I am excited to post that my Mt Auburn Night will be published in Hellbound 2, from Boston Comics Roundtable. I have been posting updates to Mt Auburn Night on this blog since I started it in March. I am really excited to work with Boston Comics Roundtable. Their comics are solid good work, and they are in comic shops throughout the metro Boston area and New England. Check them out, read the comics.
This course is an introduction to Maya 2011. Maya is an industry standard 3-dimensional (3-D) software used to create animated films, video games, medical visualizations, and special effects for films. The objective of the course is to familiarize students with the fundamentals of a 3-D working environment using Maya 2011. The course develops skills in four elementary 3-D software topics: interface, objects, hierarchy, and animation. These four topics translate into most 3-D software packages and provide a foundation for using 3-D software. Topics include Maya interface, modeling, 3-D animation, textures, lighting, and rendering. Prerequisite: familiarity with Adobe Photoshop, Mac OS X. (4 credits)
Wednesdays beginning Aug. 31, 5:30-7:30 pm.
I am thrilled and honored to be the instructor for this course. Working on the course plan is getting me excited to teach. My goal is to have all the students comfortable with core concepts for Maya. I want beginner students to feel like they will get an enhanced first course for Maya with an experienced instructor. Also I have worked with students who have previous experience in a 3d Package and they are great to work with. The past three years I was the Teaching Assistant for Tereza Flaxman when she taught this course. The students in this course are motivated and fun to work with.
This is modeled from a Guitar that Mayari and I bought in LA last year when we attended SIGGRAPH 2010.
This photo was taken at La Plaza park across the street from Union Station in Los Angeles CA. Mayari saw the guitars and had to have it. The guitars for sale all had cool hand painted designs on them.
They have been around for millions of years. Imagine a 5-foot tall 36 million year old penguin. They are examples of elegant design and evolutionary efficiency.
Making this coloring book page led me to wondering why penguins are so mainstream in animation. They always seem to have a presence in entertainment. I started to think that it is because of their shape may be easier to animate. Their shape and contour is one step more complex than the basic flower sack animators use for practice. Their black and white contrast makes them easier to color. Google could not answer my question.
For example:
Penguins of Madagascar(My personal favorite in terms of style and character attitude)
Happy feet(CG Musical mo-cap of an outcast dancing penguin)
March of the Penguins(Documentary)
321 Penguins (CG space penguins on Qubo cable channel)
The Penguin (Batman Villain) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penguin_%28comics%29
Surf's Up (CG surfing penguins)
Mr Popper's Penguins Starring Jim Carry
The Linux Icon is a Penguin
NHL Hockey team Mascot
There is a penguin meme http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/socially-awkward-penguin#.TcY9WbKTgbQ
Chilly Willy himself is a Penguin
Bugs bunny gets owned by the skating penguin by bringing him to Antarctica mistakenly in an effort to bring him home only to realize he is from Hoboken NJ.
Full Version(with a cameo of Humphrey Bogart)
Mary Poppins seems to get it right. She gets the penguins to serve her lunch.
Comicon Boston 2011 was great. I had half a day there Saturday to browse, collect, see some old friends and meet new ones.
Highlights of the day for me were seeing Matt Smith and Craig Rousseau fellow alumni from U Mass Dartmouth. They each had artist's booths where they sold their comics.
Matt writes the saga of Barbarian Lord, a cornucopia of raven food for your consciousness. Buy it because it will keep trolls from nesting under your tool shed. http://www.barbarianlord.com/
Non Alum I met include some cool people at Boston Comics Round table. I also met Ansis Purins whose comic cracks me up. Zombre is awesome,I purchased a print from Ansis. He also received a grant to work on his comic,congrats. http://www.ansis.tv/
I found some cool toy creators at comicon. I wish I had a bunch of these little guys with their mix and match components. http://callgrim.com/
I purchased a Tim Sale sketch book last minute and I am pleased with it. http://www.timsale1.com/
Here are two more alphabet coloring pages for you kids out there. I have been using Mayari's toys for reference on a few of these drawings. The Lion toy I used for reference was posed with twinning on the legs. It creates a stiff power pose. Not a very animated pose. It would be tough to change weight from a position like this, making it a very static pose. Probably why it works for a child's toy. It wont tip over. I stuck with it and feel that it went in a romanticized direction of a lion. Reminding me of medieval tapestry. I am trying not to get too stuck to realism. I left behind the details in the mane to create my own. I think a little weight shift of the pose would help this as a 2d drawing. I need to do some life studies of lions. I don't always like the way I draw them.
The ball was tougher to draw than I planned. I erased and erased then redrew the entire thing a few times. It was far more of a draftsmanship exercise.
