Robitcon 2012

A Merry belated Christmas and a Happy early New Year! A friend of mine was sending his brother to Otakon as a Christmas present and asked me to draw something to commemorate this event (and further surprise his brother). He wanted something crazy. We have a running joke in which I refer to his brother as a robit (robot) so we decided on a picture of his brother as a robit (robot) at Otakon. I went for a caricature style by combining a realistic head and a cartoon body, and paired it up with a Japanese advertisement-type style for the background. (He wanted something crazy so I gave him crazy!) Sooo happy to use my facial drawing skills for something outside of the classroom! Below you can see the steps I took to complete the finished piece:

Step 1: Draw out the Robit!

Step 2: Bring into Flash and fancy it up digitally!

Step 3: Awesome final image! The top reads "Robo Alex is here!" and the bottom reads "Large random kanji!" (Yes I know they aren't all kanji, there's a bunch of kana there too, but really, it's not supposed to make sense lol)

This project was a lot of fun to do. I'll have to do more in the future!

Hot Dogs

"I just want to lie on the beach and eat hot dogs. That's all I ever wanted."

Okay, maybe not me personally, but if you've ever seen the beach episode of The Office, Kevin admits tp this very fact. The last assignment for Naturalistic Animation was to do a lip sync. Something subtle based off live action (basically you can use anything as long as your clip didn't come from a cartoon.) As I was looking for a rig to use, I knew I needed something that would look natural with Kevin's deep voice. As soon as I saw this one (a custom Norman rig you can find on the resource page of the 11 Second Club's website) I said "YES. LUCHADOR." And so while other people used normal rigs in normal situations, I decided to make my animation about a down-and-out luchador who just wants to eat hot dogs. I'm special like that. I build the ring myself, and Mike showed me how to make blendshapes to deform/animate the ring so I could give it that something extra. Success! The youtube version loses some picture quality, but this is my favorite assignment to date. Enjoy!

Past and Future, Shot 5

You'll notice that my videos have switched from Vimeo over to Youtube. One day as I was looking at some of my past work, I realized that Vimeo had decided to cut the endings off of all of my animations. ALL OF THEM. It wasn't like that before, I swear! And so I am now posting my videos on Youtube. It takes a little longer for me to upload them, but you get to see the whole video so I think it's worth it. I'll start transferring my older stuff over at some point, but for right now please enjoy seeing my newest works in their entirety.




This quarter, along with taking my usual 3 classes, I also helped out on an undergraduate senior film.  Directed by Joy Hua, "Past and Future" is the story of a little girl who is torn between, well, the past and the future, but she eventually learns to enjoy living in the present.  I'm not sure if Joy ever posted her full video anywhere; if I find it I'll certainly link to it here.  In any case, this is the scene I worked on. (Note that I only did character animation.)

Gimbal vs. Local, Stepped vs. Spline: An Animation Revelation

I thought I'd take some time to share with you guys an important lesson I learned recently about how my mind processes CG animation. For the past several quarters that I've been at SCAD, I was taught to 1.) always work with Gimbal rotations and 2.) work in stepped mode until it's basically all animated and then switch over to spline, plateau, etc. On my last assignment for naturalistic (which isn't posted at the moment) I was doing just that -- I blocked everything out perfectly and was about to switch over to spline when what should happen? ALL OF MY TIMING WAS GONE. I'm sure you've all been there, that feeling of "Where did my beautiful animation go??" as you notice all your curves fighting against your every attempt at controlling them. It's like you have to reanimate everything to get it back to what you thought it would look like originally. It made me dislike CG animation, it frustrated me that much.

The problem was that my mind simply could not process that big of a change. I struggled to fix every little curve but the graph editor always seemed to win. My animation just didn't look the way I wanted it to anymore. I didn't understand it.

Then one day when I was presenting my work, I told that to my professor, that the stepped - spline leap was just incomprehensible. He told me to do something I never thought of doing: "Don't work on stepped. Work on linear, it'll force you to put the pauses in. And use local rotations, your arms will work better."

Don't work on stepped? I thought you HAD to work on stepped. That seemed to be what they did in all the classes, tutorials, industry videos.... I never thought to try anything else.

The next animation I started, I didn't use stepped. I worked right on spline from the get go (I prefer it to linear) and set my rotations to local. WHAT A DIFFERENCE.

Suddenly I could see my timing as it was happening. I could adjust things as I went, and the graph editor became my friend as it helped me along the way rather than overwhelming me at the end. And local rotations removed the possibility of Gimbal lock. It was amazing. Things made sense!!

I'm not recommending this technique for everyone. Some people work best blocking things in stepped and using Gimbal rotations. I guess the point I want to make is, don't think you have to animate the way everyone else does. Do what works for you! My technique may be different, but it makes sense to me, and it's brought life back into my animations.

Now then, back to work!!

3D Rotoscope Dancer

No, this has no connection to my past rotoscope project from Drawing in Motion. (Maybe it's my 17 years of dance classes catching up with me, that I'm just naturally drawn to study that type of movement? Maybe?) This was an exercise for my 3D Naturalistic Animation class. We had to find a video of a professional athlete and make our character act exactly as they do -- then adjust it so it looks natural to the character. I found a video online of this amazingly talented dancer and knew I had to use it. Who can bend like that? Honestly? Anyway, this file is pretty much done, though I would like to come back later in the quarter and tweak it some more if I can. You know, look at it again with fresh eyes. I'm not sure why this one didn't come up widescreen because that's how I saved it... oh well, something to look into I suppose.

The Lost Cartoony File -- Mocking Dwight

I was sitting in the computer lab, waiting for one of my newer assignments to convert to a .mov file, when I decided to go through my blog. It was then that I noticed that - gasp! - I never put up one of my cartoony assignments from last winter. And so here it is. Better late (very, very late) then never, right?

You'll notice that it isn't quite as glamorous as my other projects, and by that I mean it's totally a playblast and not rendered out at all. Well there is funny story behind that -- right after I made this playblast, my network decided to corrupt all of my actual maya files. POOF! GONE! This little video is all that's left. So all you SCAD people reading this, NEVER LET YOUR HOME DRIVE ENTER THE RED. EVER. EVERRRRRRR. *eh hem*

And so I ask you to excuse it's appearance. I wish I could have finished it like I had planned -- added more natural hand movements and other things to make it all polished and spiffy looking. But I AM happy with some of the subtle movements I managed to portray on the character in the background, like his little shrug and nose twitch. So let's just focus on that, shall we?

Soooo, yeah. Please enjoy "Mocking Dwight", the Lost Cartoony File.

Dwight Speech from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

SCAD, The Final Chapter

Hello everyone! I must apologize (yet again) for my lack of posts. I am finally back in Savannah for my last quarter at SCAD. As sad as it will be to leave, right now I am more focused on how awesome this quarter is going to be. I am currently taking Naturalistic Animation (which is a bit tricky for me so far, but I like that I'm pushing myself in a new direction) and a portfolio class (hurray for a more professional website and business cards -- coming soon!) and, best of all, 3D Collaborative Project, where I'll be directing my first ever student film!! We just nailed down the story and will be working on storyboards next. I won't say too much about it now as the quarter just started, but it looks like it's going to be really amazing. Together, Mike (who came up with the initial concept for the story), Miho, Jillian, and I have 10 weeks to crank out a masterpiece. Let's do this!

Sketchbook Assignment 3D

This animation was the last assignment for drawing in motion. It was our sketchbook assignment -- we had to take 5 drawings, or poses, from our various figure drawing sessions and use them to show a change of emotion. I chose to do mine in Maya since I worked in 2D for the previous assignments.

3D Sketchbook Animation from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Rotoscope Dancer

Hello everyone! I apologize for my lack of posting. Finals were CRAZY and then when I got home I had issues uploading my stuff. But I managed to get it working so yay!! This animation is from my drawing in motion class. It was our second assignment, this time using the rotoscope technique. I decided to make mine traditionally, meaning I drew all of the images using pencil and paper. I used photoshop to 'cut out' the images after capturing them. I used this assignment to play around with a little stop motion as well. Enjoy!

Rotoscope Dancer from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Adventures in Lighting!

This may be one of the few times I post something that doesn't actually move. The second assignment for my 3D modeling class was to paint something with light. We were told to play with light and shadow, in both color and black and white. So I whipped up this little scene and went for more of a painterly mood. All of the objects you see are actually white (though they look gray... see the first image)-- all color comes from various lights.

Before (without lights):

After (with lights):

Distortion -- In Toon Render!

The long over-due distortion project from last quarter. The assignment was to take a character and distort it (My class had very vague assignments, but I guess that let us be creative, right?) So here we have good old Sinka back again. I finally unstepped the spiders so hurray! I got the spider model from turbosquid.com but had to rig it myself (and I am SUPER PROUD of my rigging ability in that I was able to do it without filling with rage or asking for help. Such a good little spider, didn't give me any trouble at all!) Enjoy!

Distortion (updated!) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Mirror, Mirror

This is another project from last quarter's 3D cartoony class. My professor called it "Mickey Mousing" as a tribute to the old black and white cartoons where the characters bopped along to music the whole time. Like the MooM walk cycles, this too was sitting on my laptop as a simple playblast -- but no more! Now it's all rendered nice and neat. Enjoy!

Mickey Mousing (Updated!) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

video playback issues?!

Hey guys!
I discovered that sometimes when you click on some of my animations they won't play... but then other times they will. As I'm not fully used to the setup yet, I'm not sure if it's vimeo or blogger going "Why?????" and panicking, but I HAVE discovered that if you find a video that won't play and you refresh the page, 99% of the time when you click the play button it suddenly works. Again, I am not sure why this happens, perhaps just one of the great mysteries of technology or something. Anyway, I'm making this post to say "Do not fret!! The videos DO work! I promise!!" If nothing else, they can be opened up within vimeo where they play just fine all the time. So yeah, hopefully I can figure out this little ole' situation, but until then, bare with me okay?? Til next time!!

MooM walks -- revisited

Last quarter (Winter) I had to make three funny walk cycles for my 3D cartoony class. My professor only wanted playblasts, nothing fancy, so for the longest time playblasts they remained -- until yesterday, that is. I decided to take them and render them out to look their best. I had just learned about lighting in my modeling class, so this seemed like the best possible time to spruce them up! I played with light and color a lot in 'Zombie Moom' so it's become my favorite of the three. Enjoy!!

Zombie Moom (3D funny walk (1) -- updated!) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

3D funny walk (2) updated! from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

3D funny walk (3) -- updated! from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Space Cat?

Primitives Space Cat? (model) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Our first assignment in my modeling class was to build something out of primitives -- that is, we could rotate, move, and scale, but that was pretty much it. The idea was that the lack of technical ability (moving points, using the CV curve tool etc) would spark our creativity. Please enjoy this lovely space cat.

Mark in Motion (Muybridge Dog)

Mark in Motion (Dog) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

The assignment was to take a 7 images of the Muybridge running dog recreate it and turn it into a 10 second animation. This was my first time ever animating a dog. Hurray new experiences!

'Stached -- my first fully stop motion short!

'Stached from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

As I said in my About Me, I love to crochet. This lead me to think of a way to combine animation and the art of crochet -- in a stop motion short! Everything in this piece was hand-made by yours truly. So much work but so much fun!!

Experimental Animation

The whole point of my Animation Aesthetics and Practice class was to get us to try new things and step out of our comfort zones. I used this as an opportunity to play around in stop motion, something I'd never tried before. Turns out, I really enjoy it. ^_^

Untitled (Experimental Animation) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

This was my experimental animation for Animation Aesthetics and Practice. A combination of pixilation and under-the-camera stop motion SCAD Winter 2011

SCAD Fall 2010

Below is a large portion of my work from my first quarter at SCAD. It's not everything, but I'd say it's the pick of the litter. I thought I'd keep them all together as one big post. Next up: Winter quarter!!

crab rig (with mesh!) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Crab rig. The crab mesh is taken from turbosquid.com but it was rigged by yours truly.

crab rig demo from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Crab rig interior

2D doorbell exercise from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Doorbell exercise!!

3D Max walk (front) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

My first 3D character walk cycle

3D dino run (side) from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

SCAD Fall 2010 -- Animation Basics dino run. He's so jolly! XD

2D walk cycle exercise from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

2D walk cycle. I had never done traditional 2D animation before my Animation Basics class at SCAD. This took soooo long... but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. I definitely learned a lot about arcs in the process!

Bloke from Nicole Van Luvender on Vimeo.

Bloke was the first character I ever rigged. After rigging it in my animation: character setup class, I was told to make a short animation using the rig so that I could feel it's strengths and weaknesses

Finally! A blog!!

Hello everyone!  To the great shock (and hopefully joy) of all my friends out there, I have finally given in to their peer pressure and created a blog to hold all my artsy wonder.  You're welcome! In all seriousness though, this was totally over-due, so I shall do my best to keep it up-to-date.  I guess I'll start by posting the many things that I didn't get to post over the last two quarters (mainly because of my excuse, "Blogs!?! I don't have time for blogs!! mehh!!!").  

So...yes.  Enjoy the artsy wonder and I shall, in return, make time for blogs.  For you.  Because I care. ^__^