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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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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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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

Here is my submission for The Challenge. The topic was Winter. I chose to mimic micro photography with showing a small section of ice found in a cave or something.

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

Hero Squirrel

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Steve Glutton

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Ah, finally some personal stuff! Here are animation tests for the characters of my next animated short: Ninja… Squirrel?!

These are mostly for motion timing / flow and acting. There are obvious intersections with cloth and skinning that will be addressed on a per shot basis (although skinning has been fixed now). These also have allowed me to set up my render layers and make master character files so that I don’t have to worry about render layer setup once my shots are done, for the characters at least.

Enjoy!

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This is a project I worked on with a colleague at Pixel Farm, Eric Schulist. The goal was to demonstrate visual effects integration into a live action plate rather than an in-depth story. It was entered into a local visual effects festival, Minnesota’s Electronic Theater, and shown. I was responsible for the modeling, animation, some simulation, and dust/plasma particle effects.

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A quick animation for the challenge. That silly Admiral Ackbar…

Another two weeks, another challenge. This time the theme was orange, so I decided to create a still image since I haven’t for a while.

I used 3ds max and Vray for the modeling & rendering of the flower & bee and Photoshop for texture maps, color correction, blurring, and all of those other post tweaks.

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Another animation for the physics challenge. The principle was elasticity.

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A concept I developed after traveling on a plane with an annoying kid kicking my chair. This animation expresses what the situation felt like and what I wish I could have done.

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Another animation for my school’s physics animation challenge. This time the topic was electro-magnetism. Therefore, the piece is entitled, “Magnetgician.” Enjoy!

Credits to Peter Starostin for the character rig.

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Created for a physics challenge held at my school. The concept was to show how rockets placed on the ship moved it around. Although I only got around to rendering the main engine rockets…