Philm Phest-eeVal

Welp! It appears Grim Fetch is still alive and kicking. I received word today via the tele that it has been accepted to the Temecula Film Festival. This is awesome cause they have hot air balloons down there. How sweet is that?

With that said I've been modeling the first set for my short film I've started work on. It's going well...motivation is strong. I should have some renders here pretty soon (sans textures or lighting).

And now a bit of art for your viewing...err, pleasure? Keep in mind it's a work in progress...it's not a finished piece...so, uh...enjoy my unfinished shtuff.

Enjoy, I've employed the same techniques in your typical How To Draw/Paint books and show you each vital steps needed to paint such a picture. I know the proper steps: It's easy as 1, 2, 3!




(The artist claims no knowledge of how to paint nor should he be taken seriously on the subject matter. In fact by viewing this "painting in progress" you've just lost a brain cell or two. Sorry for the inconvenience have a nice day!)

Fireside Chat

Good Evening Friends,

For those that were wondering...no I didn't die. I've merely been swimming in my own creative sludge...figuring out stories, drawing, starting to paint again. This is a sign of whats to come...lots of work about to pour out...lots of ideas finally growing from being planted previously

I'm currently writing a feature film...I really love the story I'm developing...whether or not it's actually anything anyone wants to read or see on the big screen might be another story...

It's known that I bite off a lot to chew...however...I'll share those things that I'm chewing on now:
1. writing a feature film
2. working on some previously unfinished work posted here on my blog
3. figuring out 2 short film ideas
4. Modeling the set for one of the short film ideas...which I'm happy to say today birthed a ton of material and story for this short.

I'm very excited to know what my next short film will be...and I started modeling as of two days ago. I'll probably start writing it this week.
The set, which I'm working on today, should be completely modeled within a short amount of time from now.

I'll be applying to some more film fests as well with Grim Fetch.

Outside of that...doing lots of drawing and scribbles...always enjoy scribbling. I may post some scribbles soon.

Also...a big congrats to Sheldon Kruger who was recently hired on at Blue Sky.

Well, until next time friends.

What a days

This past weekend was the Lake Arrowhead Film Festival. What a treat. The festival is held in such a great environment; You can walk outside after watching a movie or two and catch some fresh air with crisp blue skies, mountains all around and a sun that nearly hugs you when you stand in it. The festival was full of such wonderful and talented people. Everyone was a pleasure to talk to and listen to. I think that's largely due to the location of the festival and the great staff and people that run the festival.

On another note, my film screened on Friday of last week. It was nice, there were Q&A's for every director which allowed them to tell us about the films they made...some great info in there. The awards luncheon was on Sunday mid-day.

Much to my surprise and enjoyment. Grim Fetch won for Best Animated Short....insane or what? That was absolutely amazing. I got to speak in front of everyone when I received my award...I'm not much for public speaking nor do I feel very good at it...but I got to talk for a minute and receive my award...what an amazing weekend and my family and girlfriend and I even got to go on a hike on the Pacific Crest Trail in between screenings...such a blast.

This coming Friday will be the screening of Grim Fetch at the California Independent Film Festival. I'm planning on attending there as well. I'm really looking forward to it and seeing some more great films made by so many talented people out there.

Update on Creature

So here are the latest pics from the modeling of this creature. I'm in the process of creating a displacement map from the hires version you see here so that I can apply the displacement map to a LowRes mesh.

Creature

Here's a model I made in the past two weeks in the early hours of the morning before work. It's modeled after a sketch I made a little while back. I plan on making some changes to the model. I'll probably enlarge the feet and claws, there will be little bits of hair on this guy and I'll be taking the model into Mudbox and doing my best to learn that program and show off some nice textures on this character. I'll probably finish the model tomorrow morning and be pulling it into mudbox by the end of the week. Expect more posts, and much more often than this. I've determined that the best time for me to get artwork of my own done is in the early hours of the day prior to work so I'll be taking advantage of that time so I can continue to post on here as well as continue work on my next film. Will post again very soon.

John

Pork Chops and Apple Sauce

I'm currently creating the hair for my gnome. The eyebrows are able to move, I created blend shapes for each brow shape so they will match all of the movements of the brow area (as described in Jason Osipa's book). The beard is a work in progress. I was playing around with different types of brushes and then started painting the paint effects on and I created a "chop" by mere coincidence...thus, I had to create a pair of "chops" 'cause they make my gnome look so cool. I'll probably ditch the chops...but I was testing out the particular brush settings...I like how the chops look so I'll probably use that brush to create the entire beard. For now the beard can't move with the blend shapes...eventually I'll probably use wrap deformers to do that. I am hoping to set up some kind of small control system to allow me to shift the hair around a tiny bit. Once the beard is complete I'll move on to creating the hair on his head.

-john

"Debil and Mobicky"

The following are two images I created yesterday...I decided to go through my sketchbook and take a few images further...these were two sketches I did somewhere around 8 months ago...oh and MATT...Mobicky has an odd resemblance to your character...I don't know how that happened...but I did sketch this guy awhile back...and didn't realize the resemblance until I was putting the character definition on the page....Mobicky is the sickly looking whale and Debil is the dumb little horned creature.


With that I built all of my blend shapes for my Gnome...and am now testing their compatibility. Most of the shapes work pretty well together...but these are still WORKS IN PROGRESS...I will be creating more blends to correct some of the shapes not working well together...mainly in the brow area...some of the brow shows are causing sharp angles and causing the skin to penetrate the skull. Here are a few shapes though that I got after playing with the blends...my favorite is probably the Grampa face. This aren't complete looking either...because the lids do not close yet...the expressions will look better once the eyelids are able to move with the expression the character is making. And another thing that will add a lot to the expressions is when he will have eyebrows...those should be coming soon too...once all the blends work well together...I can connect my rig I created for him.

Happy Late Halloween

So it's been awhile...lots of good stuff going on...more on that later. Anyway I thought I'd post some pics.
First off, I've been creating the blend shapes for my Gnome (For those that don't know 3d stuff...I'm basically starting to create facial shapes that will later combine with multiple shapes to make different emotions and allow my Gnome to speak).
Here are a few pics of some of those blends (These are merely for the mouth...there will be many more for the brows, nose and such that will all combine to make more complete expressions...just seeing the mouth might look odd).



Outside of the Gnome work...these next two images are the result of about 20-30 sketches of possible establishing shots for the intro of my next film...these were the two out of 7 large sketches that I chose...I'm thinking I'll probably pick the one with the waterfall in the background...again these are just sketches...I'm sure I'll change these around a little and add more depth and fix perspectives and such.


With that, I've also made changes to my gnomes cane. Before I had beads that hung from the top down to the handle....I looked at that for a while and didn't like it...I actually liked the sticks that twist around the bottom and wanted to mimic that element...I've crated two exhaust/tubes that will animate when the Gnome smokes from his pipe and smoke will come out of the bottom of the tubes.



That's it for now...comments are welcome...I'll post again...sooner than later this time.

-john

Grim Fetch

So, my film is still waiting on acceptances. I was looking at other filmmakers' websites and comparing them to my own. I realized that in order for Grim Fetch to look like a film...it should probably have pages and things that will be able to show festivals at which the film will play and have pages for things like press related info...so I decided to learn Flash as much as I could and recreate GrimFetch.com in order to have it better represent the tone and theme of the film while adding some more character to it as well.

Check out the new site: Revamped Grim Fetch site

Expect some artwork to be posted on here real soon...there are a few things I will post on another date...just not right now :( Soon though.

Until then,

-john

Gnome Project Update

The above images are some snapshots of my Gnomes cane which also serves as his pipe. The top has a mouth piece that pivots around (but currently is pointing straight up to allow me to rig it). The straight tubes with beads on them (pretty small, actually even smaller now that I look at them on this post) are currently pointing straight as well but will curl and move as the Gnome smoke from it. The only change I might make is to enlarge the beads as well as the strings on which they reside (again so small you guys probably can see them except maybe in the bottom image).

In the meantime, I've started to rig my Gnome. He should be ready for blend shapes in a couple of weeks. I also spent a good portion of this week and nearly all of yesterday researching my characters and working on their backstories as well as personality traits, quirks...any and everything that I could come up with to better help me establish some personality and strong story. I'm not finished with the writing and research but I'm getting close...yesterday was a great day in a sense that I really started understanding my characters better and how my story is going to play out.

I finished my latest demo reel a few days ago which is always a good thing.

I'm working on another project which I'll talk about at a later date once things are nearing completion.

I've sent my film, Grim Fetch to a few more festivals. Still waiting to hear back from nearly all of the ones I've applied to...should be getting responses regarding it soon.

-John

Gnome Texture

Here he is. Textures completed as of today. The only visual element he needs is his beard and head of hair. He'll have a prop as well. I'll be moving on to rigging and blend shapes soon enough.

-john

New Website along with updates

I just finished my dads company website. You can check it out here:

http://www.todayswindowsanddoors.com

Along with that are a bunch of updates on things. First off I've recently started taking a Tai Chi class with my girlfriend which is something I've wanted to do for a long time and am so glad I'm learning it now. I believe it will be something I'll incorporate into the rest of my life. And to show my appreciation is a picture of Timmy in the latest pose we learned last Saturday:


On top of that I'm nearly finished texturing my Gnome. The only thing on him remaining to be textured is his hands. As soon as that's finished I'll be posting images. I'm doing something I haven't done before which is to have textures at multiple resolutions to use based on how close the gnome is to the camera. The other thing I'm doing is making multiple textures due to events that take place in the story that cause the textures to change through time.

I'm still working on the 3d fire. I'm in the process of creating a larger more camp-like fire with embers that will emit from it as well as some smoke. Along with that I'll be adding logs and rocks around the fire with a ground underneath to test the whole fire comp so that when it comes time to put it in the gnome environment there won't be any second guessing.

With that I'm also in the process of redesigning the environments for the Gnome project by creating dozens of thumbnails for each shot and then painting larger versions in painter (no more than 20 minutes to a shot) to help me establish composition as well as color and mood.

Once I'm happy with the thumbnail images I'm planning on starting the modeling of the establishing shots as well as the first few shots in the film. I'm very anxious to get started on that.

I've been submitting Grim Fetch to festivals and will post more about those once I determine it's acceptance or the lack thereof.

More to come soon. I'll probably post some of the thumbnails I've been working on soon.

John

Effects

Hey all, it's been a busy couple of weeks...I hate to fall behind on my posts. I'm working on texturing my animated book which is very close to being done and I'm also texturing my gnome...I should have the gnome textures up soon. For the time being I thought I'd post another video since their fun and break up the flow of still images. This video is a test I did on creating fire. I'm planning on using fire in my Gnome story so I figured it is time I started investigating. This is my first 3d fire...(this video is what resulted after about 10 different attempts). I resorted to printing out every possible page on fluids and emitters and all that good stuff and am very intrigued by it all. Anyhow, this is the first fire I created. Along with my Gnome story I'm planning on using fire in the project my friends and I are working on, Dark Winter.

I plan on making a few varieties of fire...camp fire, torch fire and perhaps even some spreading fire. That's it for now.

John

Fun Project

I decided to take a break from my characters to make a prop that will be in my next film. As you can see it's a book with some flipping pages. I might add a few more pages. Anyhow, I found a tutorial on making animated books at:

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/tutorials

It is really fun, the instructions are a little jumbled, but if you know the software then it won't take you long.

Anyhow, thought I'd post the playblast.