http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2008/01/fantastic-four.html

Background Modeling - Inside the Villians Lair

 A sketch doctored up with Photoshop. First pass.

Same art, fleshed out with Maya objects.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2008/04/inside-villians-lair02.html

Vicious Cycle by Michael Marczewski

 Tragic commentary on society, with superb computer animation and good basic storytelling.

Vicious Cycle from Michael Marczewski on Vimeo.

Factory window in Maya

Simple polygon model of factory window.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2012/09/factory-window-in-maya.html

The Gnomon Workshop presents an Evening with Grzegorz Jonkajtys

Polish animator Grzegorz Jonkajtys has an interesting technique in combining miniature hand built sets with CG characters. Glad I made it over to Gnomon to see the talk.

Grzegorz's film credits include Sin City, Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth, The Mist, Rango, Pacific Rim, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Warcraft, and The Revenant. 

His titles were VFX Artist and Lead Animator.

 

(copyright Grzegorz Jonkajtys?)

After such grim short films such as ARK, where an animated Leonard Nimoy type character is trapped on a doomed plague ship, Grzegorz is bringing us a family oriented film based on a Polish character, Teddy Floppy-Ear. 

Teddy, and his friend Hare find out that a toy factory is not all fun and games. Grzegorz slips in some social commentary when the system tries to toss Teddy into an incinerator for having one minor defect, in this case, his floppy ear,

After years of CG work, Grzegorz said it was refreshing to build miniature sets by hand. He pointed out that his hand built sets have a more convincing depth and character than the usual CG backgrounds. This was his strategy in filming "ARK". Grzegorz had his crew do lighting checks with real miniature models so the lighting on the CG characters would match the hand made backgrounds in a more convincing way.

Using kit-bashing and Styrofoam containers, drinking straws and mint candy box tins, Grzegorz and his crew built the charming, and at the same time, frightening world of Teddy Floppy Ear.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-gnomon-workshop-presents-evening.html

Tardis in Maya 3D

Here's some quick polygon modeling work of a Tardis in Maya and rendered in Mental Ray.

Have to get the "Police Box" and other graphics attached,
along with door handles and dirt and scratches...

Version_02...

I made my own sign art in Photoshop, rather than swipe it off the internet.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2016/01/tardisv01.html

PreVis Class at Studio Arts

Incredible class I took from Brian Pohl at Studio Arts. 

Brian was a PreVis supervisor at Persistence of Vision studios.

It was a bear using Maya, After Effects, and a little bit of Photoshop. Plus, just coming up with the idea, storyboards and  timing for the chase. In other words, generating content while mastering two software packages. But you can see the result.

Previs Final from Rosko on Vimeo.

https://vimeo.com/8208316

http://www.brianpohl.com/

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2012/08/previz.html

The Iron Giant lives! 10 year anniversary reunion

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2009/10/iron-giant-lives-10-year-anniversary.html

Flamingo Roller Skate Waitress in Maya 3D

Here she is, She's still at a rough low-poly stage, her limbs are still separate objects.
 

I don't know why; I just doodled this character the other day,
and she insisted on being modeled in Maya.

 

Here she is with more smoothing, and her legs are a more accurate color.


Did a bit more work on her skates-

 

Here's my goofy Flamingo Roller Waitress again. Trying to get her rig fixed.
Don't worry, they only serve veggie-burgers.

I got this great pose of her using Maya.

Maya Interface

This is a great graphic that labels the basic Maya interface. I found it over the Holidays, and now I can't find the original source.

I'd like to give credit to whoever made this.

Good way to identify Maya's most important tools and menus.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2009/03/maya-interface-most-important-things.html

Maya Character Animation - Wither Away

A sentimental imp gives us his philosophy on life. Modified "Generi" character rig with dialog from Star Trek, "The Cage". The background is an old pub photo applied to a polygon plane.

3D Bear Character

Here's my old friend, Herman Bear. I've been drawing him since High School, and he finally became a Maya 3D character. His model and rig were another big breakthrough for me.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2006/01/previous-maya-work.html

Alan Turing was known as one of the early pioneers of computer science, and was head of the Allied program that cracked Germany's Enigma code in World War II. Here are some cool Turing pattern generators based on his chemistry theories. I had to use screen grabs to get them into Photoshop, from there, I converted them into Illustrator curves.

 

From there, I imported them into Maya to create geometry. The texrd.com website has a very cool free software. My hat's off to them.

http://www.texrd.com/
http://www.supracodex.com/processing/gray-scott.html

Once converted into an Illustrator file, I then imported it into Maya. From there, I lofted the geometry from the curves. This was my solution to a student who wanted to build a maze.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2012/06/labyrinth-built-in-maya-using-turing.html

Following art direction for 3D modeling

 Here's a dude I modeled in Maya for the Friedman 3D "Mars Rover Project".
It was a refreshing challenge taking art direction from Christope Vacher; you can see his work at

http://www.vacher.com/

Bruiser was built from modeled polygons, and primitive polygon objects.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2005/10/3d-modeling.html

3D Animation Essentials by Andy Beane

A great comic strip outlining the digital production process.

(copyright Andy Beane)

Maya 2017: Quick Rig

Old Tavern in Maya 3D

Personal project: Design an old tavern near my imaginary airport.

From thumbnail sketch, with tones applied in Photoshop...

To more defined building in Maya.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2008/11/northwoods-airport-cafe.html

Old Airport Maya Model scene

Basic modeling with primitives to build an old and simple airport.
The sky and treeline was done in Photoshop. The texturing is a bit too rough, I was still learning about UV mapping.
 

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2008/04/old-airport.html

Animated 3D Chicken, my first Maya short

Here's the chicken I created at Friedman 3D ( now Studio Arts) under the instruction of John Park. The original assignment only called for a chicken model to lay an egg. I modeled, rigged and animated the short in under 6 months. The little short I made from this scene was accepted into the 2002 "Bring your own Video" open screening put on by L.A. Siggraph. It was a good break.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2006/01/ancient-maya-work.html

Simple Chase with Two Primitive Characters

Here is a frame from a simple chase I made at Friedman 3D (now Studio Arts). My plot was about a cookie that escaped from a cookie jar, and how the jar chased the cookie in order to recapture him. I animated a bounce for both characters.

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2007/01/tag-lab-2007.html

3D Modeling - 1989

Here are my first 3D models. These glasses and goblets were created on an old IBM PC. I have forgotten the name of the software. This was done on a pen plotter at Lakeland Community College in 1989.

For the technology and software we had back, then this was quite exciting.

I think this was the IBM 5150

http://animationre-creation.blogspot.com/2006/09/ancient-cg-part-ii.html