In my Advanced Drawing/Perspective class we are doing an aquatic theme for vehicles so I did this with percentage markers, called a "Scuttle".

Click on it for a close-up.

Intro to 3D Modeling

This project was to create an advertisement for a museum exhibit. This piece is actually going to go to a Comic Con (convention) this weekend to represent Westwood College along with some other artwork and student portfolios.

This project exhibits lighting, atmospherics, texture mapping... I used a cloth modifier on the table cloth in the lower right corner and a hair&fur modifier on the teddy bear (supposed to look like some child had left it behind... because I don't know how to model actual people yet).


















Our last project was a product design to help us work on our modeling skills. So I made a castle playset starting with the dungeon where a very cartooney skeleton hangs from the ceiling, then upstairs to a dining room, and then the top floor is the wizard's lair (this was my instructor's idea since I ran out of good ideas by this time).

The character models were inspired by an old M.A.S.K. playset I had as a kid, with movable arms and legs. (These figures unfortunately can't bend their knees.) My friend Andy suggested the name for the playset. It has horrendous lighting but I was in a time crunch.

Typing Text Animation in Flash

I wrote a simple code in ActionScript 2.0 that can be used to dynamically create a "Typing Text" animation without having to manually animate in Flash. All you have to do is type your text into a dynamic text field and this script will animate for you.

Step 1: Create a Dynamic Text field in the first frame of the stage. Make sure to set the Line Type to Multiline. Type some text that you want to see animated.

Step 2: Give the text field an instance name of output and a variable name (Var:) of op. These names will be used in the ActionScript code to animate the containing text.

The rest is handled with ActionScript.

Step 3: Select the frame in the time line and open up the Actions Panel (F9). Enter the following code:

speed=60

texttoshow = op

output.text = ""

i = 0

j = 0

onEnterFrame = function(){

++j

if (j==Math.floor(60/speed)){

if (i<texttoshow.length){

output.text+=texttoshow.charAt(i)

++i

}

j = 0

}

}

Breakdown: Defining the variable "texttoshow" saves the text that you typed onto the text field. Later you see this variable using the .charAt() method to display one character at a time. [output.text = ""] clears the text field at runtime. Variables "i" and "j" will increment when onEnterFrame is called. To set how many frames per second you want the script to animate, assign a number to the "speed" variable.

"onEnterFrame = function() {}" will cause a function to run everytime the frame is entered (i.e. at the framerate). The first line of code in the function increments the "j" variable (++j); this is really for if you want to animate the text effect at a different rate than the movie's frame rate. The line "if (j==Math.floor(60/speed)){}" will run the animation at the speed you want (considering your movie's frame rate is 60). For example, if your speed is 30fps, it will animate once every two(2) frames (60/30). The Math.floor() method is just used so that you don't get decimal results.

The next line uses an if statement to keep the containing code from continuing after all the text has been typed. This is not really necessary in lightly scripted movies, but it is a good practice to keep from loading down processing. Next, the addition assignment opperator (+=) is used to incrementally assign the next character in your "texttoshow" variable. Then it is critical that you increment your "i" variable (++i) so that the next character in line displays the next time the script is run.

Finally, reset the "j" variable to zero so that it starts recounting the calculated frame rate.

Alternative: If you want an even simpler code that will run the animation at the movie's frame rate and that doesn't stop running after texttoshow.length is reached, enter this code:

onEnterFrame = function(){

output.text+=texttoshow.charAt(i)

++i

}

Disclaimer: For those of you who follow my blog for the artwork, this should thoroughly convince you of my "nerd" status. Thank you for humoring me. For anyone who found this post through a search engine, I hope it helped. Feel free to leave comments.

Product Package Design

Our new Illustrator project is creating a package design for some made-up project. This product was intended to be a portfolio piece so we were highly encouraged to do our absolute best on it. I haven't presented it yet but I'll let you know what kind of grade I get on it.

We also were to create some kind of promotional design for the product and the assignment handout suggested a coaster, so I figured that would be the easiest thing to do. Feedback is appreciated!

Illustrator

Done in Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator is used for print graphics and has a unique toolset for rendering really great print images (even better than Photoshop). The assignment was to learn how to use the Pen Tool to draw out basic shapes, curves, and fills, and then we learned how to use a unique blending tool.

This was one of my senior pictures. Took a long time to do this one without using a Brush Tool (that was one of the restrictions on the assignment). Ah, remember when I had hair?

Another quick one done with my tablet, for Sunny. Called "Sunset".

Well, I got a new Wacom tablet this week (it lets you draw with an electronic pen on your computer). Here was a quick sketch I did in Photoshop. It's very difficult to draw with a mouse so all the teachers here recommend all students getting tablets while going through computer animation and image editing courses.

The tablet was about $200. I hope to practice drawing more since I have this new toy.