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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

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Here’s another spot for Pioneer that was finished early July, and has recently started airing.

I animated the “Standability” section and the final hero shot of the Corn Bin building and transforming into the coffee mug. One of my co-workers figured out a efficient way to change rotation direction on the cubes using mel scripting and custom attributes. All you would need to do is translate it in a direction and it would rotate 90 degrees per grid unit. Without this the project would not have been possible within the deadline, since each cube basically needed to be individually animated.

For example, my workflow for the corn bin was to animate one cube or a row of cubes, copy, paste, offset timing, followed by manual refinement of each cube based on where the camera was. Particles, dynamic sims, etc were just not giving us the result needed, so we went with the most straight forward approach. It was a lot of grunt work, but a good learning experience for pipelining / animation efficiency.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Modeling + Rigging + Lighting + Compositing
Tom Doeden
Rich Haesemeyer
Chad Retrum
Eric Schulist

Animation
Rich Haesemeyer
Chad Retrum
Joe Russo
Eric Schulist
Paul Wilson

Transfer + Color
Dave Sweet

First Mile

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Morning

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Hello! More professional work, and I’m really excited about this one!

For this, I built a new model shoe for New Balance and animate it in the same style as their previous commercials. They sent us the sole in CAD format which was converted in Maya to geometry. I took that into 3ds Max, cleaned it up a bit and separated the pieces out for animation. For the top, I used the CAD sole as my template for rough proportions and photographs / reference of the real shoe they sent us, breaking up all the parts I think would need to be animated.

I had to tweak the top part quite a bit before approval, in which I finalized the UVS and exported back into Maya. From there I used a combination of blendshapes and bend deformers with basic rotation and translation animation of the shoe. As I was animating we referenced my scene so we could texture / light / render simultaneously. It was about a 3 week turnaround, and I gotta say, it went pretty smoothly and had tons of fun!

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Modeling + Rigging + Animation
Joe Russo

Texturing + Lighting + Compositing
Eric Schulist

Finally! Another post! I recently received the final ad images that I posed and rendered the Michelin Man into. It was a simple workflow, pose the Michelin Man, set up different render layers (fill light, key light, main, eye, reflection, etc) and tweak it like crazy in photoshop. He’s such a happy puffy man…. More to come!

I was not responsible for the ad design, just incorporating Michelin Man .

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Breakdown

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Ok, this update isn’t anything visually spectacular, and it’s not supposed to be. I want to show the technical process of something that is fast and looks simple, because there are still a lot of steps that go into live action tracking / integration.

The spot needed a 3D grapple with a rope to be tracked in, so I modeled the grapple, hand tracked it in maya using the footage as a backplate, simulated the rope using nCloth, and simulated the smoke using FumeFX.

Pixel Farm Credits

CG Modeling + Rigging + Animation + Lighting + Simulation
Joe Russo

Compositing
Tom Doeden

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Finally! I have dug through the vastness of that which are the servers at Pixel Farm and have uploaded two Michelin Man spots I worked on in August. In the maintenance garage spot I animated Michelin Man in every shot except the tool hand off. In the pump spot I animated Michelin when he walks behind the far gas pump and when he grabs the nozzle. I also built the gas nozzle in 3D and animated its base timing. Enjoy!

Pixel Farm Credits

Animation + Lighting
Chad Retrum
Joe Russo

Compositing
Tom Doeden
Rich Haesemeyer
Eric Schulist

Transfer + Color
Dave Sweet

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Pixel Farm Credits

CG Modeling + Texturing + Rigging + Animation + Lighting
Tom Doeden
Rich Haesemyer
Joe Russo
Eric Schulist

Compositing
Tom Doeden
Rich Haesemeyer
Eric Schulist

Transfer + Color
Dave Sweet

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Pixel Farm Credits

CG Modeling + Texturing + Rigging + Animation + Lighting
Joe Russo
Chad Retrum
Tom Doeden
Rich Haesemyer
Erich Schulist

Compositing
Kurt Angell
Tom Doeden
Eric Schulist
Rich Haesemeyer

Sound Design + Mix
Ken Chastain
Zac Bates
Jesse Marks

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A commercial I worked on which promotes the SpiderWick Chronicles books. I created the Goblins.

Pixel Farm Credits

Design
Deb Kirkeeide

CG Character Modeling + Texturing + Rigging + Animation
Joe Russo
Rich Haesemeyer

CG Environment + Lighting
Rich Haesemeyer

Compositing
Rich Haesemeyer
Eric Schulist
Tom Doeden

Transfer + Color Correction
Oscar Oboza

Sound Design + Mix
Ken Chastain
Zac Bates
Jesse Marks