Uploaded July 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago

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Hello!! It's been awhile.....but don't worry, I have more than one surprise for today of all days. ;)
Link to Year #1: youtube.com/watch?v=iKHsZBVHxoo&t=2s

✎ This has got to be the cringiest video for me. Honestly, most of this should not even see the light of day, BUT, since I like to keep record of everything....I decided to at least give ALL of my work a proper sign off. I should have had this done last summer but I was away in Europe. (Hard to believe that now.) So here we are! I'll be doing something for this year as well.

BUT FIRST, some history:
✎My 2nd year at SAU was, safe to say, the BEST year out of three. It was also the nuttiest because in order to save money I did Sophomore & Junior years worth of animation work at once. (Do not recommend doing that.)

Let me break down each semester and class from the video.
So during the Fall of 2018, I was drowning with 19 credit hrs. Funny enough though, I never felt more alive than when I was DYING during all this.
At SAU, Sophomore year your goal is to make a 30 sec short film, touching all parts of the animation pipeline: storyboard, design, model, rig, environment, animating, VFX, lighting/render. (By yourself) However, all your classes contribute to a common goal.

SEMESTER #1
0:04 Character Design:
I'm ready to hold a Viking Funeral for Finn here, lol! This one class was basically animation on steroids. You are not designing characters. You design 1 character, model, sculpt, add blendshapes at the last minute for facial expressions, then rig and paint weights + add clothes and hair, all in 16 weeks. Really, character designing needs to be broken up into multiple classes because it's so dense. Designing/drawing characters is NOT my thing at all! As you can see, he deviated from my original design, and model wise lacks appeal, and in terms of the rig is very limited in function/expressions, BUT out of 13 students, I was 1 of 2 that actually finished so I'm not gonna complain.
Software: Modeled in Maya. Sculpt in Mudbox. Used Mgear for rigging. Marvelous Designer for clothes. Vray to render.

0:20 Visual Development
Honestly, this is NOT an accurate example of what viz dev is. Viz Dev is all about trying to capture what the look/feel of the project should be through color and various design iterations. This is basically me just learning to paint in Photoshop, lol. (This was my first time digitally painting so take it easy on me!) Most of these are 2 hrs studios, recorded, so there wasn't time to make it look pretty anyway, but if I can survive in class critiques, than I can handle showing you guys these. This class was the 1 chill moment of my day usually ;)

0:36 Storyboarding
I personally do not enjoy storyboarding, but I really enjoyed this class. Hendel Butoy, our professor was a director from Disney, and just hearing him talk about the art of cinematics was so fascinating!
Torchlight: youtu.be/3qbbBPstNR8
The MockingBird: youtu.be/hvP3LnBGxq4

1:00 Character Animation I
This is the class it's all about right? RIGHT! Especially when we had Hendel teaching us the secretes! *sobs* Finally get to apply the principles of 2D animation to 3D characters!

The other classes for Semester 1 were Collab and Programming for Artist. I'll get to Collab, but there was no fun way of showing lines of code so Im just noting it here. I learned some basic Python coding skills but boy it was a lot harder than my professor said it be. That made my 19 credit semester.

SEMESTER #2
1:43 Environment Design
After making your character from Character Design from semester 1 for your sophomore short, next step is the environment. Learned a lot to keep a neat and tidy Maya scene so it runs efficiently, lol! I had a lot of fun making the world for Finn, ahehe.

1:52 Compositing
This was a very tedious class, right in line with my VFX route. We learned a node based compositing software called Nuke. The CG integration was my favorite! (Had to have a dragon in every project, lol!)

2:20 Collaborative Studios
At SAU, your whole Junior year is a little different in that you spend the year working with your class on a short film. Unlike Sophomore year, you specialize in 1 or a few areas in the pipeline and work collaboratively. (Like in a studio) This was my FAVORITE class, but socially very, very, VERY uncomfortable steps out of my comfort zone. This was a 4 credit hr. class, meaning we spent 5 hours straight in-class time working. (Many more hours outside of class)
Please note: I cannot yet link the full vid because we haven't officially released it. Also, I only highlighted the areas I worked in, including: producing, modeling the environment and set dressing the shots, and doing the character textures. Then everyone animates at least a couple shots. I did about 6 total. There was a lot more work and effort done by my team to bring this project to life that I didn't showcase.
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Website: vfxangel.carrd.co
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