MoneyGrip Teaser

Check back next Friday, January 25th, for a full breakdown of my design process and alternate mockups of my custom Moneygrip entry. For now, here's a sneak peak!

Guavaroo

I created the Guavaroo character back in 2006 as a means to promote character design and animation at the company i'm currently working at. We had t-shirts printed up (7 colours no less!) and I thought it would make a great vinyl character, so I began the steps to see this realized in a physical 3d form.


First, I built and rigged the character in Maya. I then sent an .obj file to 3d Art to Part and received a relatively inexpensive and nicely detailed - though rough - prototype.






The prototype model then went thru another stage of refinement, with a new mold made, a wax version cast and then smoothed out by the talented toy sculptor Peter Kelley. A revised mold was created from this cleaned up sculpt (individual pieces now segmented with pin and registered plugs and sockets) and three versions cast in polyurethane.



As evident in this 3d-render, the refined sculpt matches the CG geometry pretty closely.



After this great amount of progress, the project hit the back burner and has been sitting in limbo for the past year 1/2. I'm now in the process of resurrecting it. I'll be painting up two of the copies (keeping one clean for future mold-making) and seeing if we can't move on to the next stage of getting these roto-cast in vinyl.

Get A Grip Show, January 25th, 6-9pm My Plastic Heart

Dropped off my Moneygrip entry on Saturday and picked up a bunch of nicely designed flyers to hand out!   The show is on Friday, January 25th from 6-9pm at My Plastic Heart.

Heywire Guild & Gallery

I was made aware of this new portfolio site that I thought I'd give a try, Heywire Guild & Gallery.

I've posted more of my traditional and digital life drawings at this location, check it out:

http://www.heywiregallery.com/profile/sketchguy

Pre-holiday Madness

It's been pretty busy since returning from Berlin over Thanksgiving break. I'm finishing up my entry for the My Plastic Heart 'MoneyGrip' show before heading out west (AZ and CA) this Friday for Xmas and New Years. Looking forward to the tour of Hearst Castle at San Simeon and then a few days in San Francisco before returning to the arctic weather conditions in NY.

Here's a quick sketch and final look for the spoon shaped characters i've been working on.

Sketch to Vector #2

After working out the vector illustration, I added the shading as a separate layer in Photoshop as opposed to using blends in Illustrator.

Radio City Christmas Spectacular on NBC, 12/1/07

"For the first time ever, NBC will televise the 75th celebration of the "Radio City Christmas Spectacular" in a one-hour exclusive special from the great stages at Radio City Music Hall."

We worked on four sequences for this at Guava. I was responsible for the 'Ragdoll' sequence, creating original characters and building the interior to Santa's workshop. The animation is pretty basic so as not to distract from the Rockettes in the foreground, however, I was able to infuse some life into them by synchronizing their actions to the music and action taking place on stage.

Check out the broadcast this Saturday night, December 1st, from 8-9pm EST on NBC.

The Berlin Underground

Just had to post about how clean the subway system is here.  I was shocked to hear one of the locals referring to it as "a bit messy." Especially considering how downright filthy the NYC subway system is.  (Of course, he might have been comparing theirs to the opulence of the Russian underground...) We sure could learn a thing or two from our European counterparts.

Berlin Graffiti

Had a chance to walk around a bit this afternoon after the DVD screening.  I'm always intrigued by the local graffiti whenever visiting someplace new.  After wandering around Museum Island there were only a few hours of daylight left so I tried to snap a few examples before it got too dark.

Berlin, Day 4

Ok, so there's no Day 2 or Day 3 post.  The screenings on both days ran very late, and by the time I got back to the hotel (2am-ish) I was simply too wiped out to post.  I would then sleep in as late as possible before jetting back to the venue for another full day. Think Siggraph Electronic Theater + Animation Screening Rooms for 2 days straight and you get the idea.

Overall, the festival was very entertaining, informative, and a great inspiration. All of the presentations were well done.  For me, the speaker highlights were Studio Soi, Tokyo Plastic, and Aaron Stewart.

One interesting tidbit from Anna, Peter and Lars was that there will not be a show next year, as they will be adjusting the schedule for a Springtime conference (that way, they don't exhaust their Summer planning for a late Fall show.)  I feel extra fortunate that I was able to attend this year before the planned hiatus.

A very scruffy and somewhat jet-lagged Steve.

Lars, Peter, and Anna, aka, Pictoplasma.

The crowd ready for the first program to begin.