Gary Hercus

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[garyhercuseca]

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This is the soundtrack I produced for our group’s induction project piece.

It combines a range of heavily edited sounds from around Edinburgh, including but not limited to bus engines idling, the incredibly lame tram “ding”, people talking/singing and bagpipes.

I titled it “Forced Induction” due to the play on words considering the rather consistent use of engine sounds and the fact this was for the induction project.

While making it, I wasn’t sure exactly how well it would come out on actual speakers considering I edited the whole thing simply with headphones. Fortunately, due to the fantastic quality of the original recordings, my ability to filter the sound and the fact I used a strict process of assigning left and right channels, the final thing came out far better than I had hoped when played in the lecture theatre, creating an ambient soundscape to compliment the images.

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This is the final outcome for "3D Animation II".

The brief called for a walk cycle, the character to pick something up and some audio lip sync.

Prior to completion of this project, we were told "don't just have the character floating through space in the 'T' pose with Enya playing in the background like one of my previous students did". So on the back of the walk cycle and picking up the object, I decided to lip sync the character to Enya's "Only Time" while floating through space in the 'T' pose. I knew that despite the plea to not do this, what I was doing was actually a far less lazy version of what had been described.

The crow "idol" was actual created initially as a separate character to include in the spiders film, but due to time and the fact I felt the overall Mexican theme was more entertaining, I ditched the idea of the crow and spider interaction and included the crow as the pick up object in this film. It also seemed fitting as it went along with and added to the overall randomness of the whole affair.

The animation on show here could be better, but within the time constraints it does the job.  With an extra day, I could have refined it all much more.

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Inspired by a trip to the airport on the subway, this piece is intended to invoke the hellish sounds inherent in the operation of a subway system.

The sounds of the trains themselves marry with the tunnels to create reverberating groans, moans and screams which sound like demons or tortured souls.

Given the largely underground nature of most subway systems, the comparison to hell becomes more intriguing.

This piece includes various samples taken from direct recordings of the aforementioned trip itself, performed guitar and a clip in which lines from a song are sung.

These have almost all been altered in one or more ways.  Some of the clips have been reversed and slowed down or sped up; often to the point where they are entirely unrecognisable as the original sound.

I have also included a generated tone which increases in volume throughout the track.  This represents to some extent my own personal (somewhat melodramatic) hell of having tinnitus causing a constant (yet considerably more high pitched than the one here) tone in my head which can be zoned out of but never goes away.

The track's title "Helvete: Nommer Fem" translates from Norwegian as "Hell: Number Five".

I have developed a habit of using European languages other than English in my work, commonly German, Norwegian and Russian.  This is really the only reason for the title being Norwegian.

The "number five" portion of it refers simply to the version number.  It also coincidentally sounds relatively cool (doesn't it?) and could just as easily refer to the subway line number (a la New York).​

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Final project for "3D Animation I".

Brief was to model and rig an insect/bug and make it walk against a background.

I chose to model a tarantula and textured it in the markings/colourings of the Mexican Red Knee species. Because of that, I went overboard and included a sombrero and eventually formed a tarantula mariachi, complete with "lip sync" to the song "Guantanamera", which admittedly is a Cuban song, but is popular with mariachi bands. Note: the second spider in sings a different part from the rest!

The backgrounds I chose were the pyramid at Chichen Itza and part of a Mexican flag day celebration.

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The recorded composition.

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Rationale and graphic notation for the composition project for "Sound Essentials".

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"Walking pyjamas" project for "3D Animation I".

Simple walk cycle using created "pyjama bottoms". They are textured with Katy Perry's face from the "California Dreams Tour" poster and offset by the inclusion of an excerpt from the Pantera song "Walk".

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Initial stage character model produced for "3D Animation II".

The character model is based upon the actress Alexandra Daddario.  The texture has been applied without much editing of UVs here, the hair is missing and the character has not yet been rigged.

I chose to have the character dressed as such because Alexandra Daddario has been cast in the upcoming "Baywatch" movie.  As it turns out, the outfits in the movie will not look like those from the old TV show.

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Untitled audio file produced for the "Pro Tools" project for "Sound Essentials" course at Emily Carr.

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Crime scene turntable project for "3D Animation I" at Emily Carr.

For this we had to create a crime scene setting and include a table and chair.

I, like almost everyone else in the class, opted for a murder scene (there is an arm sticking out of the dumpster).

The painting on the wall of the interior portion is one of my own.

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Robot arm animation created for "3D Animation II" class at Emily Carr.

Task was to create a robot arm which picks up and item and puts it down or throws it away. Also had to include a piston.

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Chess set created in Maya for "3D Animation I" class at Emily Carr.

Part of the task was to include a "unique" object and something on fire.  I included a "BB King" complete with flaming guitar.

I knew my knights looked odd and only realised afterwards that it's because I forgot to put ears on them!  Maybe they're seahorses...

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10x10x16

Due to a heavy workload in Canada, I only managed to complete 6 of the 10 films for this year's project.

01:

ECA-ECUAD-Hercus-01 from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

02:

ECA-ECUAD-Hercus-02 from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

03:

ECA-ECUAD-Hercus-Magaña -03 from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

04:

ECA-ECUAD-Hercus-Wani-04 from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

05:

ECA-ECUAD-Hercus-Turnbull-05 from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

10:

ECA-ECUAD-Hercus-Magaña-10 from ECA Animation on Vimeo.

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Reference images for Bona's set designs. I have been drafted in to help with creating building facades which take visual cues from the Victorian homes of Alameda in the San Francisco Bay, California.

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My sketches of "standard" features which make up the houses to be designed for Bona's film.

The idea in doing this is to create a group of features and textures which can easily be plugged into a standard template in order to create slightly differing yet visually similar pieces.

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Having accepted the Scottish Office project brief I began trying to analyse the Scotland Bill 2015-16 along with the Scotland Act 1998 in order to try and establish the main points which the film should be making, namely the main issues which would effect a regular Scottish family and which department within the UK (i.e. the UK or Scottish Governments) are or will be responsible for these things.