UVA vs VA TECH Battle Bowl Animation

Here is another animation that I worked up for our company's Rivalry Week Sale for the Commonwealth Cup. I primarily used Cheetah 3d for modeling and rendering. Final finishing work was mainly done with Photoshop. Another huge learning experience. There were so many curve balls thrown at me, I was not sure it would get done in time. Just had to find solutions and put in tons of work to get it done. Sounds were made primarily from free sound effects with adjustments and enhancements in Audacity. Another learning experience in a quick amount of time. Normally I would have used Final Cut Pro to piece it all together, but I had to do with what I had at the time and make it work. iMovie did the job. Gotta make it work to make the deadline.

Animation was made for Rivalry Week Special 20% off Virginia Tech & UVA Big Sport Party Bowls! You can see a much better quality version of the video at the link below.

http://bigsportgifts.com/pages/20-off...

Check out http://bigsportgifts.com/ for other schools too.

Big Sport Party Bowl Animation - University of Washington

Here is the first cut of an animation I made using Cheetah 3D and Photoshop. Most of the work was done in Cheetah 3d with finishing touches and additional animations done in Photoshop. There are some trouble areas that I would like to fix up at a later date. Great re-learning experience. Some of the things you would think would be so easy were the most time consuming and difficult. I'm sure with time and additional tools it will become easier. 

This was done in order to provide promotional content for our companies new line, Big Sport Gifts. Additionally some of the product renderings used throughout the website were also done with Cheetah 3d. For the price it is a pretty robust and useful program.
 

United States Capitol Porcelain Bowl

This is a Revere Bowl that I worked on at Design Masters. It shows the four stages of the United States Capitol Building. This was pretty much a straight forward digital design. At the time, I did not have access to a 3D program so I used the built in 3D revolve capabilities of Illustrator and mapped art to the shape. It had it's limitations and hurdles but I was able to find a way to make it work for the conceptual rendering that is seen at the top. It gave me the ability to see and adjust how the art would look on the final bowl. The actual bowl can be purchased from the United States Historical Society. Additionally it was bonus that I noticed while binge watching the Netflix series House of Cards that the bowl I worked on was being used as a regular prop. Some of the scenes are posted below the conceptual rendering of the bowl.

Cast Iron Key

This is another 3d model I made in a totally different program. A colleague had pointed me in the direction of a program called 123D Design. After digging around in it, I decided to use it for a project we are involved with at work. It was my first time working in this program and some methods were similar to other 3d programs but the overall method of building was very different from what I was used to. I learned a lot just trying to make this not so simple key and in the end I was pretty darn happy with the result.

2014 Texas State Capitol Ornament

The 2014 Texas State Capitol Ornament. This is an ornament that our company worked on. It was chosen out of at least 9 designs proposed. This one in particular was a design that I had worked up during the presentation phase. As with most ornaments we do at Design Masters, once a design is chosen, it is truly a team effort to bring the end product to life. The ornament really is stunning and the packaging just sets it off. At the top of this post is a rendering I did for how the end ornament would look. This is done with my "patented" bling action, additional digital illustration, and doowahs. The next image is a photo of the final lid. The interplay from the multiple foils really looks great. Below the lid is a movie of the ornament based on my very first rough rendering. I was toying with a new 3D program and wanted to see if I could build an ornament inside it. Since I was working on this ornament I used it as a test. It definitely took some time to do with the learning curve, but I was happy with the end result. Building in 3D is something I really would like to delve more into and whenever I can add a new skill, I take the chance. Overall this was a challenging and fun project to work on.  

Stop on by their gift shop and pick on up.    Texas State Capitol 2014 Ornament

Odor Eaters Carpet Cushion System Animation

While I was working for CommuniQue' Marketing, I was able to practice 3D modeling/Animation and actually put it to use. This was an animation that was done for Odor Eaters Carpet System. The carpet had an enzyme layer that activated with spills. It would attack the stain from the bottom and the additional spray would attack from the top. This was my first real 3D modeling and animation project and it really pushed my limits but also taught me a lot. I particularly remember building and rendering the carpet fibers which to me was extremely difficult. I had to look up a tutorial on extruding along a spline. The other part that was killing me was the bubbles. I had the hardest time getting the timing down. The bottom bubble would be flying at top speed and the top bubbles would be slow as a snail. Took some a lot of tinkering to get it right. The logo at the end was something where I decided to add a the spin to the orange swashes. The animation ran in the middle of a commercial. One memory of working on this project in particular was the final rendering of the frames. I used at least 5 of the computers in the office to render the frames in order to meet the deadline. The video is much sharper than what is seen in this small down sampled video shown above.

Virginia Lenders Conference Digital Illustration

This was another 3D modeling and Digital Render around the same time as the Capitol One job. I was exploring the possibilities of digital illustration at this time. It was sort of like exploring the possibilities and limitations of it as a tool. Sort of like when I started learning to airbrush. Little did I know that eventually I would be be doing it almost all of the time in the future. The one thing I do remember is how long it took to make changes and save the file. The main limitation at that time would have been the hardware running the programs. Wow have times have changed. This job would have been done in about an hour or two current day.

Capital One Concept 3 of 3

3rd in the series of 3 for the Capital One proposal. 3D modeling and digital illustration. Creating the steak was interesting. I initially created this blob of a steak in 3D but no matter the texture I applied it just came out looking dead. I ended up using photos of actual steaks and cloning in steak over the shape. Added in enhancements where necessary.

Capital One Concept 2 of 3

Second in the series for a Capital One proposal job. Combination of 3D modeling and digital illustration.

Capital One Concept 1 of 3

This was an image for a Capital One Proposal. It was one of my first venture into 3D modeling being used as a starter for a final digital illustration. Very difficult at times as I was learning the program as I was doing the series. This is first of 3 images.

Bat Clacker

Here is another of my baseball products. I used a 3D program to render this one up and finished it in photoshop. The BAT CLACKER!!! Didn't have wings, so it resides on my storage drive now.

Desktop Background Digital Image

Been pretty busy the past couple of days. Felt like messing with my 3D program today so I did up an image and then worked in found images to make a screen saver or desktop background for my computer. This is a small version. If anyone wants it just let me know and I will send the full size file.

Baseball Bat Glass

Every now and again I mess with my 3D program. Three of us at work pitched some baseball ideas awhile back. Unfortunately it wasn't an area our company felt comfortable with. Regardless, we had some pretty good ideas. This was a start for a "Bat Stein". It was either going to be porcelain collectible mug with team insignia on the bat, or a rotocast plastic cup "giveaway" at the ball park.