this has taken forever

bouncy ball

look look. i made this in class today. for some reason the render messed up at the end and i had to do some painting/stamp tool in after effects.

ummmmm also can we learn how to make complex characters. BEN TEACH ME. i want to make my own characters not use someone else's.

update

so, i got extra notes from becca during class on thursday and i am still having issues with opening my file out of mm into maya. blerg.

capital T

i'm having a lot of trouble even opening my exported mm file into maya. it won't open. it did once but then wouldn't let me select the camera viewport. guess who's coming to lab. will there be wings? or celery?

so pretty!

ahhh

woah i'm sick but woah i finished this awful scene. hey amelia, make something better sometime soon. ok.

a bad dreamworks movie from 1998

that's what this looks like. i miss 3ds max. i was good at that program. i'm bad at maya. very sad face.

i forgot my concept image

oopsies! here is the image i've been working off of.

minimalism?

i'm not really into the whole castle/fantasy game thing. sorry ben, that's sort of your forte. so, i made a frank lloyd wright inspired house. after drawing it out and then making most of it on the computer, i turned around and saw that other kids had created really cool castles. and that mine looked really simple in comparison.

but then i realized, isn't that sort of the point? frank lloyd wright rejected ornate and frivolous architecture, even though it was beautiful. he celebrated clean lines and functional construction. so really, i fulfilled the goal i began with. it actually took quite a bit of time to make the curves look right and for the balconies to curve and have parts dug out. i really like using the boolean tool. 10% for it's name.

i think i will truly be satisfied with this piece when it has materials. which is this week! i am going to be a great material artist. this i know.


i don't know how to use blogger or html for that matter. the rectangle is off. failing at life right now.

reference images

i want to build a modernist house. something a la frank lloyd wright. i collected some images to use as my reference point and i think today i'll work on combining them to make something awesome. here are the images i've found that i like. the only problem is that i would really like to include foliage with these images. i love how flw (oh yeah, abbreviated) uses natural surroundings to build his houses. it's not really the same in the limbo of 3d land. maybe i can continue building this through a few of our assignments.

lofts/extrusions/weird things i've made

this week i've been making some interesting things. how useful they are to my practical (as practical as animating can get) abilities, i'm not sure. however, THEY LOOK COOL.


poorly designed and executed "AG" logo. my initials. i can't get the dimensions right on this. it looks funnnnnny.


this is my favorite of the things i made. it's an extrusion that got sort of tangled up in itself. i really used this exercise to play with materials. this one is just a blinn. but it's nice and transparent.


look at this quality goblet i made with a revolution.


this is a loft. with a shitty material. but i thought it was fun to play and work with textures.


this one is cool but i need to learn lights.

ta da!

atmospheric painting

i made this little atmospheric painting partly in class. i'm sort of obsessed. i had the drawing from this summer, but it looks amazing colored.

skysphere

so, i'm not particularly one for convention. i enjoy most things if they have fifty years of rust and sweat on them. shiny, new plastic sort of weirds me out. this may seem irrelevant, but truthfully, i apply this love of vintage to my art as well. so, when making a sky sphere for this assignment, i knew i had only a few options.

first, i tried to make/take a panorama of my room. it sort of worked but considering i'm doing this at 2 am the night before it's due, i didn't have a lot of time to work with it. (i'm sorry ben, here is the reason why: http://vimeo.com/14790347 five months of hard work. it ended tonight).

so, first attempt failed miserably. BUT, i did use some found images and some lights (i know, i'm ahead of the game) to make this skysphere really work. i used two vintage images, one of las vegas and one of philadelphia. i also found an image online that made a really cool rendered picture. it looks real except the backwards text.

enjoy!

hello again

hi readers,

my name is amelia giller and this is the blog i've been keeping for ben bay's classes at the university of texas. i have a number of blogs which i find sort of embarrassing, but necessary. i have a fashion blog that chronicles street style here in lovely austin, texas. and, i have a newer blog where i post my daily drawings. i guess i truly understand how great blogs are for showing evolution within your portfolio. which is why i'm making this one strictly for visual effects.

i wanted to share some of my work with you, although a similar post can be found a few months back. i've done some great work since then. first, i'm sharing my favorite stop motion piece i've done called "rare bird".




i am also sharing a photo from my fashion blog. you can see more posts here: commonbirds.



here is a photo of some of something i drew recently. you can see my drawing blogs here: ameliorate.



and here is another photo i took of my cousin.


i hope these little snidbits give you a peak into my interests!

still working! i promise

Oops

I forgot to post! But I am working. I have changed my final project. I am doing some animated title sequences for a good friend Stephen. His movie is so cool, it's about a man who wants to straighten his curly mustache for a lady. All live action, all very goofy.

Although there is something pure about doing your own work in college (Ben reminded me of this) it is always interesting to work in groups and have someone be in charge. I've had a few disagreements with the director of the film. He hasn't really liked my work that much, which surprised me. I really like what I have been doing and I have spent a good deal of time on it. Everything I have shown him, however, he has said is a "good start." I finally responded that spending four hours on something is not a start. It's a difficult balance, friendship and working under someone. He hasn't told me if he likes the stuff that I've redone. And, perhaps it is not that I'm doing things wrong but he needs to give me more direction. Anyway, I'm working very hard. Trying to get things done.

Here is about 1/5 of the work I'm doing for him.

inspirational images

Well well well. It seems that our favorite time of year is upon us: crunch time. I am working on a stop motion for Geoff's class that involves making a suit of women's clothing. I'm working on the costume, but with this awful physics test this week I haven't had too much time. However, I found some inspiration images to help me through the process. First of all, I googled "clothes monster" and got these images which are awesome and make me wish I had time to sew something so splendid. But also, when I found them they were on a blog post about a monster made up of clothing from a bedroom like the idea behind my stop motion. It made me feel quite unoriginal, that someone had even gone to the trouble enough to make a costume. I guess they didn't make a movie!


I'm also inspired by the title sequence from Monster's Inc. (the fact that it has Monster in the title is not really what inspires me but the fact that it is so dynamic and entertaining and yet, a title sequence). I am not sure how I want to make my title sequence work, it definitely will not be as fantastic as the one by Pixar. But maybe if I try hard enough...

I am posting these findings hoping to inspire myself this weekend into doing something. HOORAY physics is almost over. I might get my life back sometime soon.

Particles

Wow last little project for class. Scaryyy.

Anyways, for this project I thought I'd add some effects to an animation that I'd already made. The animation storyline itself was supposed to have rain, but I didn't know how to do rain with paper and stop motion, so I left it out. But, with After Effects and Particles I was able to add the effect I wanted.

The only thing I dislike about particles is how silly they can look. I think my snow looks pretty cool, and perhaps my rain, but the fire just looks terrible. Honestly, I wouldn't have added fire but I needed five particle systems to make. But, I really like that I could add a little debris from the birdhouse breaking that shoots towards the camera because I wasn't able to do that with my stop motion. I guess I have pretty mixed feelings about particles, they are useful in some situations, but in others they are really ugly.

I guess this post sort of sums up how I feel about CG effects in the first place. I really like organic, hand animated effects, they look more natural and are more impressive. I like to think of the fire that I made for this project (which is really bad, I'm not going to lie, particles are definitely not my forte) versus the PES video where they use candy corn to represent fire. It looks better, even though it's made of candy.That being said, sometimes it is really hard to do everything by hand, for example, rain effects out of paper. In that case, I would definitely want to use CG. I guess I compare CG particles to cooking with salt, use sparingly, but in some cases it is necessary.

Green Screen

Perhaps I am not the best at keying, but I thought I turned our idea into something sort of worthwhile. I also realize, I'm a terrible actress. But, I made our scene into a space scene. Complete with floating TV and huge shooting stars. Enjoy.

This Week

I'm not sure if we necessarily needed to post this week. I'm looking forward to learning how to key and do more with a green screen. I couldn't make it to class on Monday because of Passover. The one night Jews are allowed to get drunk instead of go to class. It's a good holiday. Anyway, I've been working on my stop motion for Geoff's class. I was originally going to use a green screen but realized I have no idea what I'm doing and that a week from now would be a better opportunity to shoot and key.

Here is the stopmotion.





I think it turned out pretty well.


Also, for my project in this class I'm going to do something with our magic carpet ride shoot. It should be really ugly and cheesy, but hey, I'm learning.