Shadow Warden

It has been some time now since wrapping up the biggest project by far in my studies. Inspired by the mayans, apocalypse, shadow and light, with our class (16 students, plus 4 hardworking programming students) we were able to come out with a two-player game for Kinect.

During the ten weeks that we had, I did some early concept art, drawings for a 2D opening animation and sculpting of the game assets like the statuehead above. Having played piano back in the year two, I also did some weird improvisations with a keyboard for the opening animation. Just because it was so much fun I continued playing with that recording in Soundbooth.

RDW in Shanghai

Setting up our mocap studio in the exhibition hall.

One of the greatest experiences of my studies in Metropolia happened when I got to attend the Radical Design Week at Shanghai as part of my university's representing team. We were a group of nearly 30 people, students and teachers from the field of culture and creative industries doing an exhibition at Donghua University. With my animation teacher and a fellow classmate we set up a mocap workshop Tai chi for beginners. We had only a week of practising the mocap software behind us so it was a bit unnerving. At some point came the idea to test how our system could handle the capturing and tracking the movements of two people.

experiments

 

face study

Because David Strathairn.

In "Das Experiment" there's this scene where a hard neon light falls on Moritz Bleibtreus face in the dark and I got fascinated by his face.

Isn't Carey Mulligan just the cutest thing ever?

step to fly

Trying out the Hair&Fur in Max.

Shared Gems

I got persuaded to take part in an event where you develop a game in 48 hours. I joined the team with two other artists, an audio guy, a programmer and a producer. The text-based Flash game we made sets in a steampunkish world, in a shop where a lousy inturn meets with customers and tries to fulfill their needs, most of the time failing miserably. I've never drawn so much in such a little time.

corporate designs

Some older modelling work that I had almost forgotten. The sumo-baby-thingy served as a mascot for an imaginary company on a school project.
The second one's supposed to be CD cover art and I actually applied to school with that. I see my Amon Tobin appreciation was infiltrating areas of my life a few years back.

figure drawing

Here are some croquis of 2min poses. I've really started to prefer black marker over lead-pencil. It has forced a whole new approach to drawing out of me as there is so little time and no going back. In the second photo I was holding the marker from the far end.

Sculpting clay for the first time in.. I don't know, 14 years? I'm quite happy with the result.

spheres boom

I wanted to experiment with Reaktor in 3ds Max. I used some boolean operations modelling the spheres, then a voronoi script to fracture them.

oh pls

Mangrove spirit

TD

Streetfight

I wanted to capture movement. Is her right hand missing a knife? Man, that's brutal.

Jumpsuit girl

story of my life

For the love of sandwiches

At school we've been working in groups making short animation films. Ours is a love story between two sandwiches that come to life at a breakfast table. After months it's finally coming together, a whole two minutes, more or less. Now it's just last minute re-rendering some bits and sound mastering and somehow forever delaying it. It's a first for everyone, which is not actually unbelievable but I've grown quite fond of our story and characters, they are sweet and simple. I've been mainly responsible for a chubby character that makes and eats the breads, all unaware of the drama that's going on on his plate. It's been exhausting at times, especially the skinning process that could well continue indefinitely for me if it weren't for deadline. I can't believe I made a fully functional rig for the legs even though the cameras just show him from the waist up, sitting behind the table mostly. The setbacks have made me so much more careful! I'm so glad though to have it over and done with soon. Time to move on.

Here's a little making-of from my part. (Geometry exploding at 00:28, there's a winning moment there..)

Music: Lackluster - Ll12 Strateface Kcl0 (07 10 99)

self-portrait

need to have one, right?