http://www.jaredbsneed.com/
Business Card Front
Business Card Back
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Business Official!!
Welp, the time has officially come. I now have a business card, and an official website. This all feels kind of surreal, but also really freaking cool. Below is a link to my personal website, and images of my new business card. Short post is done, and I'm out for bed.
http://www.jaredbsneed.com/
http://www.jaredbsneed.com/
Monday, April 27, 2015
Portfolio Pre-Production: Animation Exercises
Hello on and all! I'm back, after a little while, to update you on what I've been doing this last month. I will admit, I was a bit lazy when it came to working on my own stuff. Unlike my Directed Studies class, I had daily animation assignments to work on, PLUS having to create my own business card and website. In the new month I got a brand new animation mentor, and learned a variety of things. For this post I will be showing off a small portion of what we had to do, otherwise I would be showing off 15 different animations haha. So without further delay let's get started!!
Each week we had to do 5 different animation, all based off a concept. Week 1 was Speed poses, Week 2 was Takes, and Week 3 was Peels. A Peel, is when you show a hand or a foot, peeling off of a surface. We were shown lots of examples, but there was always something missing with each new example.... Personality. Every example showed only a hand and an motionless object. No story, no emotion, just a hand and a table or pole. I chose to do something different and add in my own humor. Now the animation of the man in the orange shirt is not the focus of the exercise, the hand is. I just thought that the guys reaction was hilarious when his lip gets touched haha
The next peel I did was mimicked off of me, and my natural habits or ticks. I often touch my face, or more specifically, stroke my beard without even noticing it sometimes. I cant help it, it's just so soft! But I figured I'd want to practice a character touching their own person and see how it went. I could have done more animation on the rest of the body, but never got around to it.
And here we are on the final exercise that I will show. After spending time do hand peels, I wanted to try my hand (pun totally intended) at a foot peel. The original thought was to get across a more shy, or bashful girl, and getting that emotion across with just her feet, but it was just out of my skill level. I was trying to have her swivel on her toe, like she was talking to a crush, but couldn't get it looking right. It made me mad that I had such a clear idea, but couldn't replicate it. But I think it's important to show what I would consider a "failure", so that I can show that I know how to move past it, what I can learn from it.
Well that's pretty much it for this post. I have more things I could show off, but don't want to bore you. Hope to see you again, for my next update!
Animation Exercises: Peels
Each week we had to do 5 different animation, all based off a concept. Week 1 was Speed poses, Week 2 was Takes, and Week 3 was Peels. A Peel, is when you show a hand or a foot, peeling off of a surface. We were shown lots of examples, but there was always something missing with each new example.... Personality. Every example showed only a hand and an motionless object. No story, no emotion, just a hand and a table or pole. I chose to do something different and add in my own humor. Now the animation of the man in the orange shirt is not the focus of the exercise, the hand is. I just thought that the guys reaction was hilarious when his lip gets touched haha
The next peel I did was mimicked off of me, and my natural habits or ticks. I often touch my face, or more specifically, stroke my beard without even noticing it sometimes. I cant help it, it's just so soft! But I figured I'd want to practice a character touching their own person and see how it went. I could have done more animation on the rest of the body, but never got around to it.
And here we are on the final exercise that I will show. After spending time do hand peels, I wanted to try my hand (pun totally intended) at a foot peel. The original thought was to get across a more shy, or bashful girl, and getting that emotion across with just her feet, but it was just out of my skill level. I was trying to have her swivel on her toe, like she was talking to a crush, but couldn't get it looking right. It made me mad that I had such a clear idea, but couldn't replicate it. But I think it's important to show what I would consider a "failure", so that I can show that I know how to move past it, what I can learn from it.
Well that's pretty much it for this post. I have more things I could show off, but don't want to bore you. Hope to see you again, for my next update!
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Who's that?!
Short post today. As a Character Animator I'm always looking for new animation rigs to use. To me it's like Christmas, every time I get a open a new rig, I don't know what it is about it. Either way I never feel like I have enough variation in the rigs that I currently have, so I took to modifying one of my favorite Rigs.
“Malcolm character courtesy of AnimSchool.com”
So here we have the AnimSchool Free Rig, Malcom. I personally love the way this looks, but I it's hard to find another rig that fits the same style of this particular character, so I took it upon myself to modify this base Malcom Rig to fit my needs.
So here it is! This is the modified Malcom Rig that I made. I took some new geometry for the hair, and scaled some of the controls in order to change the shape of the face. It can be a little tedious to use, seeing that I can't zero out certain values, but it works for what I need him to do....and I'm really happy with it, so isn't that all that matters?
Anyways that's all for today, I hope you're all doing well.
Thursday, March 12, 2015
Directed Studies: The Sneeze
Oh man, it's been quite awhile since I've been on here to update you all on my progress through Full Sail. I have been fairly busy with school work and personal projects and just haven't even been able to think about updating this blog. I never really meant to, but sometimes you have to put some things on the back burner. Oh well haha
Well this time I'm showing off an animation I had 15 days to work on. If the title didn't give it away already, I had to animate a character sneezing. So without further delay, here is my progression through my animation.
This was the first draft that I was able to get done in about 10 hours. I was proud of it at first, but quickly realized how much was wrong with it, after I took a step away from it. I learned a very valuable lesson that day...Step away from your work every so often. Nothing is worse than getting tunnel vision, and not being able to see faults in it anymore.
After some critiques from my mentor, I started to change up my animation and add some more personality to the character. There was still a lot of things wrong with this version, that I fixed up for the final, but as you can see here almost the entire animation has changed.
And here we are. This was the final animation that I turned in for a grade. Again there was still a lot wrong with this animation, but I learned SOOO much from my mentor, and drastically changed the way I work in Maya. This month was very valuable to me, as a student, and can't wait to see what else is waiting for me later on.
Well this time I'm showing off an animation I had 15 days to work on. If the title didn't give it away already, I had to animate a character sneezing. So without further delay, here is my progression through my animation.
Directed Studies
This was the first draft that I was able to get done in about 10 hours. I was proud of it at first, but quickly realized how much was wrong with it, after I took a step away from it. I learned a very valuable lesson that day...Step away from your work every so often. Nothing is worse than getting tunnel vision, and not being able to see faults in it anymore.
After some critiques from my mentor, I started to change up my animation and add some more personality to the character. There was still a lot of things wrong with this version, that I fixed up for the final, but as you can see here almost the entire animation has changed.
And here we are. This was the final animation that I turned in for a grade. Again there was still a lot wrong with this animation, but I learned SOOO much from my mentor, and drastically changed the way I work in Maya. This month was very valuable to me, as a student, and can't wait to see what else is waiting for me later on.
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
Animation: Stewart Run Cycle #1
Hello all, Jared back with another animation for you all! Today I pulled out this quick and dirty run cycle, in order to get to know a new character rig. There are many things that are wrong with the cycle, yet I didn't feel like modifying it anymore. I was happy with where I got, even though I know it's breeding bad habits when I do things incorrectly. The problem I had was that I was so excited to play with my new Rig, that all logic went out the door haha Seriously getting a new rig is like getting a new toy for your birthday, all you want to do is play with it all day long.
Blocking Stage
Like always here is the initial blocking stage, with the inbetweens already placed in. I kind of just did everything at once, and didn't work like I normally would. I personally found that this way worked pretty well for me, at least for this kind of animation. I don't know if I will use it again, but it's definitely something I'll consider.
Auto Tangent & Cleanup
So here is the final piece, overall it is rough, and I know that. I didn't get the right rotations on the torso, and the arms and legs could be moving a lot smoother, but for the 2 hours that I worked on it I was fairly content with it.
Once again I learned from this project, and can't wait to work on more.
Blocking Stage
Like always here is the initial blocking stage, with the inbetweens already placed in. I kind of just did everything at once, and didn't work like I normally would. I personally found that this way worked pretty well for me, at least for this kind of animation. I don't know if I will use it again, but it's definitely something I'll consider.
Auto Tangent & Cleanup
So here is the final piece, overall it is rough, and I know that. I didn't get the right rotations on the torso, and the arms and legs could be moving a lot smoother, but for the 2 hours that I worked on it I was fairly content with it.
Once again I learned from this project, and can't wait to work on more.
Sunday, January 18, 2015
Animation: Zombie Walk Auto Tangent
Welcome back everyone! Jared here and I this time I want to update you on the Zombie walk that I posted last time. I was able to work on this walk a bit more, and you'll see some significant improvements, or I guess for some it may just add on to the list of "Things that are Wrong". Either way, I'm having fun, and that's what this is all about. NOW ON TO THE UPDATES!!!!
That's right I went back and added a bit more to this animation. I felt that the original two steps was not enough, so I added on two more. That's why the end is in blocking, while the begining is still auto tangent. If you look at the first part of the walk you'll notice that I did a fair bit of work on it, by tweaking the dragging foot, and the left arm. I felt that having it up all the time, made it look too much like it was Heiling Hitler, and that's not good, so I made it look like the zombie was reaching out for it's target. Honestly I think it add a bit of a story to the character.
Okay so I quickly realized, after I switched the animation to Auto Tangents, that my timing was a bit too fast. You can see how the character speeds up half way through the animation. To me that's not really something that would happen in the "real world" so it needed to be fixed. Oh I also forgot to mention that I worked with the hands a bit more, so that they would actually look like they are grabbing something, instead of just being stiff.
Okay so here it is, the point where I'm probably going to call it quits. I worked on this project for 6-7 hours. It was only ever meant to keep me busy, and work on doing something different. I learned a few things here and there, and am fairly happy with the end product. There is still sooooo much that I could do to make this look 1000 times better, but I would rather move on to another small animation, and see what I can learn from that on.
Until next time!
Back to Blocking?!
That's right I went back and added a bit more to this animation. I felt that the original two steps was not enough, so I added on two more. That's why the end is in blocking, while the begining is still auto tangent. If you look at the first part of the walk you'll notice that I did a fair bit of work on it, by tweaking the dragging foot, and the left arm. I felt that having it up all the time, made it look too much like it was Heiling Hitler, and that's not good, so I made it look like the zombie was reaching out for it's target. Honestly I think it add a bit of a story to the character.
Auto Tangent 2.0
Okay so I quickly realized, after I switched the animation to Auto Tangents, that my timing was a bit too fast. You can see how the character speeds up half way through the animation. To me that's not really something that would happen in the "real world" so it needed to be fixed. Oh I also forgot to mention that I worked with the hands a bit more, so that they would actually look like they are grabbing something, instead of just being stiff.
Tweaking
Okay so here it is, the point where I'm probably going to call it quits. I worked on this project for 6-7 hours. It was only ever meant to keep me busy, and work on doing something different. I learned a few things here and there, and am fairly happy with the end product. There is still sooooo much that I could do to make this look 1000 times better, but I would rather move on to another small animation, and see what I can learn from that on.
Until next time!
Wednesday, January 14, 2015
Animation: Zombie Walk Blocking
Hello everyone, Jared here, and today I want to share a simple animation that I have been working on for the last few hours. Now this is nothing special, it was just an exercise to keep my imagination and skills up. In the next month or so I have to take an art test, and then I will be spending a few months on my Animation demo reel. Oh boy, this time at school has been crazy fast, and soo much fun. But enough about that. We are here to talk about Zombie walks!
So this is the first wave of Blocking out the animation. This was the result of 2 or 3 hours of work, including working out simple thumbnails....huh, I really should show off the thumbnails that I used, but to be honest I am really lazy, and don't want to deal with that. It sounds like too much of a hassle haha, sorry >_<
The ONLY reason why I am posting this up is because I have a lot of family and friends who are not animators, and have a hard time seeing things working out when my animations are in stepped. I know it's not a good showcase of skills, mostly because I have not tweaked any of this animation. There are no holds, no anticipation...nothing.
It's tough right now, but I will update this post as I continue to work on it more. Hopefully I will be able to show you a finished walk, or cycle, very soon. Keep an eye out for the updated post!!
Blocking Stage
So this is the first wave of Blocking out the animation. This was the result of 2 or 3 hours of work, including working out simple thumbnails....huh, I really should show off the thumbnails that I used, but to be honest I am really lazy, and don't want to deal with that. It sounds like too much of a hassle haha, sorry >_<
Auto Tangent 1
The ONLY reason why I am posting this up is because I have a lot of family and friends who are not animators, and have a hard time seeing things working out when my animations are in stepped. I know it's not a good showcase of skills, mostly because I have not tweaked any of this animation. There are no holds, no anticipation...nothing.
It's tough right now, but I will update this post as I continue to work on it more. Hopefully I will be able to show you a finished walk, or cycle, very soon. Keep an eye out for the updated post!!
Compositing and Scene Finishing: The Helmet
You know originally I was not going to post anything up about this class, but I figured that I would end up regretting it in the future. So here we go!
The second class I had to take in December was Compositing and Scene Finishing. This class is just a continuation of the first Composting class that I took waaaaaaaay back when, where I learned some of the ins and outs of The Foundry's Nuke. For this class our teacher was entirely overworked, and stressed. He was very lenient about our projects and grading, so there is not really too much to show, or that I want to show. One thing that I was happy about, was our second project, The Helmet Project. For this one we were tasked to take a live action reverence of a girl, and overlay Maya lambert armor overtop of it. There was a bit of freedom to this project, but not all that much. We had a target that our art director wanted us to hit, and we couldn't stray too far from it. It was to mirror a real life way of working in a studio, where we don't have control.
So here we go! It was a small clip to work with, but it took forever to work on with our school laptops. Every time I would add a new node into the Nuke script, my computer figuratively make an audible groan of displeasure. I felt bad for it, she clearly wanted nothing to do with all of this. haha So the freedom that I was talking about before are some of the more subtle things in the shot. For instance the color of the helmet HUD, the pattern of the armor, and finally the background. Those three things were simple things that we could stretch our creative freedom over, but it was enough to keep the class interested in watching `8 of the same scene, during our critiques.
I'm glad that in our shortened month of December, our teachers didn't overload us with work, because it allowed me to have fun with our projects more so then I would have if we were constantly rushed to get our projects done.
The second class I had to take in December was Compositing and Scene Finishing. This class is just a continuation of the first Composting class that I took waaaaaaaay back when, where I learned some of the ins and outs of The Foundry's Nuke. For this class our teacher was entirely overworked, and stressed. He was very lenient about our projects and grading, so there is not really too much to show, or that I want to show. One thing that I was happy about, was our second project, The Helmet Project. For this one we were tasked to take a live action reverence of a girl, and overlay Maya lambert armor overtop of it. There was a bit of freedom to this project, but not all that much. We had a target that our art director wanted us to hit, and we couldn't stray too far from it. It was to mirror a real life way of working in a studio, where we don't have control.
Helmet Project
So here we go! It was a small clip to work with, but it took forever to work on with our school laptops. Every time I would add a new node into the Nuke script, my computer figuratively make an audible groan of displeasure. I felt bad for it, she clearly wanted nothing to do with all of this. haha So the freedom that I was talking about before are some of the more subtle things in the shot. For instance the color of the helmet HUD, the pattern of the armor, and finally the background. Those three things were simple things that we could stretch our creative freedom over, but it was enough to keep the class interested in watching `8 of the same scene, during our critiques.
I'm glad that in our shortened month of December, our teachers didn't overload us with work, because it allowed me to have fun with our projects more so then I would have if we were constantly rushed to get our projects done.
Visual Effects 2: The Flame Demon
Okay so I know this is essentially just a repost of one of my others, but I have a reason for doing this. At school we are required to make these blog posts at the end of each months classes. Now normally this would not be a problem, in fact I have really found that I love updating my work onto this site...the problem that I had in December, was that I was so excited to go on my winter break that I kind of just put up a garbage post, which would get me the necessary points for my class. I kept on meaning to update this, sometime over my break, but every time I thought of it something would come up and I would forget about the blog. =/ Well now that I remembered the blog existed I am back to update the last post the way that I originally MEANT to do it. haha
So this was the first turn in that I did, for the class. After downloading the rig, I animated it to have an idle animation. In my mind there, was no reason to put the rig in there if I wasn't going to animate it, otherwise I would have just created the effect on a black background. haha So after the animation was baked on the geometry, I created the lava textures you see, since the rig was originally all Lambert Grey. After that I added a fluid container and started working on creating the effects of the fire. Again I am not a VFX artist, so unfortunately I don't remember all the details and sliders that I messed with, in order to get this effect looking like it does. But over all I think it looked pretty okay...except for that black halo that shows the bounding box for the fluid container. But alas, it is what it is.
For the second part of the class we had to create the effect of smoke. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for it, but I knew that we had to use the node-based program SideFX Houdini. I will say that I can appreciate what SideFX Houdini can do, but it was not fun for me to learn everything it has to offer. To me I thought that it was too complex of a way to about things, and I didn't enjoy my time in it as much as I probably should have...but, what can you do? you can't win them all. As far as what's happening, I guess I should at least explain that a bit. When I was in Maya I was able to animate bake on the animation to the Geo, and have the lava texture, but when I tried importing everything into Houdini things started to fall apart. It took me far too long to get the Rig into Houdini, and not have it freak out, but once I got it working I could finally get the smoke effect to work with the rig. Overall it was a hassle and a half, but in a way it was sort of rewarding........No, who am I kidding, I was super frustrated.
Overall I had some resemblance of fun in Visual Effects 2, but I wish that I understood, or wanted to understand the Visual Effects side of CG more.
Visual Effects 2
So now onto the meat and potatoes of the post. Normally December is supposed to be a hell month at Full Sail, but I have to say 2014 was sooooo much easier than it was in 2013. My teachers were pretty overworked, tired, and ready for a break that they eased up on our assignments haha The class that I have the most work to post for is my Visual Effects 2 class. If you remember the first Visual Effects class that I took I had to use dynamics, and particles to create my effects, but for VEF2 we were delving more into the fluid effects of different programs. The assignments themselves were pretty open ended, as long as they used some sort of fluids, so with the freedom in place I went about thinking of an idea. It wasn't too long that I thought of something I wanted to try my hand at. Now I am in no way a Visual Effects artist, but I try to take pride in my work, and don't like when things come out looking like garbage. So for this project, after much thought, I choose to use a free rig, made by Justin Kirk, and revolve all my effects around the rig.
So this was the first turn in that I did, for the class. After downloading the rig, I animated it to have an idle animation. In my mind there, was no reason to put the rig in there if I wasn't going to animate it, otherwise I would have just created the effect on a black background. haha So after the animation was baked on the geometry, I created the lava textures you see, since the rig was originally all Lambert Grey. After that I added a fluid container and started working on creating the effects of the fire. Again I am not a VFX artist, so unfortunately I don't remember all the details and sliders that I messed with, in order to get this effect looking like it does. But over all I think it looked pretty okay...except for that black halo that shows the bounding box for the fluid container. But alas, it is what it is.
For the second part of the class we had to create the effect of smoke. I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do for it, but I knew that we had to use the node-based program SideFX Houdini. I will say that I can appreciate what SideFX Houdini can do, but it was not fun for me to learn everything it has to offer. To me I thought that it was too complex of a way to about things, and I didn't enjoy my time in it as much as I probably should have...but, what can you do? you can't win them all. As far as what's happening, I guess I should at least explain that a bit. When I was in Maya I was able to animate bake on the animation to the Geo, and have the lava texture, but when I tried importing everything into Houdini things started to fall apart. It took me far too long to get the Rig into Houdini, and not have it freak out, but once I got it working I could finally get the smoke effect to work with the rig. Overall it was a hassle and a half, but in a way it was sort of rewarding........No, who am I kidding, I was super frustrated.
Overall I had some resemblance of fun in Visual Effects 2, but I wish that I understood, or wanted to understand the Visual Effects side of CG more.
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