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3 weeks before the opening game and we need an animation that not only brands Pixel Farm but shows the relationship between Pixel Farm and the Twins. Can we do it? YES! And we did, and this is what is the result from those 3 weeks of quick milestone turnarounds, little exercise, and a lot of consumption of Chinese food.

This plays 40 minutes before the game starts, on the big screen. So if you go to a Twins game, look out for it! Enjoy!

Pixel Farm Credits

Director
Kurt Angell

Producers
Bill Kruse
Paul Sadeghi

Design + Animation
Amanda Nelson

CG Modeling + Texturing
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

FX Animation
Rich Haesemeyer
Eric Schulist
Joe Russo

Lighting + Rendering
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Compositing
Amanda Nelson
Eric Schulist
Joe Russo

End-Tag Animation & FX
Kurt Angel
Chad Retrum
Eric Schulist

Music + Sound Design + Mix
Ken Chastain

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At Pixel Farm, we recently completed the in-game graphics for the Twins’ new baseball stadium (Target Field). Since I was working on MonsterQuest as this project was in production, I only had a chance to work on one of several animations: the homerun situational graphic.

I worked on the end part where the ball collides with the text and everything shatters, using particles instancing & keyframe animation to achieve the effect. The main challenge of this project was figuring out the timing for the slow motion. To do this we animated a moderately paced timing, and changed the “by frame” at render time to get more or less frames. Because of this extended sub-frame sampling, we had to sub-frame sample our particles too, which took a really long time to simulate. But after all of that, we created something of insanity…and everyone felt great about it.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Modeling + Texturing
Matt Pearson
Chad Retrum
Eric Schulist

CG Rigging + Animation + FX + Lighting + Compositing
Rich Haesemeyer
Chad Retrum
Joe Russo

Sound Design + Mix
Ken Chastain
Jesse Marks

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Holodeck creature animation for MonsterQuest.

The final animation I worked on for the show. I reused & altered the sasquatch I created for the first episode, and added a younger version.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Character Modeling + Texturing + Rigging + Character FX (Fur) + Animation + Lighting + Compositing
Joe Russo

CG Environment
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Additional Animation (Background Sasquatch)
Amanda Nelson

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Holodeck creature animation for MonsterQuest.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Character Modeling + Texturing
Matt Pearson
Jim Van Den Bogart

Character Rigging + Character FX (Fur)
Joe Russo

Animation + CG Environment
Amanda Nelson

Lighting + Compositing
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

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Holodeck creature animation for MonsterQuest.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Character Modeling + Texturing
Billy Thiex

Character Rigging + CG Environment + FX (Smoke) + Animation + Lighting + Compositing
Joe Russo

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Another holodeck creature animation for MonsterQuest.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Character Modeling + Texturing
Jim Van Den Bogart

Character Rigging + Character FX (Fur & Dynamic Wings) + CG Environment + Animation + Lighting + Compositing
Joe Russo

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We wrapped up production for The History Channel’s MonsterQuest TV series recently at Pixel Farm, creating cg elements for 9 episodes over a course of 5 months, starting back in October 2009. It was around 1-2 minutes of animation per episode, depending on the content of the show.

This particular piece is called The Creature Holodeck which plays early in the show, describing the creature through V.O. and motion.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Character Modeling + Texturing + Rigging + Character FX (Fur) + CG Environment + Animation + Lighting + Compositing
Joe Russo