Olympic Skeleton

Here's a little GIF to honor this glorious and treacherous sport!

Read on for some process stuff!

Third Year Film!

Wooh! Meet The Glitched King:



This was a fun experiment of a film for a few reasons, mostly due to a super compressed production schedule. In the past I've given myself most of the school year to do my films - this one I only had a semester. I would be lying if I said this was entirely intentional, and I think it shows somewhat in the film, but having to work on a leaner schedule taught me to make quicker decisions, obsess less, and think more globally about what pieces of the film are most important. Plus, I didn't have time to start hating what I was working on (as much). I still have a lot to learn, but I grew a lot making this film!

The ending production push was also a collaboration, and that in of itself was a great learning experience. I could write pages about this, and probably will. But in a nutshell, collaboration is awesome, and I wish we did it more at school.

I have a huge trove of production material to post in the coming days. Stay tuned!

THE EXTERNAL GIF

David O'Reilly was kind enough to release his entire library of rigs from The External World, and I was stupid enough to take time off of my film to make this little loop. Enjoy!

 

FILM_3 CG Character Test

FILM TEST! Much prettier if you watch in HD on vimeo.

Here's some animation/rig breaking with my main film character this year. It's just a test and won't be in the film, and things will probably change (like color! rendering!). Everything is still a secret because that's more fun. Enjoy!

Judging from my posting frequency you might wonder if I am in fact dead - I am mostly alive, but working really, really hard. I had a film reboot over winter break (scary) so I've been playing catch up. Almost all the assets are spoiler-y in some sense, but with my rigs out the door I should have more content to put up here soon.

Phone Drawings

I got a Note 2 over winter break. It has a built in Wacom Digitzer and pressure sensitive stylus. I did some visdev for my film in Sketchbook Mobile on it. 21st century is weird.

It's also Android, so I can hack the shit out of it, which I appreciate. Like this tool.

         

Dammit Maya.

Get your shit together.

Expression Sheet

tease tease tease #figurinstuffout

Drawing out quick expressions is so helpful for setting a target of expressiveness for your CG.

I'm finding that overall this year I'm integrating drawing into my CG workflow more and more, both for modeling and animating. Seeing all the 2D planning they do for their CG at Disney was really inspiring.

Reboot!

Wow Michael, it's been almost seven months since you've touched this blog. That's bad, and you should feel bad. I do feel bad. So here's a little thing from my third year film.

Most of my creative output this semester will be film related, and it's always tricky posting production artwork that's subject to change or could spoil your story. But this year, I hope to share as much production stuff as I can without ruining my film for everybody.

Sidenote, I'm totally embarrassed by a lot of  stuff on this blog. But I guess part of the fun of looking at these things is seeing improvement though, right guys? Right?

I'm crying

Experimental Animation

Some really rough experimental animation for my film. My film will be in CG, so visually this doesn't represent the film at all - this is meant to get a rough feel for the movement and mechanics of the character, and to work out design issues. I had a lot of fun working on it.

GIFS

What is it about these things? I could just make them all day.

Guerrilla CG

Me and some CalArts homies have banded together and started a CG tricks/tutorials blog. All of us have made CG films, and have also had experience working with CG in the industry. We really want to share what we've learned, and things that inspire us.

Come visit us!

http://guerrillacg.blogspot.com/

Second Year Film

Wow, so this is super late. Here's my 2nd year CalArts film, 'Under a Big Tree'.


Under a Big Tree from Michael Piazza on Vimeo.


Making this film was an adventure into the unknown for me. Having just barely used Maya before this year, and never seriously, I had a lot of learning to do in not very much time. This whole year was a constant "oh god I have no idea what I'm doing" moment - it was humbling and gloriously fun and sort of depressing all at the same time. I should make a list of all the things I learned, because it would be ridiculously huge. And I'm definitely going to make a 'making-of', just as soon as I beat Skyrim.

It's really fun to get lost in the forest of the technical (at least for me), but at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that your audience doesn't notice any of it. I certainly don't feel that my film succeeded on all levels (or most levels?), but I'm proud of the journey. And I'm starting my Disney CG internship in a few weeks, which is also an exciting scary unknown, so wish me luck!

More rambling: I found out that making a CG film involves uniting a bunch of different disciplines that artists and technicians spend their entire careers perfecting. Which is scary at first, but it just so happens that at this point in time, the tools exist (and are artist friendly enough) that it is possible for one person to learn how to do all this stuff and make a film in a little over a year (you will hate yourself though). 

It's all about evaluating your own skills and knowledge, figuring out where you'll be when you have to actually start production, and then making smart design & story choices that mask your own incompetency. We weren't always provided with the resources we needed at school, which was frustrating - thankfully, my classmates are awesome and we helped eachother all day long, every day. I feel decently competent with The Mayas at this point, but my laundry list of things to learn is still far longer than the list of what I know.

just a flying snail

that is all.

48 Hour film!

This is my CalArts 48 hour film (meaning that we made it in 48 hours) that I completed with my friend Toniko.



The theme for the year was cactus! Our film was actually pretty tame this year, compared to many. The weekend after everybody finishes their 48 films, we show them in a rowdy, debaucherous screening. This year we even had a legit tumbleweed, in honor of our theme. 48 hour films is easily my favorite character animation tradition.

We both animated (Toniko did a bit more than I) and figured out the story, I comped everything and edited the music to work with the piece, and Toniko did sound design. It was the most brutal crunch time ever for those three days. I was referred to as a 'slavedriver' on perhaps more than one occasion.

It was technically a 72 (75 maybe) hour film, but we nearly finished it in the first 48. Stupid sound design.

Some Animating

You perhaps have already seen this! An assignment for CG animation.

animatin'

I arbitrarily promised myself I'd post something today, after neglecting to for one month and 13 days. So here's an unfinished gangster walk (of a gangster) that I did at the beginning of the year.



And then a little thing I did today.



There's a CG test coming soon too! I suck at finishing stuff.

Animation Practice

(Character copyrighted by Valve, obviously)


I found some awesome Team Fortress 2 rigs earlier, and I just got around to making my first little test with one of them. The rigs are really nice, too - with all the IK/FK switcheroos we nerds could ever dream of. And we do. A lot.

____________________________________________________________________________________

I woke up one morning to find all my desktop icons were cleared out, replaced by one mysterious video. I don't quite to know to make of it, but it's pretty spooky.

Work

So this summer I managed to land myself a gig doing this banner for an 'insurance lead finding' company's website.

I have no idea what that means or even what they do - but thankfully, I'm just an artist so I don't have to understand, 'real world' things such as these. All I have to do is dick around in After Effects until my eyes bleed. Ah, bliss.


Sidenote: This thing really needs shoowshy sound effects. Please make them at your discretion. 

Tahoe

I went to Tahoe earlier their summer. It was rather majestic!

I don't really know how to paint or anything, so this will have to do. Click to embiggen!

I can bear this no longer

The other day, my friend told me that she wanted to help me color a little animation I made. Of a bear.

I was thrilled! 

 I think she did a great job.

Thanks, friend. The artistic flame burns within you!