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More Box Tops! I was the 3D Artist & Animator on this one, once again!

Pixel Farm Credits

Director
Tony Mills

Designers
Alicia Reece
Robert Mostoller

3D Artist + Animator + Compositor
Joe Russo

Additional FX Simulation R&D
Matt Pearson

Sound Designers
Ken Chastain
Jesse Marks

Drawings from Saturday’s SketchCrawl event. It was freezing outside, so 3 of us huddled up inside a coffee shop downtown. Go Minneapolis springtime!

Read more about the sketchcrawl event here: http://sketchcrawl.com

Teaser – 15s

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Launch – 30s

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Here are two spots we completed for Kentucky Lottery in early January. In addition to the digital animation treatment, we also used a practical puppet rig for the dollars to achieve a more organic visual look. A fun challenge for the team!

Here are some photos from the production shoot:

Pixel Farm Credits

Director
Rich Haesemeyer

Storyboard Artist
Joe Russo

Puppeteers
Alicia Reece
Joe Russo

3D Artists + Animators
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo
Rich Haesemeyer
Zac Leckscheid

Compositors
Eric Schulist
Rich Haesemeyer

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Here’s a 15 second spot we created at Pixel Farm for General Mills’ Box Tops For Education program. Tony Mills (Inferno Artist) Wrote, Designed, and Directed, with myself as the 3D Artist & Animator. If you’re a box tops contributor, this one’s for you!

And for you animation savvy people, here’s some technical notes:

The Box Tops pile was animated using nParticles in Maya and by using instanced geometry on the particle simulation for the Box Tops and the dollars. Everything else in the scene was key-framed, including the collision dollars when the items pop out of the pile.

If you show any interest in any other part of the process, send me a e-mail and I’d be more than happy to respond!

Pixel Farm Credits

Director
Tony Mills

3D Artist + Animator + Compositor
Joe Russo

Sound Designers
Jesse Marks
Ken Chastain

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Remember all of those MonsterQuest videos I posted a while back? Well now it’s all in one tidy package. This is basically everything I’ve already posted with a few more shots from the show, but condensed into a short edit.

Here’s a quick recap of this project:

At Pixel Farm, we worked on History Channel’s MonsterQuest Season 4, creating CG elements for 9 episodes over a course of 5 months, starting back in October 2009. It was around 30 seconds – 1 minute of animation per episode, depending on the content of the show.

Enjoy!

Pixel Farm Credits

MonsterQuest Season 4 Creature FX

Creative Director + Lead Compositor
Tom Doeden

Lead 3D Artist + Animator
Joe Russo

Reel

Edit
Joe Russo

Title Graphics
Chad Retrum
Joe Russo

Sound Designers
Jesse Marks
Ken Chastain

HillBilly Beast
Joe Russo

Mothman

3D Character Artist + Texture Artist
Jim Van Den Bogart

3D Character Rigging Artist + Character FX Artist (Fur & Dynamic Wings) + 3D Environment Artist + Animator + 3D Lighting Artist + Compositor
Joe Russo

Shark

3D Artists + Animators + Compositors
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Piranha

3D Character Rigging Artist
Matt Pearson

3D Artists + Animators + Compositors
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Snake

3D Character Rigging Artists
Chad Retrum
Llyod Travis

3D Artist + Animator + Compositor
Chad Retrum

Lizard Monster

3D Character Artist
Billy Thiex

3D Character Rigging Artist + 3D Environment Artist + FX Artist (Smoke) + Animator + 3D Lighting Artist + Compositor
Joe Russo

America’s Wolfman

3D Character Artists
Jim Van Den Bogart
Matt Pearson

3D Character Rigging Artist + 3D Character FX Artist (Fur)
Joe Russo

Animator + 3D Environment Artist
Amanda Nelson

3D Lighting Artists + Compositors
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Sierra Sasquatch

3D Artist + Animator + Compositor
Joe Russo

3D Environment Artists
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Additional Animator (Background Sasquatch)
Amanda Nelson

Additional Compositing On Every Episode
Tom Doeden

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Whoa! I haven’t posted something like this ever! But it has a certain artistic value to it… photography rather than 3d stuff.

These are pictures I took while attending The Russo Family Reunion held in Deerfield Massachusetts, October 8th -11th 2010. I used my Droid Eric HTC Phone and messed around with the infamous FXcamera app to see how far I could push it! I hope you enjoy!

A series of sketches I did a while ago that I hope to turn into an illustrative motion piece. My inspiration for this was to focus on composition within a frame and to see what type of shapes are interesting. Also, I’ve been pushing myself to experiment with different styles in an effort to keep developing as an artist. Oh, and for fun too.

More updates once I develop this…

I’ve added a shop section to sell 3d models I’ve created and will be creating. You can purchase them from TurboSquid.

Kunai Knife

Bell ARH

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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

Designer + Animator
Amanda Nelson

3D Modeling Artists + Texture Artists
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

FX Artists
Eric Schulist
Joe Russo
Rich Haesemeyer

3D Lighting Artists
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Compositors
Amanda Nelson
Eric Schulist
Joe Russo

End-Tag Animators & FX Artists
Chad Retrum
Eric Schulist
Kurt Angell

Sound Designer
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

3D Modeling Artists + Texture Artists
Chad Retrum
Eric Schulist
Matt Pearson

3D Artists + Animators + FX Artists + Compositors
Chad Retrum
Joe Russo
Rich Haesemeyer

Sound Designers
Jesse Marks
Ken Chastain

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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

3D Character Artist + Animator + Lighting Artist + Compositor
Joe Russo

3D Environment Artists
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

Additional Animator (Background Sasquatch)
Amanda Nelson

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Holodeck creature animation for MonsterQuest.

Pixel Farm Credits

3D Character Artists
Jim Van Den Bogart
Matt Pearson

3D Character Rigging Artist + Character FX Artist (Fur)
Joe Russo

Animator + 3D Environment Artist
Amanda Nelson

Lighting Artists + Compositors
Amanda Nelson
Joe Russo

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Holodeck creature animation for MonsterQuest.

Pixel Farm Credits

3D Character Artist
Billy Thiex

3D Character Rigging Artist + CG Environment Artist + FX Artist (Smoke) + Animator + Lighting Artist + Compositor
Joe Russo

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Another holodeck creature animation for MonsterQuest.

Pixel Farm Credits

3D Character Artist
Jim Van Den Bogart

3D Character Rigging Artist + Character FX Artist (Fur & Dynamic Wings) + 3D Environment Artist + Animator + Lighting Artist + Compositor
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 30 seconds – 1 minute 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

3D Artist + Animator + Compositor
Joe Russo