DA

I reopened my deviantART gallery to run in conjunction with the blog. I wanted to be cool again, I guess.

Any way, here it is.

There you have it.

Aviation Progress

Here's some screenshots of the progress of my senior film, Elementary Aviation.



(That's kinda how I feel at times when working on her rig...)

The Canary is super fabulous though.

New URL

I'm in the process of renaming the blog, seeing as "The Animated Life" is already a blog for the New York Times.

I am open to suggestions. In the mean time, the URL is now "cscharrer".

Snow Leopard Cycles in progress

Snow Leopard rig and model is property of Rhythm and Hues, who have graciously allowed SCAD to use it.

Future Project

The title says "future project" but it takes a blast from the past to understand.



I did this for my Digital Form, Space, and Lighting class (same class as painting with light, violin, and the violin gone bad) and we had to use ONLY basic polygon shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders, cones, toruses) and piece together some sort of aquatic figure or scene with the shapes. And we could only use the three basic manipulators (rotate, scale, translate) on the shapes. No extruding, sewing seams. I was pretty proud of my outcome.

Another future project idea? Model the character in my title bar. She's got talon feet, that'd be fun.

Now I want to go back and take that same idea and make a new model of it. Fun! First I need the time. I should be posting the progress on my senior film soon. Models and rigs oh my!

Freddie will cut you

Except her sword broke so the tip is jagged Q_Q.

Sorry, she still doesn't have boobage, maybe when she gets some better armor.

Still in pencils, now that I look at it I want to fix the hair... must fix...

Winter Village

I just recently finished helping my roommate with her level design project. I got to do some low-poly modeling of a bunch of decorative assets, along with some brainstorming help on the quest details.

Because the objects I modeled, uved, and textured were decorative pieces, I feel the best way to display them is by showing them doing their purpose.



In this scene I did the anvils, spears, axes, bows on the table, and the red oil lamp. I did a few other things but either they weren't used in the final turn-in or you can't see them in any screenshots. I'll post a few single shots of assets later.

You can find more screenshots of Katelyn's project at her site, http://www.katelyn-mp.com, which I'll be adding to the sidebar of links also.

Thundercats, HO!

I didn't get to watch Thundercats much as a kid, but my brothers did have a couple action figures. The cat-people were amazing to me, but my mother found cartoons to be brain-rotting and I couldn't discover their source till later in life. Now there is talk of a CG movie in lieu of other 80s cartoons becoming movies, and the talk has been buzzing for a while now... well, kinda. It's been pretty silent for a while actually. I hear Warner Bros has delayed its production, but thanks to the folks at MovieLine, we have four concept images!

This is a mostly personal blog, so I have decided that only one concept image will be displayed here. But not just any one concept image, no, but Lion-O himself. Why just one? I love characters, and Lion-O looks good. Perhaps I have a particular liking because his face is much like the face I tried to employ on my Caprean designs like Dallas and Jestir.

I hope that production continues on the movie. It's currently being said that Jerry O'Flaherty is directing the film, and he's credited as an art director from video games such as Gears of War and Command & Conquer: Renegade. An art director being a film director? Interesting. I really would like to see how this could turn out, especially with the pretty concept art they've released. (Yea, the movie could still suck, but if it can look pretty while doing it!)

Elementary Aviation Work

Thought I was going to delete this post, but not so much. So, here are some 'scans' of some progress work I just did for Elementary Aviation (so I can actually work on it now) and... yea...

Shuddup.

FINALLY!

I got Maya yesterday. Couldn't get it to work though, and it made me an angry panda. Today I got Sims 3, and the disc was scratched. Two softwares not working and frustrated with my job, I began to crumble.

Then it happened.

My dear Tim was trying to help me yesterday with Maya and to no avail. He attempted to help again tonight with Sims 3, but there were no quick solutions for me, and so he returned to the Maya issue. And resolved it. In two seconds. Done.

Freaking miracle.

And for some reason, having that fix just sent a wash of relief through me. Fine, Sims 3, be stupid, I have real work I need to do any way.


Back in action!

Waiting

I'm waiting for maya to come in so I can start working again. Ordered it, but it's on backorder. Don't know how long that's going to last, hopefully not too long.

So, until then, a character sketch I did recently



This is Fredericka. I can't tell you what she's for, but I can tell you that the image scanned a little crooked. I haven't really done concepts like this in a long while. She's... meh, ok, I wasn't trying to go for some super sexy gladiatrix, but she isn't terribly interesting to look at. It's a solid start to a process.

Seven Weeks Left

Till I go back to Savannah.

My re-doings of holiday t-shirt imprints at work have resulted in my privilege to redo the imprint design sheets we show customers at work. Not only do I get to reorganize the imprints on a sheet of paper in a fashion that I deem logical and easy to read, but I get to rework a few holiday imprints to better work for general occasions. Too bad this isn't available online, but it should give people more reason to stop by the store and take a peak at the imprints I reworked. (Sorry art department peeps, but an art student who ain't allowed to work with ya gots to do something. You guys still get to say you did the original design, I just made them more... usable. :D )

Summersnoozefest of '09

I've only been back in Michigan just shy of a week, but seriously, it's boring. I'm pretty broke so I cancelled my WoW subscription (temporarily hopefully), and the internet doesn't like to keep me online long enough to get a good game of Warcraft III finished with Tim. That's frustrating.

Back to work at the Teddy Bear Co. Not going to talk about that, it's very very boring and certain things drive me crazy. I like to keep myself occupied by finding random mundane things to do. Like going on our imprint computers and finding interesting and rarely used designs and tweaking them so they fit my needs (Like a "congratulations" design to a "bff" design or a mother's day design to a little boy's... or two little boys'... personalized bear design) and discovering in-store sewing kits and fixing up the bears with holes in them. But, this is not enough... still bored...

And then my Maya (3D software) has expired on my computer, so if I want to work on my senior film (like I originally planned) over the summer, I have to be a code-cracking ninja or cough up $200 for 14 more months of Maya which will probably be updated within the next five. Or completely outsource my work to volunteers. I think I'll come up with the money so I won't have anyone to blame but myself when my models don't work right.

At least I'm beginning to hear of signs that I still have friends nearby that I might be able to occupy some interesting time with. That would be nice.

I need a hair cut, i have a strange mullet O_o

Pitch Poster!

So, myself and a few others from SCAD had their senior project pitch posters selected for the SIGGRAPH issue of Animation Magazine. Had no idea it was even considered, but for some reason the old version of my poster was submitted, not my shiny new one. Oh well, I can't complain, it was submitted, and that's awesome! So go vote for me and my classmates!

http://www.animationmagazine.net/pitch_party_09_vote.html

I know, I know...

I know I was harassing my blog over the weekend about my film production blog, Elementary Aviation, but now it is for realskies done now. It has all the required content and everything. You know what else is awesome? My pitch books are also done, and they got picked up while I was in concept class yesterday. Now all that needs to happen is finish working on my modeling work, pack up my room, move it across town, have the bf graduate, and then relax for awhile.

But first, I'm going to level my death knight for a bit.

Um, Eeyore?

As per request of Mike/Gordo, I bring your attention to this site that you may or my not be already aware of. Awkward Family Photos

Up up and away!

If you haven't bookmarked or even checked out my new short film pitch blog, then do it now, because it is getting updated this weekend. I could update it right now, but I'm trying to get the posts in about the same order as the book that goes along with it (that if I'm talented enough I might include as a downloadable .pdf), so untill then , enjoy the layout and my pitch poster as seen above!


PS - I feel a bit like a sell out, but I have a twitter. Find it on right side of page -->

(goes to hide in shame)

I Feel Pretty

Hamster the Rhino would like to say hello.



"Hello"



And do you like the new addition to the sidebar? (I miss having real fish Q_Q)

So you want to make a character?

Well then, here's a tip- Actually make a character.

If you want to tell a story with the character, don't make "just a dude/girl/kid/etc". Think about the situation you're putting the character through, and ask yourself why they're going through it and how they react to it. Then elaborate. You'd be surprised how much easier it can be to give a character life when you give them backstory and purpose.

Now go.

New Blog! (UPDATED)

I'm not moving, I just set up the blog (in its barest form currently) for my undergraduate senior film.

Elementary Aviation


Not much there right now, but check back in a couple weeks.

UPDATE: The film and blog have a new name (Actually, the film has changed completely but you don't have to worry about that)
Keep up to date!