Hi everyone!

At the close of the Spring 2024 semester, I discovered new skills I enjoy doing, and was able to narrow down my emphasis even further. 

At the start of my program, I was just going for a BFA in Animation & VFX with no emphasis. At the end of my first semester, VFX was added as my emphasis. I originally wanted to stay open for employability reasons. As I learned more about the 3D pipeline, I grew even more obsessed with color and texture though. I will continue to learn all I can about the 3D animation and VFX pipeline, but now I'm going to focus as many classes as I can toward Lookdev and Lighting.

I just finished the Introduction to Lookdev and Lighting class. This class was originally a graduate level course, and I was taking it in my third semester. I hadn't even taken Introduction to 3D Production B yet. I was taking them concurrently. To say this was a challenge is an understatement of the year. Did I get frustrated at times? Yes. But the funny thing is, I found the challenge thrilling. I wanted to spend all my time in that class. There was always a new puzzle to solve, or a challenge that needed a solution. I learned soo much about creating realistic looking textures and lighting. Painting realistic dirt and rust on cars and campers using Substance Painter. We worked on the assets for one shot and the shot itself the entire semester. I gave a car, camper and their luggage, colors and textures. I textured the character and city. Learned about transferring textures to rigs, turning animations to alembic cache, importing everything for use in the scene for an animated shot. Creating believable lighting with cinematic effects using tricks of the trade. Compositing and color grading and other effects in Nuke. How to create a 3D Geo Cam in Nuke to change out between night and day skies. We even learned how to turn our realistic looking renders into toon renders easily. We learned multiple ways of creating each effect. Our feedback was given each week as a class, like a studio does dailies. We were expected to troubleshoot any issues and fix them. We were graded on how well we accepted and applied feedback, our growth as artists, and the technical application of our textures. Also, I was learning visual node-based coding in Maya and Nuke, making my own shelves and buttons utilizing Mel script in Maya. I loved it! I can't wait to do Advanced Lookdev and Lighting! However, there are a few more core classes I need to take care of before I head into that class though. I also found some other enjoyable things to do in my other classes. 

In 3D Production B I worked on an outdoor environment and an indoor environment. I had to beautify the outdoor environment utilizing paint effects to add animated trees, grass, and flowers. I then had to add a water surface and give it fluid dynamics utilizing Bifrost in Maya. Then I animated a toy boat on the water utilizing curves to match the waves generated. Then I utilized nCloth and constraints to make a flag blow in the wind and gradually rip. On the indoor scene I had to import footage and animate a 3D Character according to the reference. I also had to animate the camera cinematically. I then learned how to create my own Skydome by importing an HDR with lighting information to make the scene lighting match the sky more accurately. Once that lighting was done, I added my own interior lighting and rendered a 3D Character animation scene. I really enjoyed this class; everything came very easily to me. Which is surprising to me because this time last year, I knew absolutely nothing about 3D. 

I really enjoyed Cinematics for Animation and VFX. I found film critique to be very intellectually pleasing. I especially loved learning how to edit footage for film, color psychology and how color grading and camera angles are used to enhance the story. 

I always try to add my own personal touch to my homework assignments. Like finding stickers to project onto the car, camper, and t-shirt that enhance the storytelling. Or, adding my own sky from one of the many photographs of beautiful skies I took. Coincidently I found the importance of compositing. As there were always power lines to remove or images to merge to enhance the image result in Photoshop.

Though I will be training on all things 3D and VFX, I will be focusing more closely on Compositing, Lookdev, and Lighting. I will be updating my portfolio with my projects and updating this blog post with pictures, video, and links to the projects. I might be a little slow at it though because during my break I'm staying productive by going to Indiana Filmmaker Events, participating in an animation contest hosted by the Carmel Film Forum, helping an author start up an animation and gaming project based on their book, and participating as an extra in a film. Some people might think that's a lot of work, but I'm doing it all with my kid that just turned eighteen. They are just as fascinated with all of this as I am and I wanted to do fun things with them this summer, you know, before they run off to be all grown up and everything 🫣🤭. 

I love the work of Mary Blair (classic Disney), Kent Davis, Amy Brown and Lisa Frank. They continue to be a true inspiration to me. I also love Epic (2013), Disney's Cinderella (2015), and lately I've been taking a deep dive into Star Wars. All of these works just truly fascinate me. I truly found a love for critiquing films in my cinematics class! My instructor was really impressed with my work too. So I might start sharing some of that work via this blog channel as well.