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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

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.

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

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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…

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An animation inspired by all things that are action and little story. I focused mostly on color, composition, and timing rather than character development. The music is from Perfect Dark by artist Grant Kirkhope.

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The second installment of my Ninja Squirrel shorts. It focuses in on the squirrel training hard to one day get revenge on Steve, the very large obnoxious man who ran over his parents. Is this training too brutal? Find out!