This is my 2007 Character Rigging Demo Reel. It contains a good portion of my work through my time at ILM, minus “Spiderwick Chronicles”. I need to add that, and once the Clone Wars stuff from LucasFilm Animation comes out, I’ll make sure to add it in, too.
Holy shit, I love this!
A video featuring No Fixed Abode’s “Cause an Effect”, directed by Heath Ledger. Shot on a shoestring budget in Ledger’s garage in Australia.
It’s a fantastic display of artistry in both the music and visuals. Both accentuate the other — fantastic on their own and brilliant together.
I’m going to keep an eye on this group. I might again start listening to hip-hop.
Cause An Effect (remastered) – Directed by Heath Ledger
No Fixed Abode | MySpace Video
Alternative Press Expo
OK, I have to be honest, the part of Comicon that thrills me the most while at the same time makes me the most uncomfortable is Artist’s Row. It thrills me because the people who actually make big name and independent books alike are there to show off their stuff. It makes me uncomfortable, because a large portion of the artwork is just mediocre and I know that most will never make it beyond the small pity sales they get at the con. The Alternative Press Expo (APE) is that x10.
I’d never been to an APE convention before and was excited to see and learn more about smaller publishers, as well as the independent and self-published market. I’d been a bit out of touch since moving from Los Angeles. I could tell before entering The Concourse in San Francisco what to expect as far as the crowd goes — a lot of mod and goth, clove cigarettes being smoked at every exit, and a lot of Betty Page haircuts. Not that I was prejudging, because I don’t care what people wear, smoke or think, but it did give me a quick insight as to what to expect when I went into the venue.
My inclination at conventions is to impulse shop because it better suits my personality, but there is always the chance of blowing my wad before finding the hidden gems, so I walked the entire showroom floor before spending any of my hard-earned cash. After my initial walk-through, I knew exactly where I wanted to go. This was really just delayed impulse buying, because I was mentally noting the books I wanted as I filed past the many I wanted nothing to do with.
Sonambulo: Mexican Stand-Off by Rafael Novarro
First to get my money was a sweet looking book published by 9th Circle called Sonambulo, which can best be described as a dark noir, horror with Lucha Libre thrown in — the title character is a former Lucha Libre fighter.
I bought a trilogy storyline called “Mexican Stand-Off” and got a fourth follow-up for free. Nice! Sonambulo author and artist Rafael Novarro was there and was cool enough to sign all four copies — cool people abound at APE. Except for reading a couple of pages from the first issue of Mexican Stand-Off, I haven’t gone through all of the issues, so I’ll have a more detailed review later, but I have high hopes for this one.
My next purchase was as close to a guilt buy as I came. One of the reasons I don’t do a whole lot of talking at these events — I really do love talking to the artists — is because I then feel compelled to buy something of theirs, regardless of the quality. I’m weak, I admit it, so what? Shortly after getting my feet wet with Sonambulo and feeling pretty good about it, I hesitated for a bit too long at a table that had some nicely inked 11×17 drawings laying out. That was window enough for one of the salespeople to notice my E3 2000 shirt (yes, I’m old — shut up) and we started talking a bit about the game industry past and present. That was cool. While we were talking, I was browsing through the self-published comics and sketch books (will you people stop making these fucking sketch books?) and found the quality of that art in the books to pale in comparison with the nice prints on display. Annoying. Even more annoying was my inability to say “Hey, nice chat. Thanks and good luck!”. I did say something along those lines, but not before caving in and buying one of the stories called Native Drums. I haven’t read it yet, but I know the artwork inside doesn’t represent the best the artist can do, and that already leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. If you want people to buy your stuff, don’t show your beautifully inked work next to obviously rushed and uninspired work in comic form. I’ll leave judgment for later, but it’ll be a tough sell. My fault on this one.
Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous by Karl Christian Krumpholz
Next came the Slave Labor Graphics table, one of the largest spreads in the show. I have a fondness for Slave Labor Graphics because back in 1986, I bought on of their first titles, Samurai Penguin, and drove over to their comic shop in San Jose, California to have them sign issue number one. Since then I’ve purchased some of their graphic novels but need to pay more attention to them in the future. So I perused the many titles they had laid out there and settled on a graphic novel entitled “Byron: Mad, Bad and Dangerous” by Karl Christian Krumpholz. Again, I haven’t read the book yet, but the artwork and story synopsis intrigue me and I can’t wait to dive in. Like Sonambulo, a more detailed review is forthcoming. Mr. Krumpholz was their and gave me a personlized signing on the interior. I love that!
A nice thank you gift for donating to The Cartoon Art Museum
Right next to Slave Labor was the fabulous Cartoon Art Museum. One of their current exhibitions is Monsters of Webcomics which highlights some really cool serialized comics and cartoons on the web and as a token of thanks for my donation (donate the shit out of these guys! They do real good in the world!), I got a nifty little piece of art by Jonathan Lemon, creator of “Rabbits Against Magic,” a funny web comic I recently
discovered. Mr. Lemon was there, too, so he signed a RAM postcard for me. Have I mentioned that I love stuff like that?
The last books to get my dough were some I’ve been meaning to buy for quite a while were a couple of Elephantmen compilations, “Elephantmen: Wounded Animals” and ” Elephantmen: War Toys” (Volume 1: No Surrender), published by Image.
Elephantmen: Wounded Animals by Starkings, Moritat, et al.
I’m a sucker for bad-ass anthropomorphic sci-fi beasts and from the moment I saw the first teaser images for the book, I was intrigued. While customer service wasn’t top on their minds, Mr. Starkings and Mr. Moritat were there and Mr. Starkings, the artist and co-creator was kind enough to personalize both War Toys and Wounded Animals for me, so they helped end the day on a high note. Quality book and quality people.
Would I recommend APE to people? Sure, if you dig quirky characters, are into underground art or just like to check out the scene, APE is a good bet. All in all, I had a nice time at the expo. It took me only one and a half hours to see and buy everything. I zip along quite nicely when I go by myself, so don’t let that fool you into thinking there aren’t tons of things to see at APE. There are boat loads to see and, because tastes vary greatly, there should be something for everybody. I do wish there were vendors with greater emphasis on the young children’s market — a huge fucking gaping hole in the indie market, if you ask me. If you find any, let me know.
I’ve finally decided to learn ZBrush in earnest, and I’ll be posting my results here.
My tutorial that I’m using to dive into ZBrush is one of the latest from the guys at The Gnomon Workshop, Introduction to ZBrush:Interface & Workflow with Ryan Kingslien. So far so good. I opted for the digital download. I have to say, it’s a major pain in the ass to attain instant gratification. The tutorial is broken into 33 separate downloads obtained from a password protected site that allows access for only five days. So if you go that route, act quickly. I still have a few to download. Once I have them all, I’m going to burn a DVD backup, just in case.
Here is a work-in-progress based on the first few lessons. Don’t blame the tutorials for my crappy model. The tutorial is just teaching the interface and uses a head as the first exercise. The sculpting is my responsibility.
I just pulled this model out of my butt and will go back and look at some reference so that it’s a bit more anatomically correct. Again…WIP.
This is a quickie example of a dynamic skirt rig made for Snow Clone Troopers on the TV show Clone Wars. It can blend between keyframed and dynamic, with the motion of the keyframed animation affecting the dynamic motion to whatever percentage you want.
This technique was adopted to a number of other subsequent skirt/dress rigs.
There’s no sound with the video, so don’t bother adjusting your speakers… 
A small update to my object renaming replacement for 3DS Max.
There are two important upgrades:
One, I added in functionality from the original renaming script that allows the user to delete characters from the beginning or end of an object name, but in my own way. Highlighted in red, there now exists the ability to delete any number of characters from anywhere in the object name. By defining a beginning and ending point, those characters will be deleted (actually, I just thought of an idea — putting a text box in there so you could replace the old characters with new — next version).
If you check the “End of Word” box, then you’ll notice that End is disabled. In this mode, Start becomes the number of characters from the end of the word. I don’t like changing a UI’s functionality mid-stream, but in this case I’ll make an exception. Let me know if it’s too confusing.
Two, the script is now intended to replace the code called by Tools|Rename Objects….
You’ll still use Tools|Rename Objects, but once you follow the instructions below, calling Rename Objects will launch newRenamer instead. I might need to make it more elegant or auto-install itself, but that will come when I learn how to do it.
Installation:
(below, replace “3DS Max 2008″ with whatever version you have, although I’ve only tested it in 2008)
1) Rename C:/Program Files/Autodesk/3DS Max 2008/ui/macroscripts/Macro_RenameObjects.mcr to Macro_RenameObjects.bak
2) Copy Macro_AFnewRenamer.mcr to C:/Program Files/Autodesk/3DS Max 2008/ui/macroscripts/
3) Relaunch Max
After installation, the next time you select Tools|Rename Objects… you’ll get the new and, I hope everybody will think, improved object renaming tool.
Let me know if you find any bugs or would like to suggest additional functionality.
Alec
OK, I’ve been looking over MAXscript (MXS) for the last three days now and decided to jump into rewriting a portion of Max that’s bothered me since the first time I saw it (8 days ago), the object rename tool.
newRenamer is a cleaner version that just makes more sense to me. I’m used to the great renaming tool in Maya written by Michael Comet, and I had to have something similar to ease my transition to Max.
I think everything should be self-explanatory, but if not, feel free to drop me a line or reply to this post.
THE SCRIPT: newRenamer.ms
Thanks,
Alec
Hey all. Tomorrow I start working at 2K Marin, a video game developer in Novato as their Character TD. It’ll be an awesome experience. 2K Marin, back when they were in Boston known as, strangely enough, 2K Boston, made the award winning Bioshock and we’re going to continue in that fine tradition on Bioshock 2.
I’m coming from the Maya world into the 3DS Max world, so that hurdle will be the toughest, I think.
Writing the tools, coming up with ideas, and general rigging will be the easy part. The mind shift needed to translate my knowledge into the Max world is actually exciting to me, since learning anything new is what keeps my aging brain at least somewhat pliable.
More to come as I dive headlong into the making video games for one of the coolest companies around.
Alec
