Novella

Here are the preliminary sketches of the characters for a short novella for The Pearl Diver: Rupert, Amelia, the old storyteller, the diver, the rat, Torquemada, and Sancho.  The protagonists, antaggonists, and side characters are all roughly sketched out but still need work.  The essential outline for the story is already drafted, but not the dialogue.  Once the novella is finished, the graphic novel will come next.

character sketch

DIVER PENCIL TEST COLOR

Here is the colored render of the pencil test for the diver.  The basic colors used are blue, light blue, orange, yellow, and pink.  All the colors came from the color map.

The hight lights are just whites applied to the diver’s anatomy: belly button, notch on lower back, shoulder blade, top of hair, forehead, bangs, top of rib cage, simulated tan lines especially around the bikini.  It’s the base color of the canvas bleeding through.

Other factors came into play when coloring the diver.  Darker skin and hair tones are just another layer of the same color but at different opacity.  A blue filter layer at a low opacity was also used to unify the entire image, then Photoshop curves was used to pump up the saturation of the colors and the darkness of the lines.

There were plenty of problems when it came down to the final product.  Colors were lost, frames were dropped thereby altering the timing of the animation, and even the resolution was cut in half.  The best workflow for the entire process is summarized below.

WORKFLOW TO EXPORT GIF

• rough animator
• export mov or png files
• so all the colors come out right
• i.e. yellow and pink

• photoshop
• import mov
• apply curves
• to fix saturation and contrast
• 1280 x 720
• export as mp4

EXPORT METHODS

    1)

• photoshop
• reduce the file size 640 x 360
• or percent/50
• (less resolution than original)
• change frame rate to 24
• convert to video timeline
• set timeline frame rate

    2)

• ezgif.com
• 25 fps
• preserve transparency
• optimize the gif
• 600 x 338
• (more accurate timing than photoshop but less resolution)

    3)

• keynote (best method)
• document settings/resize
• 1080 x 608
• (better timing & resolution)
• WHY 1080?
• For Twitter and Instagram, 
• the image size of 1080×1080 pixels is ideal.

correct timing, wrong color on lips and earrings

wrong timing, correct colors overall

Mouse AR

Back in December 2018 I did a short augmented reality promo for Mobile Motion Mocap and our client was Radio Disney. The idea was to have Mickey Mouse walking on a Radio Disney logo. The primitive mouse geometry was provided by Radio Disney, but the mocap came from Mobile Motion Mocap. 

All the elements were put together using Unity game engine. The shadow is just a faded circular plane surface parented to the mouse, but it added to the illusion of the augmented reality. The setup for the AR in Unity was time consuming, but once it was done, the process of putting it all together was very quick. 

 

 

Game Hybrid

Finished developing a computer game using Tyrano Builder.  The game is unusual in its structure because it’s a hybrid of a visual novel and a digital board game.  The game allows you to play a quick board game without the cumbersome set up and lengthy rules.  It also allows you to read a choose your own adventure novel, but with the interactiveness of a board game.  It’s a casual game with the best of both worlds.

banner

visual novel

game interface

Unity Video Render

During my internship with Mobile Motion Mocap I had to learn how to render a video in unity game engine.  The set came from Daz Studio, and the character & mocap were provided by Mobile Motion Mocap.  I assembled the scene in Unity, planned my shots using Cinemachine, then added post processing within unity.  Post processing included ambient occlusion, color correction, motion blur, & vignette.  I did the final compositing in afterfx using a sci-fi font then applied a bad tv fx on the font & at the beginning of the footage.  The end result is a crash test dummy that comes to life in a junkyard by way of dancing.  What was truly amazing is that the 1 minute footage only took 7 minutes to render in unity.

final video

3d models

Character Design For Toy

On September 18, 2018, I was commissioned to design a toy for Yulu toys for their virtual production project.  The design was created in Daz Studio and was based on their concept art, 3D model scan of the toy, & images from the actual toy.  Aside from Daz Studio, I had to use Maya to design the clothing & Photoshop to design the face.  The final design came very close to what the client wanted, but they eventually chose to go a different route on the design by mid November.

designs

concept art

doll images

final design

Mocap Internship

This past winter I had a 4 month internship for a mocap company called Vitruvian Entertainment in Burbank which lasted October 2016 to February 2017, & one of the projects I worked on was an NBA commercial called "NBA Chinese New Year Envelope 2017". During the Chinese New Year it is customary to give red envelopes full of surprises to another person much like our X-mas tradition.  The commercial stars NBA players James Harden, Jeremy Lin, and Stephen Curry, all rendered as paper cutouts of themselves playing basketball before they morph into their real selves at the end of the shoot.

The shoot took 1 day, and it lasted from 7 am till 6 pm at Sirheel Chestnut Studios in Burbank, and my supervisors were Irfan Merchant and Jose Navarro.  During the shoot I assisted in the computer setup including camera equipment, battery chargers, & proximity markers.  I also took measurements of the basketball players and entered it in the mocap application which made the mocap data more accurate.  I also assisted during the fitting of the suits for the clients which meant securing any loose wires & making sure all the wireless components faced outward for the suit to be accurately read by the computers.  I also constantly kept checking, replacing, & charging the batteries for the suit in order for the mocap data to be fully read.  My side job was also to operate a digital camera for every take, so we could use it as reference during the mocap clean up.

The shoot had its share of problems.  First the location for the shoot switched from an indoor high school gym in LA to a local studio in Burbank the day before the shoot.  The location had to be examined for size requirements & wireless technology interference. Secondly, blue tooth devices from the staff corrupted the mocap readings but were quickly remedied. Third, some battery packs failed to charge, but luckily there were back up batteries on hand.  Other problems were minor ones such as wireless components getting flipped due to the movement of the basketball players themselves.  Despite all these setbacks, my supervisors acknowledged that this shoot was one of the most successful & least troublesome compared to previous ones.

NBA Chinese New Year Envelope 2017 commercial

Sirheel Studio stage

mocap workstation

digital camera

end of shoot

call sheet