Monday 19 August 2013

Kiwi Carpool Infomercial

Hello Everyone!

Over the last few weeks I have been really busy with a few freelance projects and and a never ending list of domestic duties.

The latest project I was involved in has just been posted on Youtube, it was an infomercial style animation that aims to inform New Zealand drivers about the benefits of carpooling.

I was involved with the animation side of the project working with one other animator. I was asked to create several animated elements that move within the design provided by the client. Then to assemble all of the different parts and export for the web.

All of the animation was completed using a combination of Flash and After Effects.

Here is the completed video.


I enjoyed working on this project and learned allot about working on a project that had a really tight brief and a quick turnaround time.

As always I am looking for more animated or still freelance projects so please get in touch!

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Spaceman Pose and lighting Test

Hey everyone, 

Sorry its been a while since my last post, I have been super busy making preparations to move from Auckland down to Waihola and have not had too much time to put towards my own projects. I will be moving on the 21st so will more than likely be offline for a week or so until we can get everything straightened out again in the South Island.

In the mean time I have been busy recording my brain waves onto the school hard drives so that a small part of me can live on and manipulate the minds of future generations of south seas animation students!

On my own front I have been testing the spaceman rig and ironing out any bumps, kinks, and bruises in the rig so that he is ready for the school project which starts production on the 8th of July. Our second year students are busy working on pre-production design work for the world, props and vehicles as we speak.

All I can say is that the project is looking like its going to be a doozy this year, and I will be looking forward to seeing the completed product.

Posed and lit test render of the "Spaceman".

Wednesday 15 May 2013

Banana Anyone.......Complete!

Yesterday, I promised to give you an update on my banana texture which I was demoing for our students.

There are a few things I want to tweak a bit more but for my first ever time painting a banana skin I think that it came out pretty well!

Here it is...

The completed banana as of yesterday afternoon.

The completed colour texture map.

Tuesday 14 May 2013

Banana Anyone?

I sometimes look at what I do in a day and think this is strange. Today is one of those days!

At the moment I am teaching texturing at South Seas. Today we have been looking in great detail at banana's, each of our students for homework had to find and bring one in and analyse what makes a banana look like a banana.

They then have to paint a texture for a 3D banana and infuse all of the gathered banana essence into their textures. All the while I have been demoing the process to them. 

Here is my results so far, I will update again at the end of the day with the final result of a days worth of texturing!

I love animation...

Progress render.
and here is the colour UV map so far.

Progress Colour UV Map.

Thursday 9 May 2013

Quick Update

I have been kept extremely busy at work of late getting ready for the next series of classes that I will be teaching. As always I have also been hard at work creating new teaching resources and improving the resources we already have.

The latest piece that I have completed is a new texture for our "Big Guy" rig which we use during the key animation module. This is a close up head and shoulders version that can be used for facial acting and dialogue. For his texture I have gone for a more feature quality look which I am quite happy with.

The spaceman rig is also now officially complete after a few small bugs found during testing phase. I am also happy to report that he is now an official South Seas animation rig which will be used during classes and he will also be the star of the school short film project this year!

I am super excited about this development and for one cant wait to see the short start production or see the animation that our students will be creating with him.

In the mean time I will still be animating with him in my spare time, so keep you eyes peeled for more updates to come.


BigGuy Bust from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

Thursday 2 May 2013

Future Projects...

Hello everyone,

I am still waiting on my Spaceman character's rig to be completed by my rigging guru. I have been working with Dan closely to ensure that all of his controls allow for a really wide range of expression and character. So far the rig is looking uber cool. I just cant wait to get into posing, which should be happening very soon. So keep your eyes peeled for that.

In the mean time while I wait, I have been really busy at South Seas preparing for the next set of classes I am teaching with our first year group. I have also been mulling over a few sequences that I want to use my new rig in. I'm nearly there with a few idea's and I'll start boarding it up on paper soon.

I have also been steadily adding a few more projects to the list of things that I can move on to when the spaceman is complete. In my last post I shared a character design that I want to develop more and use in a short story that my wife and I came up with. I also recently designed another character that I hope to learn more about rigging for character animation with (mainly because he is very simple rig wise). Hopefully if I pick up more of the rigging process I can get more of my characters ready for animation in the future.

Anyway here he is!


Snail Turnaround from Geoff Ind on Vimeo.

Tuesday 30 April 2013

Tortoise Character design and Digital Painting

At the moment my spaceman character is currently being rigged for animation by a rigger extraordinaire. I am really looking forward to moving him around and giving him some character! I hope to have the rig in my hands soon but in the mean time I thought I'd share a character design I painted up late last year with you. 

I initially designed him for a short film Idea that my wife and I came up with. I still may get back into developing our idea further but for the time being it has been put on a shelf until I have more time to devote to a larger more fully realised short film.

Tortoise Orthographic views.
I really like his shell, especially the dimension that the segmented shapes give it. Hopefully I can find the time to develop him a bit more and them translate him into the 3D world!

Take care,

Geoff.