DigitaLeon Illustrations

A short animation and some renders of the environment completed for advanced software. I think I'm going to be using Maya a lot more often, it was a bit frustrating at first learning this program all over again. However, once I got used to the changes, I was able to use the program a lot less frustratingly. It's not perfect, and I know I've still got a lot to learn about this, but it was a great learning experience.

Here's a doozy, I'm just coming back from a short camping trip that was a whole lot of fun and I needless to say, did not end up sleeping the whole night. And so I return to my cave and I find that I must turn this image up there into an environment. I loved the idea it's so great to be able to let loose and be creative. So after staring at a screen for a few hours and many sketches later.... I made some cuts and changes to the architecture, I was at this point going for a castle appeal. Im going along and adding more detail. Got to have a nice little pond in there. :p Here's the final version of the concept. I honestly feel that there's some details that could be left out, but after about 7-8 hours, I needed to upload this to the class. Oh yeah, did I mention that this will have to be modeled out in 3D? All in Maya, which I haven't used since high school? Well this will definitely be a huge refresher on Maya. I'll keep an update on my...

Here's the final animation for my 3D character animation class. Yes, more classwork! So much it can drive you crazy! Well it's a learning experience, which I'll be taking to any project I'll work on. This class really made 3d animation a lot easier to grasp and there's so many different techniques for getting the same thing done. It's really choosing the one which will be truly beneficial is what comes with experience.

This here is the final for my Intro to digital composition class. It was a very short and fun class, I've learned a few new things about after effects which is what this was made with. It was too hard to work with, I started off with just a single image in photoshop, which is the bubble and then used that as a sprite for the particles, so that every particle rendered looks like the bubble I made in photoshop.

Just in time for all the candy purchases for the Halloween jolly old good, ohhh who am I kidding? This is some disturbing stuff! Imagine the great depths I had to go into in order to complete this one. It was a lot of fun though, I enjoyed every moment of creating this..and so, it's Aliiiiiivee!! It's aliveeeeeee!!! Muahaha..*cough* 

Storyboard idea for a short 3d animation we are currently working on. Lot's of fun! I just hope that I will be able to achieve it all, after all I've never really worked on a full fledged 3D animation, just short clips and practice here and there, but this is it, folks..The whole process from beginning to end.

A short 3D animation completed for my class. Along the lines of keeping the weight of a prop in mind when animating a character. Very fun and interesting challenge, because I have to basically act through the character that the sphere is heavy. And so, of course the weight would end up being a little too much for him to handle.

A quick snapshot of a painting I'm working on in photoshop. There's a lot of details I'm gonna need to work on, especially for the trees. I was just speed painting and I just thought of a misty forest area with and opening to show sunlight and those sun rays.  

Here's a fun one. The goal was to make the videos overlap, and play in order sequentially and play out as one clip.  Wasn't too difficult in this case, just by changing the layer modes and brightness to each layer. Aaaand Boom! You've got an perpetual self cloning machine! :)

Here's another motion graphics I had to make and I'm really starting to like working with After Effects. It's a very powerful compositing application that delivers a freedom of creativity. This time around it took me a while to really get an idea of what I wanted the animation to be about. So I pretty much wrote a short poem, although I didn't get to use the whole thing. I wanted to get an idea of how the text will be moving about on screen so I created the text layers and used an text animation preset and modified it so that it would fade in. I wanted there to be clouds, everything is better with clouds and I was wondering if I could do it in short time. Then I remembered I could use photoshop; so I painted the clouds in photoshop, using a soft brush and low flow settings, some clouds was just a single cloud, others were larger groups of clouds, with alpha transparencies. Import them in AE and make them 3D layers so I can move them around in 3D space. It was a b...

Some new classes up this week, and they are going to be a lot of fun hard work to complete. Here's a clip for my Intro to Digital Compositing. It's supposed to be a 10 second clip on any kind of destination, I was thinking very rustic ruins so I ended up using those images for my ideas of a destination. I kind of like it, I know I could do better but after being stumped for a while, this came together quite nicely. Not very much of an intro, because After Effects is one of my favorite programs it really excites me that this whole class we'll be making some intros, and even a sting for the final project. I'm really looking forward to that! Finally my own station!

Hey There! I know I've been missing for some time again! Well fret no more, here I am with a new short animation I worked on for my Advanced 2D animation class. I know I might be my own worst critic, but I feel that it could have been a lot better with more time. Here's a short animation clip. This is a study of how a walk cycle can show the difference in emotion the character portrays. This guy looks real happy! Here's the next study. He doesn't look too happy.

Finally going to update! I've been chipping away at another class project for advanced 3d textures. Very fun class, one that actually gave us the freedom to model any scene I can imagine from scratch. One look, I'm sure you'd be able to where I got inspirations from. If you've played any Zelda in the past. : P

This poster was for Sonic's 20 yr Anniversary, even though I'm sure it's a bit late. I did the line work and colors in manga studio. So this made it one of the first drawings I've made on that program and I'm starting to really like it. It's really simple to ink the sketches, and get a very clean result.  So the idea just came to me, and it wanted it to look like Sonic is speeding through these two high performance cars, like nothing. Very fun stuff, I'll try to do some more, based on many other video game characters.  

Here's a short How To, I hope could be of help to someone who'd be interesting in learning how to set up a 3D model for lip synching, or any kind of dialogue animation in 3Ds Max. I'm sure that this could be useful in other 3D applications as well. This is kind of what you can end up with: When you've completed a 3D model that you want to to be able to animate with facial expressions, and have a character's mouth animate along with a dialogue. One way that you can achieve that kind of animation is with the use of a Morpher modifier. I'm going to explain the process of setting one up, don't worry, it's very simple! This is an example of a completed head model, it could be textured or not, it's entirely up to you. From this point, you won't be able to do much animating to it's facial expressions or do an lip sync. Why? That's because you have to apply a morpher modifier on the the main head model. Next, you'll be making copies of...

Super Obvious Secrets That I Wish They’d Teach In Art School at Marvelous Mustache Factory A must read for me, okay, maybe anyone who's interested in the life of an artist. I know I've got much to learn...

Hey everyone, I hope everyone finds the time to enjoy this day, whether you're on the hunt for those hidden eggs, or in church. Happy Easter! Here's a little Easter joke for ya'. Why did the Easter egg hide? He was a little chicken! Ha ha, okay that was bad...Well at least I tried. :)  Here are some animation tests which I have completed for an intermediate animation class. I do wish I had more time to dabble with my own animation, I do have one I'm working on, but I think it's quite too soon to show it yet. :p Emotion Animation Test Flour Sack Emotions

I was feeling brave and at the time I wanted to give painting with oils a try on a small canvas. I just kinda went into it, didn't really think about references and what I was going to do, cause then I'd just end up staring at a blank canvas all day.  In the end, it was a blast using a new medium and finally using oils. I definitely want to continue working with it!

The character is finally completed a few days ago and now, I've got the internet to finally upload it! made some poses for him. However the envelopes, which are what determines where the bones will manipulate and how much, isn't fully perfected, even though I spent a few sleepless night trying to fix them up, I'll continue to do so, and hopefully I can make a short animation clip with him.

Now here's what I've been working on for the 3D modeling class,  I am one step closer to bringing the Character to life~! There's still a lot of details I want to  get into the base model, before I work on adding the next level of detail! Then I've got to put the bones under the mesh so that I can get some nice movement going.

A character based off a created by a fellow classmate. We were told to create a character description, and then we were surprised to learn that we'll be swapping characters.I had to design the character, and in the coming week, start modeling him in 3D! So, I was assigned the Characabra, which beastly creature of legend, that resides deep in the valleys. Those who wander near his territory are never seen again.

Between Two Points from motiphe on Vimeo . A very stunning short animation, directed and produced by Motiphe. Its a tale of the weight of dependency.

Some random sketches, mostly down in 30 secs. I've got so many of these sketches just lying around my room and all over the desk. I'm kinda lazy to scan over 50 sheets of paper back to back. However, I probably still don't get in enough practice.

Day 22: Skives

D ay 21 : Squabble the Duck Although a seemingly  normal duck, this duck has got super fast feet, which he can use to skip across the water faster than a speedboat! Sounds familiar? Well, it's not supposed to! Using his super speed he triumphs over evil Dr. Rubinstein...Okay, maybe that's going a bit too far.

D ay 20 : Dorothy & Coco

D ay 19 - Nathan Another character that I didn't really get the change to color. So character number 20 has to be epic right? I hope, providing that I don't have any crazy classwork to finish, It'll hopefully be epic. : D 

D ay 18 : Cornelius

D ay 17 : Spacewalker

Day 16: Macro

D ay 15 :   Duran

Day 14 - Chaple

D ay 13 : Loki I'm a bit late again, but here's Loki, and I drew him awhile back. I was doing something else but I didn't really feel it, so I scrapped it, until I can work on it.

Day 12 : Gong

Day 11: Jules Here's Jules for the character a day, for day 11. Seems like it's quite a bit till 30 and classes have started up again. I can only hope that classwork for these classes are merciful enough so I can have extra time to do the character. I've already been giving myself too little time to work on them, focus...focus...focus!

D ay 10 : Jack

D ay 9 : Shireh