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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

Another two week illustration for the Minneapolis Art Community. The topic was an 8-bit re-design of a character. I chose Scott O’Connor from Kabuki Quantum Fighter, a Nintendo game.

Not sure if I correctly placed the Japanese text, or if it’s even written correctly. It should read the title of the game on the right, and my name on the left.

Here’s something for the revived Minneapolis Art Community. The topic was self-portrait.

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

3D Artist + Animator
Joe Russo

3D Texture & Lighting Artist + Compositor
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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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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One time I was grilling out and…well you’ll just have to watch this one to see what happens.