - Ellipticator by Ryanimation

Here's a song that Tim and I recorded.

The story behind this song is as follows:

Back at the end of High School and the beginning of college, Tim was trying to make a rock opera-type project. I was going to contribute this song to the album. That never took off and this song was forgotten.

We were going through old stuff recently and found this. Since it was basically all written already we decided to go ahead and record it.

Most of this song is as it was when I wrote it 4-5 years ago. As a result, it doesn't have the same feel as a lot of my more recent stuff. It has power metal influences (mostly in the straight power chords/ double bass sections), and not so much the prog stuff of my current pieces.

The parts that are different from the original are 3 solos/leads. The leads at 1:31 were improvised, then learned, then re-recorded, re-improvised, etc. until I got something that worked. The first acoustic solo is all improvised. The second acoustic part at the end was improvised, then written out, fixed, and re-recorded.


The guitars are all me, bass lines written and played by Tim. We used samples of Bruce's drums to make our own drum track. The keys parts are from Reason.

Anesthetize paintings

Made a few digital paintings from still frames of Porcupine Tree's "Anesthetize" DVD.

Both of these are from the song "Fear of a Blank Planet"







Click for slightly-biggerness.


Here's the video:



First shot is at about 0:20, second is (I think) at about 6:25 or so

Half-Dried Canal

I've got a little project going on over here:
Half-Dried Canal

Here's my first real update:
http://halfdriedcanal.blogspot.com/2011/02/ryan-week-1.html

Title describing contents of blog post.

Haven't touched this in a while. That will be changing soon.

For now, enjoy these:

A song I recorded, totally ripping off Opeth. But it was just for practice.

Nopeth by Ryanimation

A picture I drew for Dave Rappoccio's birthday-nerf-gun-shooting-range-thing. If you are one of the select few to be around during the original Squirrlrus drawing, you might appreciate the new and enhanced version.