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.