Goose and Gander Animation loops.

I have been busy this weekend working in Flash, making a couple of new animation loops based on our flock of Geese. The goal of this exercise was to create some new animation using Flash in a more realistic style with texture and colours being as close to the real geese as I could.

I started off by taking a few photographs of our geese. I used these images as reference when sketching the geese, mainly focusing on the posing and proportions of the birds. 

When I had a sketch I was happy with, I saved and imported it into Flash and used it as a template to build my characters. Again I used the photographs as reference for painting the textures and colour of the feathers for both male and female geese.

Sketch of a Goose made using photographs as reference. Colour swatches to the left of the sketch where taken from the photographs using the eyedropper tool for ease of colour picking and painting in Flash.

The most time consuming part of the process was building the character to start with and getting the colours and texture looking right, after which the animation was reasonably quick to complete.

Goose N Gander from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

It has been a fun little project and I'll be having another go with some more animation soon, refining the process further and making more good looking animation!

Ta Geoff.

Some more progress..

Making some more progress on my current scene.

As you can see I am starting to think about animation while designing the character and have been sketching out some basic movement poses. These will help out when it comes time to animate this character.

Slug band member.

Ta Geoff.

More progress today...

Been working on some Flash animation today. 

This is going to be part of a much larger scene with more characters which I have yet to design and animate. I Couldn't resist getting some animation happening though so will tackle more of the scene in the coming days and weeks.

 
MonsterBand WIP from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

New Flash work..

I have something new on the go in Flash. Stay tuned for more to come...

Design ruff

Complete flash assets

Getting used to blender.

Wow its been a while since my last post! As always the reason is the same, been crazy busy!

Lately been looking at using blender more and more instead of Maya. I had a friend ask if I could animate using blender for a possible work opportunity last week so I had a bit of a play on Saturday doing some basic animation to get used to the animation tools and editors inside blender.

Blender animation, Squash Stretch Overlapping action. from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

After getting over the initial frustration of not being able to find things and getting used to the blender hot keys I must say that animation using blender is not that different from Maya. You have all of the same editors to adjust your animation frames and curves etc. Once you get over the initial hurdle of the fact that the axies in blender are not the same as the ones in Maya which threw me a bit to start with! I can definitely see myself learning more blender in the future and possibly trying to migrate all of my current skills and workflow over.

Ta Geoff

Fun Flash Animations

Been looking through some of my old flash work and found these fun little animations which I made a while ago, they are not really long enough to have a home or use anywhere so I thought id put them on my Vimeo page.

I would have made each of them in no more than a few hours some even quicker than that. They were done just for fun.

Anyway here they are for your viewing pleasure!



Catapault from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.


Arrows from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.


Cannon from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.


Boom from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

Old Well Turnaround and more detail.

The Old well model I posted on Monday was completed entirely with the aim of giving me a piece of work that showcases texturing for my reel. I think it has a bit of a Disneyish feel to it which was not really my intention at all. I guess its my background at Disney Animation in Sydney and all of those Disney movies I have seen in the past!

I intend next to come up with some new pieces that are more based in the real world, as if they could be included in live action films. Mainly because that is a gap I have in my reel as it currently exists.

Anywho, here is a turnaround of the completed Old Well Model. The quality of the video is a bit fuzzy at the moment because Vimeo will only allow me to upload one HD video per week. Ill upload it again next week which will hopefully fix the problem.


Old Well Turnaround from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

And here are some more detailed stills of the model with complete textures and lighting.

Back Orthographic View

Front Orthographic View

Left Orthographic View

Right Orthographic View

Top Orthographic View

More Detailed angles

Stone Well UV and painted Maps

Timber Frame UV and painted Maps

Updated Demo Reel

Yesterday I completed a new piece of modelling and texturing work to go on my demo reel which was in sore need of dusting off and revamping a little!

I have now updated my reel taking out a bunch of old stuff and adding in the new. I hope to get at least one new piece of work completed specifically for my reel from now on just in case I need to show it at short notice. 

I have also decided to spilt my work into several different reels that are for specific skills. This I believe is more in keeping with what the animation industry requires nowadays, this one is focused on texturing and lighting which is my strongest skill set currently.

anyway here it is, my new 2015 Lighting and Texturing Demo reel.


Geoff Ind Demo Reel 2015 from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

Old Well Modeling and Texturing.

I have been very busy over the long Easter weekend creating some new work for my demo reel. I started the modelling on Thursday morning and worked through till the the afternoon of Easter Monday.

The model itself was complete in less than a day, with about half a day to unwrap and layout all of the UV's. By far the longest part of the work was creating all of the various texture maps (36 in total when you include all of the variations, bump, specular and colour maps) and setting up all of the materials. All maps where painted in Photoshop completely from scratch using some reference material but no photographs where used in the completed textures.

this is the final complete model rendered out of Maya as colour and occlusion passes and then comped back together in After Effects.

Ta Geoff

Old Well model.

Viking Sketch MkII

Yesterday I posted a sketch of a Viking which I had fun drawing. After coming back to him this morning with some fresh eyes I noticed a few things that I wanted to change, mainly about his pose. Which when I looked again seemed a little stiff and not so interesting. I also received some really great comments and feed back so I decided to re-work the sketch a bit before I went ahead and spent a bunch of time painting him up.

I also received a request to show my working ruff drawings which include my construction etc. When sketching on my Cintiq I tend to redraw and refine over and over making a new layer for each sketch. In this process I tend to loose allot of the ruff feel of my initial drawing which I am trying really hard to rectify.

Anyway here is the new version, a progression of all of the sketches from the first to last, and a side by side comparison between were I was yesterday and where I am now.

Thanks for viewing,

Geoff.

Viking dude MkII

Viking progression. Please excuse the faint one in the first version.

Side by side comparison of yesterdays version and today's.

Viking sketch

Been doing some drawing on the Cintiq again, still trying to break out of my usual drawing style and come up with something that I like. Getting there I think, pretty happy with this sketch will have to sit down and get some painting done at some point.

Enjoy 

Geoff

Viking warrior dude.

More maya goodies.

Another little bit of progress towards my new reel. Still got lots planned and lots to get done so onwards and upwards!

Low poly dungeon door

Maya Texturing

As mentioned in my previous post I have been working in Maya a whole heap lately. 

I'm creating some new work for my reel which is in sore need of updating and also for a potential opportunity in Dunedin that I have just be made aware of, which I am quite excited about. Hopefully the stars will align themselves for me, but even if they don't I will have some cool new work to show for my efforts!

As this is for my reel, if any of you professionals have any critiques or suggestions that will improve my work then please don't hold them back! Feel free to message me using the comments below or to get in touch with me directly.

Anywho this is the first sneaky preview of what I've been working on, more to follow as I get more stuff completed.

Ta muchly Geoff.

Colour map for a low poly 'Viking Shield'.

Fun Sketch

I have been working in Maya allot over the past few days and needed to draw something to get away from looking at Vertices, Edges, Poly's and Ngon's.

So I drew a bug thing. 

Quite like how it looks, probably because its something completely different from what I normally draw. Drawing took about 10 minutes and was a nice break from 3D land. Probably should develop it a bit more and paint it up at some point.

Ta Geoff

Bug thing.

Cintiq Sketching

Well its certainly been a while! As mentioned in my last post from bloody ages ago I have been really busy with home projects a new little addition to my family and freelance work. This year I resolve to post allot more often. 

As you may have also noticed I have been making a few changes to the look and also to the name of my blog. The look will continue to evolve for a while but the new name and URL will be staying the same (I think).

I was lucky enough to get a new Cintiq 22HD to go in my newly completed office space this year and I have decide to make it a personal goal to get much better at drawing in general and more specifically drawing digitally. 

As I have been away from the drawing desk for far to long my hand seems to have forgotten how to draw which has been incredibly frustrating, but at long last it seems to be coming back again. Lately I have been playing around with a few different styles of drawing characters and this is the first sketch that I am reasonably happy with, hopefully there will be more to come!

Long skinny leg guy.

I may add colour later.

Ta Geoff