Happy New Year!

Happy New Year everyone! Wishing you all a wicked awesome 2013.

Some quick doodles.

Just about to leave work and figured I'd do a few quick sketches to make the time go by.

Back in a simpler time.

Before heading out to visit with some friends tonight I broke free from working on Fatal Seduction for a bit and did some simple modelling. A kindergarten classroom was the choice for no particular reason - just thought it would be a change up and some good practice. I took ideas from tons of real life classrooms and kind of meshed them into one.

I wouldn't mind continuing on with this. We'll see come the new year.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Rock and water

A speedy from today.

Clouds

A quick little speedy of clouds tonight. More so of a test.

Alien doodle

Alien doodle for the day.

Mountain top speedy

20 min. mountain top sped paint / study.

Speed paints

A quick landscape speedy done waiting for a render.

Another speedy drawing. Alien.  No eyes - using visible brains as sight.

Waterbottle

A quick 15 minute warm up painting.

The Empire in Regina

A quick little matte painting done for fun tonight.  Spent about half an hour on it - not including searching out all the Star Wars elements and getting lost deep within the SW universe...

Original photo was taken with my phone on my way home after work.

Slowly creeping back into painting.

Been a while.

Amy Nelson covers Kelli Pickler's 'I Wonder'

Amy needed to submit a video to a recent contest which landed her a spot on television for a reality show.  Since she's awesome to work with, I couldn't pass the chance when she came to me with this.

Here is the video now, live and in the raw rocking the piano - no sound adjustments, 1 full cut, no edits.

3D Copic Markers

Practicing up on my Maya.  Took about 2 hours overal to complete - not including render times.

Canadian PUPS Advertisement

Canadian PUPS Advertisement done at Red Hat Studios (working with Phoenix Group).  I modeled and textured the container in Maya and then created the materials and rendered it out in C4D.

Skater Girl WIP.

Skater girl work in progress during my spare time. 

Working with Amy Nelson again!

Had the pleasure of working with the beautiful and talented Amy Nelson again.  Rocking the piano like a badass.  My favorite frame grabbed from what we were filming.

Urban Decay Matte Painting

Been working on a matte painting.  simple concept and a good self learning/teaching experience.
Shot on the RED Epic, using Maya, Photoshop and After Effects for now.  Will be heading into Vue after the matte is complete.

here are a couple screen grabs of the process.


We shot pretty much in the same spot where Mayas camera is.

Shader network (so far) for just the Canada Life building.

Music video for "Better Idea" by Amy Nelson

well it's finally released! Again, I can't say it enough as to how much fun it was to work with Amy and the band.  She was easy to work with and it was a great experience.  I look forward to working with her and possibly others in the future.  To be able to produce, direct and edit the final product was a huge privilege.


Here it is!  Buy the song on iTunes! Support Sask. artists!

Space Milkshake Update

Over the last month and some we (Red Hat Studios) have been working away at modelling and texturing 3 main spaceships for the movie Space Milkshake.  I think I came close to 100 save versions and this is by far one of the biggest modelling projects I have ever participated in.

And they have been approved! If the guys upstairs love them, then I do too.  We are still tweaking them a tiny bit where we see fit but nothing major.

Such an amazing feeling to have your designs come to life. Can't wait until we comp them in!

Take a peak (and link to Red Hat).

http://redhatstudios.ca

Photons.

running some personal tests using photons.

Amy Nelson Introduces "Better Idea"

Was very pleased to Produce, Direct and Edit the music video to local country music artist Amy Nelson's new single "Better Idea".  The video isn't out yet but here is Amy herself introducing the video.

Color correcting!

the music video will be done this week! just putting in the final touches and she should be ready to rock!

Amy Nelson's "Better Idea" - sneak peak!

I had the privilege to work with the talented and beautiful local country artist Amy Nelson (http://www.amynelson.ca/) today on her first music video for the new single, "Better Idea".  She was super easy to work with and a lot of fun, which made the day that much better.  

It was my first ever directing debut with huge assistance by Helder Mauricio Carvajal (http://hmcarvajal.com/).  I will also be doing the full edit.  

I'm very excited to see the final product and look forward to working with Amy again.

Knick knacks and more DOF

Messing around more with render layers and DOF, setting myself up for the rendering process that will surely begin soon enough on Space Milkshake.  Thought I'd model some extra parts for the space ship while waiting for After Effects to render a few freelance clips - nothing major.  But a good chance to mess around with a few things in Maya.

With the DOF.

The DOF render.

Screen grab of the quick set up.  Using the max distance of the object furthest from the camera I'm able to adjust the surface shaders ramp to get my DOF.

 Other than an area/ambient light I use an HDRI photo from the web to render some final gather with.

Test rendering.

something different - Nothing special here, but I've never really explored rendering abilities within Mental Ray.  Simple tests for the night and exploring possibilities.  Just a quick set up, nothing to spectacular and a little bit of breakdown.

Turn table WIP

had a little bit of time tonight to revisit the turn table. still a wip.  I apologize for the weak and tiny render - it was mostly done for testing a few things.

moar Turn Table wip

wish there was more time during the day and no chance of ever getting sick.  small update.

Turn Table wip

Another small update.

Fatal Seduction - a sneak peek

With my lead photographer out of the country in Africa on a job that he couldn't pass up (and who's to blame him? Dream come true for him and I wish him nothing but the best and a safe return!), I have set myself a goal on getting Fatal Seduction ready for his return.  Since I'm no longer taking freelance work, I can now focus all my attention on this baby and hope to get it done later this year / early next year.

I've begun redoing the website and here is a sneak peek at the splash page, a conceptual vision of Lana (main protagonist).

Turn table WIP - wiki wiki wiki wa

more progress on the turntable set, which I have named Spinnex.

Turn table WIP

3d turntable work in progress.

Happy New Year!

As the first week of the new year comes to a close, I have slowly been going through my work over 2011 - specifically work done with Minds Eye Entertainment and Red Hat Studios.  A lot of good times and a lot of stressful times and very good reasons to hate french directors. Like really really hate.

Anyways.

I'm looking forward to the new year and the work coming ahead, mainly space ships ;)
.. and less French. hah!

Here are few pieces over the last year.

While the original ferry was purchased along with the cars due to time (and lets face it, if you can - why not?), we still modified it.  I handled most of the modelling and texturing jobs on her.
(Faces in the Crowd - Minds Eye Entertainment) 

The scaffolding was modelled from scratch even though there wasn't really much to it.  Tracked and comped in.

(Faces in the Crowd - Minds Eye Entertainment) 

My breakout point into joining forces with Colin and Richard.  They needed a WW2 flak gun modeled. A few days later I was working with them full time and haven't looked back since.  Modelled, textured, tracked and comped in.  Rich gets full cred to the CG dam which looked beautiful. 

(Chastise - Minds Eye Entertainment) 

Looking forward to 2012! 

-Jimmy