Bat pastels

Hey, Batman is turning 70 next year.Some folks in my hometown is looking for an exhibition about him. This is a pastel study I did last week. I'm looking forward to improve on the city.

Two Shots low res render

Story board for the short

Pic from AI Exhibition

I like something in this pic. I took it when some of my work was being show at the Gallery of the Art Institute of California - San Francisco, a while back

Homage

My friend and great graphic designer Felipe Hauck saw the short and did this really nice sketch of his view of a cockroach!

Making of book

Guys, I'm pretty happy with the copy of The Making Of book of the short. This is a double page spread after the cover (the cover is the same image of the poster and the DVD cover ;-) ). The book is just 36 pages but, if I knew the print quality would be soooo good, I would have increased the page numbers...
I will post the PDF for you guys to let me know if you like the book or not.

PREMIERE OF THE SHORT THIS FRIDAY

Yep, I can't believe the short's "premiere" is this Friday, May 30th already.
Here's a bit of the Festival's info (hope to see you there - it's free):

FILMS FROM SAN FRAN STUDENTS.

Art Institute of California - Second Annual Animation Festival

San Francisco, California, USA

May 30, 2008

The Art Institute of California -- San Francisco announces the Second Annual Animation Festival, scheduled for Friday, May 30, 2008 from 7-8 p.m. at the Herbst Theater located at 401 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco, California, USA. This entertaining hour-long program will showcase The Art Institute's best animated works by students, alumni and faculty. The festival is open to the public and there is no charge to attend. Information: www.artinstitutes.edu.

The festival will feature independent student animated productions in a variety of genres, including 2D animation, 3D animation, motion graphics, stop motion animation and mixed media. This year's festival will premiere short films by the first graduating class of the Master of Fine Arts in Computer Animation program. The thesis films include PECK SUPPORT by Aron J. Shay, IS THAT ALL THERE IS? by Cristiano Seixas and MIDNIGHT SNACK by Jacqualine Adelmeyer.

Animated short IS THAT ALL THERE IS? tells the tale of two cockroach buddies who survive a catastrophic explosion. One experiences an existentialist crisis, while the other tries to find a way out of their destroyed world. Seixas moved to San Francisco from Brazil to further his studies in computer animation. In Brazil, he worked for more than 15 years in the animation, graphic design and comic book fields, and also taught visual storytelling at Brazilian universities. He is currently the creative director of Big Jack Studios with offices in Brazil and San Francisco, while simultaneously completing his M.F.A degree in Computer Animation.

For more information about the festival contact Valerie Mih, Animation

Festival Coordinator, at 510-219-1584 or valmih@gmail.com.

Guys, there's way more cool stuff not listed here, ok?
It's almost 20 shorts being screened this Friday!

THE POSTER

This is the poster/DVD cover of the short. That's it. The short is done! A lot of things could be different in it but some stuff ended up better than I previously planed, so, I'm kind of happy with it :-)

Final look

That's it guys, That's the final look of the main character in the short. I hope you like it. Let me know.

Matte painting

Well, coming back with a matte painting that I'm doing for one of the shots. This gotta be done this weekend. 99% photoshop and tablet. Let me know what you guys think. (this is one quarter of the image, it's a quite large piece)

First shot!

The shortest shot of this short (sorry for this...) is done! Finally I wrapped up one. I just need to do a high res render (I just have this resolution you see right now. But I can move to all the other shots :-)

Now I'm feeling Zombified

This is actually the piece I like the most from the last couple of months. I got this idea from a picture David Charles took from me and my friend Hauck. David called it "zombiefied" and I HAD to do something about it. Then I got my color pastels and did a huge drawing over a black color plus paper.

Job Done Now Chill

"Job done, now chill" was done in a couple of hours, at my friend's house, here in San Francisco. I used black and white pastels/charcoal on a gray color plus paper. I like the mood I got in the final piece.

Almost there for the first render!

Hi friends. I'm kind of celebrating the end of my lighting and texturing set up for the first scene. yep, ready or not, here I go. The animation is getting there and I got to move on to all the next shots. So, now I just need to set-up everything right to render my first shot! Hehehe, God knows how long this will take. I will keep you guys posted :-)

Wonder Con 2008

This is graphic designer/illustrator Hauck, me and Gumby working hard @ San Francisco's Wonder Con 2008. Three nice days in the Moscone Center. While San Diego Comic Con is crazy and crowded, Wonder Con is smooth and nice to walk around and talk with artists and other professionals from Comic Books/Illustration/Graphic arts field.

Acrylics

As I said, I will post some drawings and paintings I did while not working on Maya. Well, after looong years, this was my first attempt back to acrylics on canvas. I changed the face of my friend, as we were imagining Fidel taken some time off around San Francisco.

Having fun

I have to admit: I had a lot of FUN trying these renders. So much that I did this shot of both cockroaches flying around, like buddies hanging around and chatting. It's a shame there's no scene where both of the characters fly. So, this is just for the fun of it :-)

Different angles and some retouching

For Karin, our Texturing and Lighting instructor, we have to deliver 8 renders that get the closest possible of the final image we want for our shorts. Well, that was a great opportunity to improve on the main shots. I'm pretty happy with what I got on this scene. These are the two renders I like the most so far. I hope I can move to texturing and lighting the other shots really soon.

I know I know

I know I know, this is just some XRay effect that I got from Maya and then just color balanced it on Photoshop. Yep, pretty much. But I still think it's a cool image of the character ;-)

Finally a frame

After more than a month without any posts, now I'm ready to post new material. Actually there's some illustrations and sketches I really want to post. Let's see when. Anyway, this is the latest test render I did for the main scene of the short. Can you guys let me know what do you think?