Art blast from the past!

I just did a Google search of my name and found some artwork of mine from years gone by, it was printed in a school district report:

(I think it is a testament to my brilliant drafting skills that they listed me as a second grader, when I know I was actually still in first grade when I drew this...)

Finding this old picture was a sweet reminder that my love of art and technology was apparent even at age 7. I am so thrilled to have found my niche in animation production, and to be able to say that everything I'm doing now still involves being surrounded by what fascinated me as a child.

Toothless and I flying over an X-wing.

I felt like doing a really crappy doodle about something really awesome.

My first adventure in CG Lighting!

Today I played with CG lighting for the first time ever! One of my productions, The Lattice, is getting textures together for our environments. We wanted to see what an out of the box metallic texture could do, so I dove in and messed with a mental ray node for myself. Under the guidance of the almighty Ed Janne (one of the film's directors), I tweaked around for about 10 minutes and came up with this little render:

It's actually pretty close to what we were looking for--we want to rough it up and get in a little more painterly "grit", but yeah... cool! It's always fun to try new things :)

Credit where credit's due:
Corridor Design: Ed Janne
Model: Ian Saterdalen, Lyz Holder
Lighting Concept: João Ribeiro

Waterslide Confession...

Inspired by my friend Patti's recent dream. She's not actually getting married, but she had a dream about divulging such an announcement to me in this manner, and it sounded like fun!

Toothless Doodles

If you haven't seen Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon yet, you really should. It had me squealing with delight on more than a few occasions, and after the film I immediately raced to the store in search of merchandise that celebrates the cuteness of the dragon Night Fury, aka Toothless.

Alas, the only toys were of Toothless in his more aggressive, 'toothy' poses. So until I can see the film again, I've been sketching his softer side...


(Drawn on cintiq, referencing google images.)

Sssup?

I don't doodle nearly enough these days... :(

Mardi Gras Beauty Queen

Yesterday was Mardi Gras, the Fattest of Tuesdays you'll see all year. To celebrate, I did this little sketch for my storyboarding class. The goal was to communicate a character in its environment, and it was deemed a success by my instructor and peers--Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Turkeynauts!

Some awesome folks from the 2D Grad Lab (and I) joined forces and sacrificed a year of their lives to create this little intro... enjoy!

Flight of the Turkeynauts from Guillermo Martinez on Vimeo.