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.)