Vintage Animators

A fictional animation company of an aspiring 3D modeller and animator named Ilze.

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This is an experimental piece of furniture built with a purpose to practice using nDynamics and modelling everyday items - another topic not covered in my showreel just yet. It took only a few hours to build and the plant model is taken from Creative Crash website, but I feel like I've kicked up my skills for a fair bit here and that makes me feel like a hero of today! In view of this unexpected development I have decided to invest in growing these skills and acquiring a few new books on the topic. Hopefully my next blog entry will be a detailed review on how the schooling went.

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The latest update on the car so far - a lot of minor details have been added and finished off, but it's still not ready for a final render sequence. I hope to finish it off soon an build a new portfolio as things are slowly improving and more bits and bobs get created. Hope you will like it!

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After a long break I've finally returned to my sweet car! A lot of changes have already been made and a lot of changes are still due to happen; the most obvious details that the car is missing at the moment include indicator lights at the front and windscreen wipers. When I'm done making those changes I may just quickly redo the body, as some parts of it are still bugging me. It's colour is still not exactly decided upon, but I'm quite fond of the honey yellow/orange (may just keep it!). No matter how close or far it is from completion, I hope you'll still like it!

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As promised in the previous post - a proper update on how things are progressing with the car I would love to eventually own.

As can be seen - most of the detailing on the outside of the car is done except for the back of the car and the items around the front window. When these last details will be added, work on the interior will begin.

Overall I'm happy with the way work is progressing, but I may eventually end up re-doing the doors and the windows for the car as I think they are still not in the perfect shape that I want them to be.

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This is an image from about a week ago that got uploaded to my online portfolio first (for the event of job interview preparation) and somehow I forgot to upload it here, but now that's been mended. The model itself has now advanced to a higher stage, but I haven't quite rendered it out yet - all in due time.

In the end this will be a high poly photo-realistic hard surface model with hopefully some nice textures as well (I'm really looking forward to that part!) depending on how much free time I'll have in the following months. 

Any comments or feedback is always welcome, of course!

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This is the first progress image of the project I am currently working on to build up my modelling showreel - a 1964 Porsche 356C. One of my most favorite of the classic Porsche's and a car I would someday like to own.  

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A brilliant collection of amazing pictures collected by NASA telescopes and free to use as textures for any purposes. Using these as a part of a small commercial video to promote a wonderful project. More info to come soon!

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This might just possibly be the best animated film coming out on the big screens in very long time!

"With the charm, wit and whimsy of the original Winnie the Pooh featurettes, this all-new movie reunites audiences with the philosophical "bear of very little brain" and friends Tigger, Rabbit, Piglet, Kanga, Roo-and last, but certainly not least, Eeyore, who has lost his tail. "Well a tail is either there or it isn't there," said Winnie the Pooh. "And yours isn't... there." Owl sends the whole gang on a wild quest to save Christopher Robin from an imaginary culprit. It turns out to be a very busy day for Pooh bear who simply set out to find some hunny."

This film summarizes everything I love about animation with a lovely heartwarming story, brilliant voice acting and a style true to the original illustrations of Milne's stories by E. H. Shepard.

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More pattern tests for the Haworth Cat animation project - this time for the sky dome in the background of the environment.

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More images of the Haworth Cat - this time a test of how would the 3D model look when rendered in the style proposed to the client.

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As the picture says - The Haworth Cat himself in progress. This is a model as well as a concept image illustrating the style of a project me and my group mates are doing for the Haworth Cat Rescue as a part of a university module.

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My new online portfolio is now up and running! Happy days!

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Another progress playblast from my final year project (now that I actually have things working again I have something to show to the world!) - this is the shot where Oliver is threatened by the mean kid Dean and pees in his pants from fear. Dean is still in a very rough state and will be rendered out in a playblast tomorrow (with the same quality improvements as Oliver), so keep an eye out for that, but this comp is mainly made for comparison between the playblasts. The final composition before rendering will include facial animation as well. As usual - any feedback and comments are very much appreciated!

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When animators go crazy ...

An image of my character Oliver by an awesome animators and my best friend Pauls Kalnenieks! Things just seem to keep going wrong all the time, but, as depressing as it is when it happens right before the deadline, it's only half as bad when you have amazing friends who can help you out!

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I've been waiting for this animation to come out for a long time now and finally it's here! I'm really looking forward to seeing it as soon as possible!

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- What would you say is the most important trait to have as an animator? - Stupidity , because if you take that trait after the point of no-return , it turns into geniality. - Best quality of an animator, is to be animated.

Fiuciuc Andrei Nicolas and Matthew Coblish on a question posted on the aniBOOM facebook wall.

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More issues with Maya.

This started happening recently to one of my characters and will possibly happen to the other character as well. It looks like a skinning issue that pops up whenever I switch to the IK mode, yet the character has been fully skinned. The wrist doesn't really follow the IK wrist control properly either and a lot of funky rotations are still floating about in the air so ... Yes I need help with solving this and I hope that it can be easily fixed. Lets hope it's just something that I have done wrong to the rig and not an issue with the structure of it. If you have any ideas, feel free to share them!

PS - Resetting the preferences or re-loading the reference file does not do the trick and it's only going funky in a few scene files, some of them work fine without issues like this.