Martian Sculpt

Here's a character sculpt I did entirely in Blender. I've wanted to dive into Blender for a while and kick the wheels, and this little guy is one of my first attempts at working with the program's sculpting tools. Enjoy!


Martian Character Sculpt from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

A couple of still images:

POTUS Sculptures

Had some fun this winter sculpting with Super Sculpey! Here's a couple of busts that I turned out of Honest Abe and Old TR - I think they look pretty darn good!

Dragons

FX Animation - Fire

I recently took another really cool class on animating fire by Michel Gagne at taughtbyapro.com and thought I'd share the results. I think my favorite part of this lesson was the undercurrent texture that is animated faster than the looping flame - it really adds some appeal in my opinion.

FX Animation Exercise - Looping Flame from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Character Design Exercise

Recently, I've been taking a couple of online courses at taughtbyapro.com - the latest being a Character Design course taught by Tom Bancroft. Here's a nifty little character design exercise I'm pretty happy with - the assignment being "5 designs for a generic 12 year old boy." I call him Willy!

For Matt

Draw A Bird Day

I haven't posted anything in quite some time, so I thought I'd get back on here and start doing that again. Last week someone at work mentioned that it was "National Draw-a-Bird Day", so I did this little doodle of a Grey Heron. Pretty much just because I like Grey Herons. But I had so much fun doing it that I did a second drawing the next day of my fav little bird that visits my bird feeders - the Chickadee! So here they are:

My Updated Animation Reel

Tom Davis 2013 Animation Reel from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

SNY "More Sports" 15 Second TV Spot

I recently had the pleasure of animating this :15 second TV spot for Sports New York for Real Art. I did all the animation from start-to-finish, and I'm very proud of it! It's all hand-drawn, and I got the chance to use some multiples and smears - something that I really geeked out on. Buck did 4 :30 second spots and they set the tone... the look, feel, pacing, etc with their spots - my job was to animate this in a way that it stayed consistent with what they had already done. It turned out great! Andy Nick art-directed it. Jamie Golsch managed the project. I had some help coloring in some of the sequences from Susan Jauss and Shelby White. Adam Haroff did the sound design. Debbie and Arturo from Real Art's new york office wrote the script, worked with the client and with Buck on their :30 spots, and gave our team creative freedoms that really allowed this thing to shine. Proving that even though you may get to animate the whole thing - it really is a team effort at it's core. I'm looking forward to doing more hand-drawn animation in the very near future!

SNY MoreSports 15 Second Spot from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Make Friends, Play Tennis TV Spots

Two TV commercials I animated for Midtown Athletic Club/Real Art Design Group. I was responsible for all animation and visual production of both 15 second spots. All animation was traditionally animated with pencil and paper for client approval, then scanned and cleaned up/vectorized in After Effects. Directed by Andy Nick. Original concept/design: Arturo Gigante and Debbie Kasher. Sound design: Adam Haroff (adamharoff.com). Production-side project management: Matt Zolman. Client-side project management: Todd Blair.

Make Friends, Play Tennis - Porcupine/Balloon Animal TV Spot from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Make Friends, Play Tennis - Astronaut/Alien TV Spot from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Some Scraps - Doodling During Render Time

Here's some scraps from my doodle-pad I did today just before lunch. I really like this playful little guy! Hmm... Scraps sounds like a fitting name for him. Maybe I'll animate him soon...

My New Animation Reel and Website Is Up

If you've been following along, you may already know that almost two years ago I went back to school to really iron out my animation chops. I've recently graduated from Animation Mentor in the 18 month Character Animation Program, and I've decided - along with posting my new Animation Demo Reel - that I'd go ahead and to a total "reboot" so-to-speak. I've launched a new Portfolio Site where I'm keeping my current reel along with samples of my illustration work. From time to time I'll be posting new work here on the blog and on my site, so please subscribe and check back once in a while to see what's new!

That being said, I'm going to send you on over to my spankin' new website to check out my new reel and then some!

Click here to check it out: www.tomdavisart.com

New Lighting and Compositing Test

I've been trying to get my head around lighting and compositing across my 3D applications (in this case Cinema 4D) and After Effects. This weekend I threw together this little test. To me - this is feeling just about right. Once I get this concept down, I plan on animating characters in live-action footage.

Lighting and Compositing Test from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Facial Poses

This term at Animation Mentor, we were required to find facial poses that conveyed a clear emotion and mimic that emotion with the Bishop character. It's really a fun exercise and helped me wrap my brain around facial posing. Here's some of the poses I did that I feel were pretty strong!

Something Else...

You might have noticed if you watched my previous post that there's a couple picture frames on the wall in the background. I created a couple "paintings" in photoshop yesterday morning that I'm going to de-saturate a little and put into those frames when I come back through and do my final render. Jenny flipped out about these and really like them, so I thought maybe they were worth putting up here. I had fun doing them b/c I gave myself about a half hour timeframe to complete them! Hope you like!

Some Fun Stuff I'm Doing

Something I'm Working On...

Details soon to come... but I'm loving the direction this is going so I thought I'd post a teaser!

Animation Mentor Class One

Animation Mentor Progress Reel: Class One Basic Foundations from Tom Davis on Vimeo.

Here's my progress reel for Animation Mentor Class One: Basic Foundations with Don Kim! I feel like I've learned a ton this term and I couldn't be happier with AM's program. I'm getting ready to start class two, so check back in 3 months when I post my second progress reel!! A couple notes worth mentioning: these are Maya playblasts, not full-on renders... the same files I turned in for my assignments. Also worth mentioning, there's no physics engine stuff, rigid bodies/soft bodies or collision objects or any of that... this is focusing on learning the basics and hand-keying everything! Anyway - hope you like!

Christmas in ... June?

OK... so last Christmas I gave my wife, Jenny, what she's been hinting at for years - Peanuts lawn characters (to put in our yard at Christmas-time)! Like a throwback to the 70's I drew these guys out on particle board, cut them, and painted them and gave them to her for Christmas! These guys are roughly 4 feet tall (with the exception of Snoopy being a little smaller). Jenny's way more saavy than I am regarding stuff like this so she ended up weatherproofing them recently while I took the opportunity to photograph them. My neighbors were impressed that I didn't trace or stencil these guys, and I assured them that's not my bag... nor is weatherproofing evidently. But yeah... if you're gonna make your wife something cool for Christmas - never, ever, EVER trace them ... jeez, really?? I will say, though, that mine are not the only hands that touched these guys... my son, Forrest helped me cut and bondo the rough edges, my 7-year-old, Willy, and my neighbor friend, Joe, "helped" me paint them, my daughter made sure mama was out of the house long enough for me to work on them, and my son, Dylan, helped me hide them all winter long! (so yeah this one was a team effort.)

Animation Mentor Stu Poses

As you many know I'm currently attending Animation Mentor and am now in the last week of class one! (Woohoooo!) One of my favorite things we did this term was "Stu Poses". It's where we're assigned an emotion or a physical state of being and we have to then sketch the figure in 10 or more quick gesture drawings... then we select our favorite and put our character, Stu, into said pose. It's a really fun exercise and although there's no motion involved, it's a HUGE building block for what we're about to be getting into from here on out in our classes and in our animation careers. So here's a couple of my favs from first term. Hope you like! Oh - and later this week I'll be posting my Progress Reel from term one here for all to see as well, containing more Stu poses and a bunch of animation assignments I've finished... so check back! (Sketches by hand - obviously - and Stu poses done in Maya using AM's character and rig.)