Personal CG and Animation Retrospect

Hi! It's been a while since my last post here. And with the Easter vacation done (which I badly miss), there's nothing left to do but to think of good times and go back to the normal routines we use to do.

And speaking of which, after meditating a while back, I decided to create a blog post featuring (yes, a shameless plug indeed) some of my past works (hand picked for you) and a little story about them. Of course, I would love to hear your honest and constructive criticisms so I could improve those in the making and those that would come in the future. I have arranged the following in chronological order -- oldest to newest. So hear you go:

1. Meowww (2007)

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This is one of the happiest illustrations I have made, being that in the entirety of the process, I was just very glad I am recreating a drawing and giving it life through colors. Big thanks to my friends at DeviantART (http://deviantart.com) for their comments and criticisms on this. Now that I look back on it, I often ask myself: 'How did I do that again?'

2. Splash (2007) and Splash-Strips (2007)

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If I remember it right, this was my very first 'published' animation that I created using Blender and YafRay (back then without the 'a'). With my natural fondness of glass, spheres, and such, I did this to revitalize my creative instincts and continue forth with other drawing stuff that I was doing back then. But I ended up loving this more than those drawings that were extracted from my thoughts back then. Rendering time for this one took almost forever, I think it took almost a month for this animation to finish rendering, let alone the fluid simulation baking which took almost the same time. Crazy but fun!

3. Confinement (2007)

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This creation of mine was a lame excuse for my very poor modeling skills. But it also was a discreet expression of my emotional status back then. Most of the lighting here was achieved through Radiosity and further tweaking. And a little post pro with GIMP.

4. The Making (2007)

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This was initially a modeling accident that eventually made its way through my personal gallery. It was still a tedious doodling with Radiosity lighting and some 'mesh sculpting' which was a really really ugly process back then (yuck!). And yet, this was the birth of the clay guy you will see roaming around some of my stuff.

5. Visitor (2008) and Visitor-Frames (2008)

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In an attempt to further extend and 'exhaust' Blender and GIMP's capabilities, I decided to create an architectural walkthrough (of which I didn't have a clear definition of before). With no CAD plans and architectural background to begin with, I have only my vision and observation to count on. And with no dramatic architectural structures around me, I had no choice but to use our little house for this animation. I took pictures of our house mentally, strolling every corner of the structure every now and then and will get back to the very computer you see in the animation to start doodling around. This is, by far, the heaviest scene I have ever done in my entire CG career. No proxies and links, all local and high poly (even with those objects and props not entirely seen through the camera view included).

But this is indeed a turning point in my life experience as a CG artist, of which I discovered and learned a lot of mistakes that I have employed and workflows that would have been altered to become better. But instead of lurking on the downsides of the project, I channeled those experiences to further improve my next projects.

6. Breathe (2009)

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And so I already got hooked into Blender and all its intricacies. And with my lame clay character as a base, I started developing this scene originally as a submission for http://cgsphere.com. It was a real test for me on 3D lighting and shading. I'm not sure if I was successful back then, but I was happy with the result.

7. Bubbles and Butterflies (2009)

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Yes, the clay character again (arrrgh!). This is more of a story than an artwork in itself. And I'm really very thankful to the Blender community for appreciating my work and to the BlenderArtists (http://blenderartists.org) moderators for including this artwork in their forum gallery. I'm really very very ecstatic!

8. Button (2009)

This was mostly an animation practice than anything else. It was also an overkill with Blender's compositor. And just like I always have been doing, this was a really funny experience for me, minus the frustrations that animation gave me.

Thanks again to the Blender community and the Suzanne awards jury for making this one of the nominees in the Suzanne Awards 2009 under Best Designed Short Film (http://www.blender.org/community/blender-conference/blender-conference-2009/festival/). Thanks, everyone! ^_^

9. Stu (2009)

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Perhaps the second 3d character I've made with Blender. I was on a natural high when doodling this on a paper and went ahead straight to Blender to start the 3d doodle and voila. Yuck. ^_^

10. Slumber (2010)

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And last but not least in the list is one of my all time favorites -- Slumber. I was having mixed emotions while doing this. Normally, I would sit down, draw, 3dify, and have fun. But this was a bit more different in that I felt sad but happy. I don't know, but I'm glad I was able to pull this off.

Again thanks to the Blender community and the BlenderArtists forum for choosing this as one of the images in their gallery section (http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?200399-Slumber-Still).

And that's it! Thanks for taking your time to drop by. If you want to see more of my old works, you can check out my gallery at:

http://reynante.deviantart.com/gallery
http://reynante.daportfolio.com
http://vimeo.com/reynante/videos
http://youtube.com/rey123sss

Thanks! And please, I would love to see yours too. Drop by a comment below. ;)

Until next time!

-Reyn