Pirate Radio

Super Ultra UPDATE!!!

2010-01-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

I forgot, HERE is a video I worked on with my buddy Stanley Von Medvey. He made this video to promote the International Space Development Conference. I helped by contributing a model of one of the spaceships. You can see my Model starting at 1:09 in the video as the ship undocks from some sort of space station.

mata ne

LETS UPDATE!!

2010-01-02T15:29:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone! All none of you...

It's been a while since I've posted anything so a quick update. A few months ago I was laid the fuck off...

Since then my past has reared it's ugly head only once...

Apparently in one of my interviews (I might add I wanted the job very much) my old boss was contacted as a reference. Unsurprisingly he shit talked me to a person that would be interviewing me. Of course he only presented his side of the story and made himself seem like a victim but who cares, luckily for me this person also contacted a bunch of people from my job at Laika. Everyone there loved me (because I'm not an ASSHOLE) so it more than outweighed the stupid shit my bitter old boss had to say.

Unfortunately, they decided they didn't need to hire a rigger so I didn't get the job. However, I have since gotten a job at Moving Picture Company in Vancouver. Where no one has even heard of my old boss. The great thing about this whole experience for me is that now I can take his name off my resume for good and he'll never have a negative effect on my life again.

So thats where I'm at, VFX for film at Moving Picture Company. My lady and I are adjusting to Vancouver life pretty well.

Expect the blog to start coming back to life shortly.

success is the best revenge...

adventures of captain N

2008-09-22T20:27:00.000-07:00

holy crapamoly its been a while, i'll have a more complete blog post for you guys later.(yeah all million people that read my blog)

anyways,

skydiving....

in the absolute zero of space...

2008-08-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

some new drawings, not too much to report atm

enjoy...trying to get something natural...

viva la revolucion

- < -

mechajutsu IKUZO!

2008-07-26T13:23:00.000-07:00

mecha kuri is born

uoooooohhhhh!!!

ore wa tamashi no BAKAHATSU POWAAAAA!

-07-

i'll have to use....that

2008-07-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

hell yeah, my buddy stanley came up with a new video advocating space based solar power as an alternative to fossil/nuclear power. lets all take a leap into the future and get this shit started!

mechajutsu...HENSHIN!

-07-

fighting for freedom wherever there's trouble!

2008-04-23T00:04:00.001-07:00

PLOGISODE 1: horse rigging

PS, make sure to right click the video and turn the quality all the way up. youtube compressed the crapola out of my video.

auuuggghhhh!

2008-04-21T21:52:00.000-07:00

so i wanted to get the video blog going, but i decided to wait till theres some proper lighting.

for now you'll all just have to settle for this peek,

boy rig is about 90 percent done, ready for blocking animation.

im going to start shot layout this week and then i'll start handing out shots.

-who the hell do you think i am-

saturday pt 2: son of saturday

2008-03-29T21:31:00.000-07:00

so here's saturday continued followed by some girl horse wips. the rig is basically done, you'll probably notice some problem areas here and there, the weights still need to be cleaned up. the good news is we're definitely ready to begin blocking. w00t!!!

and a slightly different angle of the same pose:

wake up

dann!

saturday

2008-03-22T21:45:00.000-07:00

no real need to say anything, enjoy

facial progress

2008-02-19T00:25:00.000-08:00

heres a test shot of the facial system.

the mouth is very small and we wanted to get as much out of it as we possibly could...i think we're coming along

more on the way

-the revolution will be televised-

sexy times!

2008-02-12T00:01:00.000-08:00

here's the current progress on the girl rig

our boy is gonna have alot on his hands for sure hehe

the rig went out today so i'll hope to have some clips of blocking and test footage up soon.

- adios aaaamigoooooss!! -

the more you eat em the more you fart...

2008-02-11T17:42:00.000-08:00

...dont ask

anyways, heres the current wip of the birch forest, can you tell which ones are fake without cheating?

a moment of sudden inspiration

2008-02-09T18:22:00.000-08:00

i love it when this happens,

im not even ready to BEGIN talking to you about this guy, but i was hit with a moment of inspiration and decided to share it with you

be excellent to each other...

teaser teaser

2008-02-09T16:39:00.000-08:00

boy horse rig wip 90 percent done, the floor is a temporary nurbs plane put there for astetic reasons.

enjoy

CLOSING IN....

2008-02-01T16:48:00.000-08:00

girl rig is about 90% done right now, i have to add the rest of the muscle objects for her legs and then i can do the boy's setup.

that of course doesn't include facial...

im gonna be busting my ass over the next week because as of right now i have missed my deadline.
above you can see current progress on the tree bill cabey is modelling. the leaf object is a proxy and most of the branches haven't been connected into the main body yet. bill is going to add a filler branch layer above the main hero branch layer just to make it alittle more busy up inside the tree.

until next time

i am the fury...

feel the terrible flames of my rage!

something worth noting...

2008-01-29T21:31:00.000-08:00

here is the concept sketch behind the 3d image below you, i figured it might be good to provide some more insight into the characteristics of this character. he's still just a head and some ears though hehe

-07
zeroseven

THE FACE OF THINGS TO COME...

2008-01-27T22:45:00.001-08:00

hello there, this update we have something fun. recently i had been having some fresh ideas, so i took my base mesh and a really loose sketch i did at work and tried to capture the spirit of the drawing. im very happy with how this character worked out. the final will probably be different as edgloops and details are added, line quality is decided upon etc, but this sketch definitely captures the character.

as for this guys story, that we'll have to save for another time...

-07
zeroseven

dinosaurs on ice!

2008-01-20T18:10:00.000-08:00

we recently went to see walking with dinosaurs,

here are some of the pictures from the show.

this show was really awesome, i recommend anyone who can definitely try and catch it.

"im a hacker!...

thats what i said, you're a nerd..."

it's big it's heavy it's wood...

2008-01-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

it's birch tree!

heres some more progress, this time from mike kopa

he'll be making a few of these over the next couple of days, then we'll have a forest! the hero tree is in progress as well so look forward to more posts soon!

dont ask for it....

CORALINE SNEAK PEEK!!

2007-12-22T11:25:00.000-08:00

heres a sneak peek of the upcoming laika film coraline based on neil gaiman's book and directed by henry selick

click the poster link below

we dont remember our names.....

more progress to report...

2007-12-15T14:28:00.000-08:00

some progress on the boy's textures i think they're just about done. then we just need to tune in the shader and he's ready for rigging.

rigging continues on the girl and we have a bit more modelling to do, so stay tuned!

zhats it for today...

good job parappa you may go on to the next stage

SPIN ON!

2007-11-29T15:57:00.000-08:00

heres a sneak peek at our shading wip.

my good friend kevin wisdom came up with the shader and combined them with hannah's textures, looks freakin sweet!

peace cutta!

ore o dare datta omoteru !?

2007-11-26T12:47:00.002-08:00

just some sketches today, a couple of badly copied milt kahl drawings and some boylan originals
until next time..

kyoudai gattai!! GURREN LAGANN!!

dont tease!

2007-11-25T16:30:00.000-08:00

heres a wip of the blocking rig posed out

almost done...

who do you think i am!!

OH YEAH..

2007-11-17T16:52:00.000-08:00

i almost forgot!! the coraline trailer is playing in front of beowulf in 3d. im not sure where exactly it's playing but you should still go see the teaser, it's eye poppingly good haha..

lazy saturday...

2007-11-17T16:48:00.000-08:00

some texture progress today, a paintover of the current texture wip

never knows best...

environmentalicious!

2007-11-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

hannah did this environment study yesterday,

we've been so inspired by the beautiful leaves out here and apple season is in the fall so we figured a bit of color couldn't hurt. i think she did a great job in capturing the feeling for the piece.

believe it!

trick or treat, scary pumpkin head!

2007-11-01T00:32:00.000-07:00

the dead get to come back for one day and bill has to give him a cock mouth...

typical

happy haloween everyone

yippie kay yay!

2007-10-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

a wip of the girly horse....

now that modelling has gotten back on track how about some rigs??

it'll be so fun!

haha

-c-

# Zer0 - One

2007-10-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

hannah did some pretty sweet drawings in her sketchbook you can see them here

if wishes were diamonds....

2007-10-08T11:06:00.000-07:00

so my buddy kevin just left after spending the weekend, we all had a great time and im working on a few fun short pieces to chronicle our weekend, to hold you over heres some images of our journeys.

now all i need is a movie to direct and i think i can call this place perfect...

Yuki Chan Arrives!!!

2007-08-29T19:38:00.000-07:00

pirate radio's newest recruit yuki hime arrived yesterday. here are some pictures from her first day here.

more soon...

TREE MODELLING TUTORIAL

2007-08-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

Jason Baldwin was kind enough to write a tree modelling tutorial for me, he's a modeller here at laika. if you are interested in more of his work please click his name or follow the link, here.

TREE TUTORIAL

by jason baldwin

This tutorial will discuss the techniques used to create a tree similar to this one.

TRUNK

create a cylinder with:

radius of 3
height of 30
subdivision axis of 12
subdivision height of 10

Do not delete the top and bottom caps of your model. you'll need them later.

grab a column of polygons two wide and extrude the faces.

With the extruded faces still selected, scale inward by holding ctrl and the green Y axis of the scale tool.

Do this all the way around the cylinder, varying your selection columns from 1,2 and 3 wide.

with your mesh selected apply a twist deformer. You will find this in the animation menu set under Deform - create nonlinear - twist. Dial in a value into the "end angle" attribute till you achieve the desired amount of twist.

Kill history. Add a lattice. Right click over the top of the lattice and select "lattice point" selection type. Select the top lattice points and taper the top narrower. You will find the lattice in the animation menu set under Deform - Create lattice. Delete history. Add another lattice with five or more T Divisions and using the same technique as before crank it into the shape of your tree. Delete history.

Make sure you periodically add a smooth to your model (then remove it) or work with a smooth proxy to check your final shape.

BRANCHES

Find two faces where you want your first branch to be. Tweak them into a roughly round shape and extrude them.

Make sure you add an extra edge span near the base of the branch so it will smooth properly.

Now, this part gets pretty tedous. To save some time, create these two shapes from 6 sided cylinders. Make sure that every end has 6 sides. These are the two variations of how your branches will... branch.

Extrude till you're ready for your branch to branch again. At this point attach one of your two styles of branching sections.

Keep doing this, alternating branching types and always getting narrower as you go higher. Add your own stylistic flair as you go.

After you get a branch done, duplicate it and attach it to a different part of the tree. Then, tweak it till it looks nothing like the original branch.

Do this till you hate trees, maya, modeling and life in general.

ROOTS

If you didn't delete the bottom cap of your original cylinder, the bottom of your tree should look like this.

Grab the leading edges of one of your extruded rows and lift them to reveal the faces below.

Extrude the newly revealed faces into the desired root shape.

Do this most of the way around, skipping extruded columns from time to time.

LEAVES

pass off to the fx department

Team Zero Arrives

2007-08-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

hell yeah, shirts are in and pirate radio is officially born.

anyone participating in our shorts will certainly be wearing one of these.

more coming soon,

till then...

"the revolution will be televised...."

-pirate radio-

weekend adventure

2007-08-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

hey guys, so i haven't been a very good blogger lately, but i'll let u in on some of the stuff i've been doing.

works been crazy for a while, i've had alot of stuff to do and we're getting started again on the short. we should have boards up in a couple days. we did a bicycle event here in portland called the bridge pedal, i'll be posting more images up from that later on today but heres something to tide over the 4 people that visit my blog.

(the people that look like they are posing with us are my coworkers, aaron his girlfriend tara, myself, hannah and edward. trappe was taking the picture but theres a few photos with him in it so i'll get one up soon.)
yeah, there were approximately 20,000 participants in this years event. crazy!

hooray for the girlie girls

2007-05-18T09:21:00.000-07:00

i really love this design, it's very unique. my lovely girlfriend hannah came up with the concepts for this short. i think this color study totally captures the right kind of attitude for the character. i love the simplicity of the design coupled with it's unique shape.

texture power!

2007-05-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

so, if theres one thing we seem to be making progress on it's texturing,

mike kopa sent me these images today and things look to be coming together. i gave him some notes and hopefully everyone else has some feedback for him so we can start to really dial in this look and start to push it farther.

here ya go

uvs laid out progress continues

2007-05-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

here are a few screencaps taken of the horse after it's uv's have been laid out.

the horse is being textured by mike kopa, as soon as i have a site for him i'll add a link.

rigging this weekend, maybe some story work later this week as well.

-chris-

update

2007-05-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

so theres an update coming soon, i've been really busy at work lately and haven't had much time after work to do anything besides relax. but the modelling on our first horse should be done today. that leaves the girl horse to model and hopefully by then we'll have some sort of automated rigging system for these horse rigs so we dont have to build the girls rig from scratch.

until tomorrow

-chris-

horse update

2007-04-15T22:39:00.000-07:00

it's been a little bit since i've been able to post, but i had some time today to get some work done and heres what i came up with. the original design is my girlfriends, you can check her out here, or go to her blog.

for starters...

2007-03-25T23:14:00.000-07:00

i've been watching alot of creative videos lately and since im gonna be doing something quite creative over the next few months i decided to finally start a blog and fill it with all sortsa things.

consider this my place to "mentally exhale" for the most part my brain is always off somewhere spitting out new ideas so it'll be fun to start posting more, if anything it will encourage me to draw more.

that being said this next series of drawings comes from my need to understand horses for a short film i would like to do. this piece will also serve as a testing ground for new ideas and techniques in rigging i've been thinking of for a while now since i've been at this new job. keep an eye out for more horse drawings as i understand how they are built and eventually start creating character sketches to inspire my rig.

enjoy