Run Cycle Just For Fun!

Hey, I thought I should show off at least something I've been working on at school :P

Here's a run cycle I made in Autodesk Maya, the time it took to make is about 2-3 hours

Run Cycle Fun!


Mash repeat button for great justice!!!

Thanks guys, lots of love.

And no of course i dont own the song - its just a run cycle for fun! youtube/vevo/whatever dont hate on the starving artists!!!

Final Project Video Finished!

Alright, here is the video that has taken me over two terms at VFS to complete. My final project for Foundations of Visual Art and Design.

This model set has 2,160,235 (That's over 2 million) polygons, and took me over 200 hours to complete.

Over the course of making this, I have grown exponentially as a modeller, texturer, and I have learned many many things about lighting and cameras. I am very happy with the result.

At the moment I do no have access to a computer that is powerful enough to render my video out at it's highest settings, so this video is technically incomplete. Perhaps when I go into the 3D program in a couple weeks I will use those super strong computers to rerender this project to show it in it's true beauty.

Thanks to everyone who supported me on this long and tiring road, and I hope to keep on meeting, or ideally, exceeding you expectations for a long time to come.

Final Project Foundations

Final Project Foundation Quick Update

Getting closer! Hopefully done tomorrow so I can start rendering!

Final Project Foundation New Pic

I'm putting in a massive full day today, hoping to finish before Friday this week!
Here is a quick snapshot of a portion of the level (Some bits of it have been featured before).
It's really starting to come together I think!

Final Project Foundation Update

These are a few screens from my (very unfinished) final project, I'm hoping to keep a consistant style throughout the entire world and I think I am accomplishing that quite well so far.

Concept Art Final Finished

As term 3 is over for me, I have finished my Concept Art final, and can show you my (For lack of a better term) tech demo of one of my more completed levels.
Since my project was on 3D video game level design, I hope you can easily understand what is happening in the video.



Description:
"My Discovery Project final video to demonstrate what I was working on all term.
This video just shows one of the many levels I did.
I have added red boxes to show where the video is "Zooming in", I had a maximum presentation time so that is why the video is so rushed.
the "Zoom in"s are meant to show more detail of a certain area, if you imagine the world map as like a super zoomed out model, and the zoom ins as actual camera moves, the world is easier to imagine in 3d."

After Effects Final

Here is my After Effects final, a huge thank you to Videocopilot.net for the tutorials that helped get me to this stage, please go check the site out if you are interested in learning.



Overall on this specific project I spent about 5 hours, on the entire project (Including my ditched idea previous to this) I would estimate about 8.

Projects Update

In my After Effects class I have decided to totally restart, I just lost all passion for my previous idea - so it was time to find something new!
I put in a lot of work since that decision, and should have the video done by tomorrow at the latest; I will post it here once complete, along with story board images and a "Look Frame" - all of which are part of my classes hand in material.

For my own project which I have decided to do some 3D level design for video games, I have also come quite far; I have decided upon my 3 worlds, and have many sketches of various elements within each one. I will be taking the next step (Full colour in photoshop) soon, and will post some of the initial pictures here with their fully rendered counterparts aswell.

Everything is chugging along well, I just need to keep putting in the hours.

Another thing I am doing in my spare time is working on the "Pimpest Plays" feature over at SCLegacy.com, if you are not familiar with what exactly that is, it is a compilation of articles describing the most influencial, spectacular, and awe inspiring moments in the Starcraft competitive scene. Pimpest Plays has been running for over 9 years, and the articles and videos are viewed by thousands of people, so being accepted into this team is a huge honour. Please go and check out the website there and support the team!

T.V. Show Inspirations

Growing up in the 90's provided a great source of cartoons and shows to draw from. Original ideas like Pokemon, Dragonball Z, Rugrats, Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, Reboot, and many others have lended a hand in my thought processes and creative tendencies. All the shows on tv seemed to have a different style, and although at the time I grouped everything that was drawn as "Cartoon", and everything that wasn't as a "TV Show", I would later realise the immense differences in artistic styles, story structure, and genre.
Being able to take small parts from each of these shows, and amalgamate them into new ideas is a great joy, and everytime I start thinking about how to take a project, I can see where certain ideas spawned from.
I loved my childhood shows, and I really want to be able to see a future filled with just as many for the new generations so that those kids can have just as much fun as I did.

Video Game Inspirations

My dream of level design came of course from video game level designs, growing up on the mid-late SNES, and being fully into gaming right at the start of the N64 made it a very impactful experience to see these imaginative worlds and locales be exposed to me over my early developemental stages of youth. Games like Super Mario 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time all had such amazing places to see, it was akin to going on a vacation to a faraway place whenever I wanted within my own home.
Super Mario 64 and Banjo-Kazooie had such gorgeously themed levels, it really just stuck with me over the years, everytime I play a game that has a level or setting in a snowy area, I expect snowmen and igloos - period. Back when 3d level design was young, there was such a need for easy to communicate information so that the player would not be lost or confused - the fact it was 3d was enough to amaze, the whimsical world was the right touch to make different places feel different. A lava land has volcanoes, a haunted place has a dark purple and dark green colour scheme with crooked houses, a snowy place (Again) has to have snowmen.
Ocarina of Time was so starkly different from these games in the way that everything felt right, it made sense, it was real - or atleast as real as a game world could be at that time. A lava filled place was not plagued with volcanoes and lava rivers, but instead with things that a person could actually believe could occur on Earth, as in, it was a beleivable sense of level design. The forest area was filled with trees, it made sense. It sounds funny to write this down, because it's so obvious to everyone now, but at the time this had not been done (Or, I should say, it hadn't been done well) before - and it showed the world that video games were different than cartoons, they could be real, and have real messages.

These are big themes to extract from simple levels, but that's the thing, they aren't simple. In a game you exist within the level, the story hinges around the world, if the place your in doesn't make sense, nothing will - level design makes a game its own, gives it a place, makes it memorable. These games (And of course dozens of other N64 games) shaped my love of creation of space, and I hope one day to make another child think about how the space around him affects everything he does.

Sources of Inspiration Over the Years

I thought it would be a good idea to list a couple sources that put me on this path, so that people can understand where I am coming from, and what I am about. Below is a short list of movies, games, and other things that have pushed me in this direction of 3d modelling.

-Toy Story (And other 3d movies):
Ever since I was very little, Toy Story intriqued me in ways other movies simply couldn't. It was as if the imaginary world that I created when playing with my toys was realised on my tv infront of me. I love everything about this movie, and it definately was the first thing to open my eyes towards using computers to make things in 3d.
-Army men/Hotwheels (And other toys):
As a child I played with toys a lot, I didn't have a lot of video games, and most TV was beyond me at the time (This would be around 3-5 years of age). I loved the way my toys felt in my hands, the plastic of my army men, the metal of my Hotwheels, it was so tactile. I spent hours examining my toys, looking at how each part worked, how the person who created it thought about what went where, how they modelled it. I am certain this is where my desire to create with my hands came from, as for the next several years I played a lot with playdough, clay, and other maleable materials (Including some woodwork, which looking back on it really wasnt much more than nailing dozens of nails into a plank). The transition from these materials to the computer world of creation came naturally as I grew older, and realised that I was able to build whatever I wanted within a computer, instead of being limited by supplies or costs in the real world.

These things are peices of my past that will be with me always, influencing little things in my works and guiding my thoughts secretly when coming up with ideas.

Projects Update

For Motion1 class I am planning on doing a visual effect heavy movie, since the max length is around 15 seconds, I think that I will be able to have multiple effects within that small amount of time. I plan to use a lot of particle effects, and green screen to make a really interesting scene.
For Writing2, my story is coming along, if mine gets chosen as one of the scripts the class will actually film, I think the hardest part will be animating the sandwiches. My story of course revolving around a person being locked in his apartment and being hunted down by man-eating sandwiches. I have been thinking about how I would actually move the sandwiches around, and I have decided that I will just use puppets, actually modeling sandwiches in a 3d software would take much too long, and puppets will help give everyone on site an interactive job,
I also have a class called "Discovery Project", where each student can do any kind of project they want over the 6 weeks, and at the end we present our data that we collected while working on the project, and also our final results. I have decided to do some concept art for 3d video game level design, as this is the kind of work I want to do in the future - not so much the concept art side of it, but the modelling. I understand however that you must walk before you can run, and so learning how companies go about making level from start to finish will give me a good grasp on what my future will look like.
These are my three big projects for the term, with all the other classes simply having smaller week by week tasks.

The purpose of this blog.

My purpose for having this blog is to use it as a creative profile. I will be displaying my works here and linking websites and other things that inspire and or interest me. I hope that people who review my page will find a better understanding of who I am, and what I am about.

I will try to keep this blog up to date with my current interests, hobbies, and work that is in progress. Since this is just the beginning, I will be adding old works to this within the next few weeks.

Thank you for visiting, and please feel free to ask me questions by leaving comments below, or sending me an email at:
Vzachata@gmail.com