Alexis D. M. Comstock

Student Blog of my progress in Computer Animation Degree. 

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Reviving Blog Update 2020  (1/2)

Greetings! If not aware, this tumblr was created for my Full Sail courses as projects progress and final turn-ins for students & instructors. This started back in earlier 2016. With Full Sail University constantly evolving to meet the rapidly evolving entertainment industries, the process changed to a new forum platform (than eventually to Portfolios upon Artstation). HENCEFORTH, the forgotten updates on this blog. Adding the factor that I completely focused on my coursework and federal work study as an Online Tudor at Full Sail, this sadly became out of sight and out of mind.  THE NEW PLOT:  Posting records of Full sail course work to Archive, than reutilize blog for progress updates on personal art projects. With my wide creative background I have been troubled in where to showcase my other artworks of traditional medias. Of course I will gather more insight before posting certain original concept work as I want a platform that is reliaible to defend and protect against other’s stealing my posted work.  Another posting will follow on other significant matters...

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So much knowledge

Learning so much that I found myself falling behind in updated, mostly for I am still digesting information. Finding it challenging in how to describe what I learned for there is so much knowledge covered. Where to even begin?

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Portfolio III at Full Sail University: Modeled an 1850s Winfield Rocking Chair.

Was a challenge to model and figure out how to accomplish the brass filigree. Cushion is not the best, I want to redo the zbrushing on it.

Below is the reference I used, found on Online Galleries .com

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Final submitted for my 3DA2 ( portfolio two) course at Full Sail University. 

My work: The Camera set up, set coloring, animation of the given Storm Trooper Rig and few prop arrangements. Rest was provided by our instructor to use. 

Concept: Gazing to the fire, hears knock/doorbell, walks to front door, opens door for it to swing open and looks to the Invisible Tricker-Treaters. 

I had many struggles in animation the curves and timing to create a natural movement with Trooper. Discovering my dyslexia that seemed no bother before my 3D classes has made its long awaited comeback. Almost 50% of the struggles were related to getting things completely backwards and mixed up. Will need to re-strategize a plan of attack to combat Dyslexia’s uprising. 

Humor aside, I believe what I managed to create is... decent. Certainly not golden, yet at least it’s not a horrendous character rig exploding disaster.

( Okay, I lied, I had more humor. )  Creating more coordinated references such as filming myself to get the character’s actions I need, will help aid in creating a more believable result. Still challenging to figure out and to go ahead a tackle it. 

And yes there is a reason why I never joined in any sports -for I was not the most coordinated. 

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In  3AM ( 3D Animatation one ) class, we were all learning the basic tools to animate in Maya using the Full Sail’s character rigg knnow as Bugsy. Coordination with the nurbs curves and pull vectors was quiet tricky figuring out.

In my walk I used my Gramophone I modeled in Portfolio one class as a prop; a golden grammy for Bugsy to admire.

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2DA Sit to stand?

Still working with the website I used on fixing the repeat function. Now I am puzzled to why this one is a once through yet with same setting on the combo, the combo repeats fine? 

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2D Animation August

Here are a few of my projects I worked on throughout the courses of the month.

( Was delayed for it took a bit of looking to find a way to convert .mov to gif to be able to upload my files. )

One of my biggest challenges, was not the course content, but with my own self: Perfectionism, Overthinking Challenges, Getting turned around, and the tendency to try to simplify my work yet it still somehow ends up complicated. Pushing myself to rebel against my perfectionist side, for example:  Roughing out my ideas down without overdoing clean ups before I even get to shooting the frames.  

Key Frames > Get the idea down > Shoot it > adjust and fix > Reshoot >Repeat

Add Breakdowns Pass > Shoot it > adjust and fix > Reshoot >Repeat.

Add Final Frames for In-betweens Pass  > Shoot it > adjust and fix > Reshoot >Repeat.

Save As > Export as .mov > Instructor check for final approval > Adjust or save to turn in. 

Was pointed out to me her arm did a pin wheel at the beginning; I have updated frames, yet need to find a suitable computer camera to use for the update. 

( Once I install Flip Book.) :) 

[alexisdmcomstock]

Update & Irony

Been going through some changes within the last few months. Switched from Accelerated to Extended for classes and been tackling life’s curveballs that rose up.  Full Sail related, our programs had a shift requested by the industry, our blogs are now to on ArtStation for our portfolio, hence the reason progress was halted on my blogging. In the next few days I will be posting my progress and most projects here on my tumblr. 

The items I find that are of my currently best quality will be posted on my ArtStation here: alexis_comstock

Some of my families luck honestly reminds me of the character Jack Sparrow with his oddball luck. From repairing my vehicle twice, to comical ones like my shower faucet kept popping out of my apartment’s wall like a spring toy; to fighting health insurance for switching what medications they shall cover; which resulted in unbalancing my health -not to mention discovering most specialist do not take Florida Blue’s - Blue Select Plan. Not pleased in how this effected my course work as I worked hard to to give my best through the struggle.

The comical things I faced seems good for animation cartoon material, with irony playing a big roll. When I first moved in with my roommate, I turned on the kitchen florescent tube light - only for them to burn out on me. My roommate thought it was funny for she was there a week before me and they were fine. Kitchen faucet handle months later popped off on me when filling a pan for pasta. To discovering the crock pot I got as a gift was cooking frozen meat in three hours instead of eight; Thankfully I was home the whole time working on course work or the place may have been filled with burned food smell for months. 

And the complete irony of me finding roaches in my bathroom and tub, as well as them crawling from the laundry washer/dryer closet to my room. They were mainly on my side of the apartment not even close to the food. Again my roommate found this amusing yet very happy she chose the other side of the apartment seeing as she dose not like insects/Spiders. We are also very good at keeping our place clean, so it was puzzling. Water was likely what they were after yet we had no leaks -trust me I checked. Months later I was looking up what attracts roaches only to discover they tend to love eating hard soaps... I had nice bar soap at me sink, bath soap bar in my shower and had bar soaps stored under my sink. Irony. Throw out the ones I WAS using and based the good ones that were still wrapped in plastic into a ziplock bag. Since then, no sign of roaches in my bathroom. 

Honestly can irony leave me along and go on a vacation for a long while? 

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Interesting how things connect

Discusion post regarding a topic task from my SAL course.  Musa, S., Ziatdinov, R., Faruk Sozcu, O., & Griffiths, C. (2015). Developing Educational Computer Animation Based on Human Personality Types. European Journal Of Contemporary Education, 11(1), 52-71. doi:10.13187/ejced.2015.11.52

European Journal of Contemporary Education Permalink

This Article caught my attention for the fact of approaching animations for educational standpoint differently. How personality types effect how a student learns an the best ways to input those aspects within animation or 3D modeling to increase interest. It always seems we forget we have different personalities within the four groups of introverts and extraverts. Yet improving your knowledge of them will also help you compile an animation that can impact all of those personalities for a wider audience. The challenge now is how to identify those personalities within the studio pipeline to handle communications correctly when passing down information for a project. This also effects in creating personalities for the characters within film project to become more believable. For no world has individual with the same basic personality type.

I honestly am one who loves to learn, always watching Discovery, NatGeo, Animal Planet along with my cartoons as a child. So why was the animation of the earth insides its core so fascinating to me? Was it for the cool animations? Or the subject such as the animation I seen within the Eyewitness: Insects video I linked down below? Or was it part of my personality type that drawn me to them -or perhaps a combination?

Eyewitness | Insects | Permalink Video

It's fascinating how an article about teaching and personalities in school brought back a strong memory of one of my most inspirational Video series I grew up with as a child. What was impactful was the behind the sense in the creation process of the metamorphais of the Beetle into a Insect Beetle. This is what I desire to do, to create my imagination to become alive through animation.  

Eyewitness | Season 1| Behind the Scenes | 8:05

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Update with small rendering in Maya. 

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Quick update on my progress! Three ZBrush props I did for my final. I LOVE the Goblet and shield I sculpted in ZBrush! I honestly spent most of the hours upon the goblet with all the road blocks of learning. :) Not proud of the Clock Face, was experimenting with different brushes/Alphas, mostly the spiral Alpha. 

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More Zbrush fun!

Still working on getting the hang of the process of shifting a model from Maya > Zbrush > Maya. It is more in depth in the steps it takes to correctly import/export them. Still it is a BLAST! 

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First doodle in Zbrush! 

Was checking out the brushes and the symmetry function. Seriously going to have way too much fun with this program. 

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Sneak peak of my nine added props in final scene.  These past two weeks have been an odd struggle, where I keep running into road blocks and hangups on Maya tools. It always seems to be missing an element. Such as the three hour struggle of digging in podcast, forums, and internet to find no aid in why my NURBS Curves PolySurface would not Extrude to a taper point correctly. Finally as I been working on debunking this issue, I discovered I needed to have the Circle Curve starting point on the end of the profile curve -FAR left, not right. For it to follow +X. Silly frustrating things like that. Seems I cannot win this week with low struggles. ( Though I have yet to clear up where the taper length adjustment component is hiding. )

Interestingly, the cauldron was the most easy and simplest I modeled in the group of props. Was also the fastest fully completed prop, taking about 30 to 40 Minutes from New Scene to Cleaning up the scene and saving. I stole the main outer surface form a sphere polygon, deleting faces on the top and scaling  the edges of of two to create the lip. Extruded inward for width. The extruded faces to create handled and feet. 

Ah, if you noticed I taken the Vanity prop out of the line up. Switching gears to focus on the props I can get done. Wished I known a week ago in the lack of need to create a secondary foundation details for the decorative filigree. It stumped me. Those details I found out on Saturday were not needed for they are best created in Zbrush along with the tertiary details...

Hoping to have time to add a strap to the horn so it can be hanged upon the wall, complete with a nail. -May give added detail upon the walls. Tomorrow will take a closer look at my props for any adjustments that need to be make. 

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Milestone items updated!

Currently have the Book, Comb, and Ink well/Pen completed. 

Currently debating upon continuing fussing with the Vanity model or removing it from the final scene. For it may pose as too much contrast to the theme of the final scene. 

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More practice Exercises through out this last week!

Certainly been busy with class work that I have not posted for lack of words to share. Here are a few tasks on reducing poly-counts for cleaner geometry and edge flows. 

Practice with new ways to approach geometry, Rotate, duplicate resolve, mirror tool specials. 

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MCR Milestone01 Shelf Asset. 

Just another post showing how I problem solve to create the necessary edge flow and surface quads.