Portfolio Time: Rotation Feedback

It's that time of year again when I need to make my animation portfolio. First up is the rotation of my original character, Joaquin De Las Máquinas. Any and all feedback is welcome and appreciated!

If the slideshow on my Tumblr, wasn't helpful, click on the drawings below for full size images.

Kratos Muppet: Day 1

My good buddy G, who produces the award-winning show Game Over on ICTV, is planning something very special: a puppet episode to cap off their ninth season.

I have been asked to create a few Muppet-style puppets of M-Rated game characters that will teach children important life lessons such as the ESRB rating guidelines and talking about your feelings instead of resorting to excessive violence.

My design for the puppet.

The first puppet I'm building is Kratos, the temper-tantrum prone Ghost of Sparta from God of War. Here's the progress of the first build day: the understructure of the head.

A quick orthographic of the parts.

I started by breaking my design into the necessary base pieces, in this case being the head and lower jaw. Besides having these be separate pieces, I needed to include space for the puppeteer's hand and arm, thus the little passage in the upper head piece and the U shape in the bottom jaw.

In order to create this shape, I needed to carve an 8" foam cube, and to do that I needed to draw proper guidelines. It probably just looks like a mess though.

The guidelines for the upper head piece.

The cube would be cut in half. The top piece will be carved into a cylinder and the 8" foam half-sphere would be glued on top to form the upper head. I drew the circle on the top of the foam block as well as a few tangential lines for the ease of carving. The X's show what I'm going to shave off.

The guidelines for the lower jaw.

The lower jaw was a much more complex form. On the bottom of the cube I drew out the curves of the U shape and on the sides the diagonals of the jawline.

I began carving the foam first using a small hacksaw (the cleaver looking thing) to cut off large chunks. It's one of my favorite tools, an x-acto #5 with a fine tooth saw blade. I continued to shave it down with a Dremel with a sanding wheel attachment. Be careful, the Dremel will eat through the foam pretty quick, so keep it on low power. I finished it off with some heavy grit sandpaper to eat away small lumps, then fine grit sandpaper to smooth it out.

The foam is very soft, and a little bit of grinding goes a long way, so when working with the stuff always go slow and the sandpaper should be your weapon of choice (because it's more precise) unless you have a huge piece to take off.

More sanding and I cut the cube in half with a hot knife.

The space for the puppeteer's fingers.

The lower jaw.

The back of the head is beginning to take shape.

So is the lower jaw.

After I cut the cube in half to create the two pieces, I began to shape the lower jaw. I neglected to compensate for the back of the head being rounded when I created the shape of the jaw (which is why the back of the jaw sticks out in the picture up there). Fortunately this was really easy to fix. A good rule of thumb is it's always better to be too big than too small. It's easier to take away than add.

The mouth.

The mouth is what would connect the pieces and allow them to move. I cut two separate pieces of cardboard and duct taped them together to make the hinge. When I get to putting "skin" on the puppet in the next few days, I'll probably reinforce it.

Things are starting to come together.

The mouth closed...

I cut the space for the fingers in the upper head inward in order for it to be shaped more like an actual head. This also made to jaw open easier.

... and open.

From the back.

And open again.

The hinge worked really well, but just in case, I added in elastic straps for the thump and fingers to make the head easier to hold and move.

What a mess...

I had to include this one because I am sort of proud of the ridiculous mess I made. That green foam dust got everywhere. It's like beach sand that will get into your phone even if it was locked in your car five miles away. When using the Dremel or sanding, wear goggles, because it will get in your eyes. Also, I wish I had a dust mask. It's not hazardous, but it got in my mouth and tasted terrible. So wear one of those.

Besides the crazy jumble of guidelines on the foam cube, this part of the build was pretty straightforward. It just comes down to a few hours of careful sanding.

This is, however, a build where the time involved is reliant on the tools used. A couple different grits of sandpaper and a fine toothed saw are an absolute must. Dremels and hot knives aren't typical things people have around, but they definitely make the build a lot quicker and easier. The saw took off large pieces, but wasn't good for finer work. The Dremel was good for quickly shaving off large lumps, but takes off a lot if you aren't careful. The hot knife (the thing with the burgundy handle), which is essentially a heated metal wire, was perfect for curves, but was flexible, so not great for straight cuts.

The hot knife was wonderful, but be careful. The wire has a tendency to bend and if you press too hard it will snap. I learned this the hard way and had to make a second run to Michael's. You don't need to apply any pressure. Gravity will take care of everything. Also wear heat resistant gloves. You are holding a 500º piece of fragile metal after all.

Safety first!

Check back tomorrow where I will be attaching the fabric skin. Hopefully I can get this puppet done by the end of the week!

The Blusterbuss Automated Appendage Armament

This past weekend I went to a steam punk themed wedding for my really good friends Shelby and Andrew (Congratulations guys!). When they first announced the theme a little more than a year ago, I was requested by the bride to attend wearing a robot arm ("Wright, it wouldn't be my wedding unless you had a robot arm"). So, never one to disappoint, I built The Blusterbuss.

The lovely Mrs. Shelby Chubb-Garcia modeling The Blusterbuss.

I based the arm around the one used by Gwen, the character I posted here a while back.

I started with a hockey glove (easy to procure in Canada) and built it out from there. The glove opening was three inches, my forearm was eight, etc. I estimated most of the measurements, and they worked out, though my Perspective teacher will probably kill me for not drawing an orthographic projection...

Both Evil FX and the Volpin Props had made extremely cool N7 armor from Mass Effect 2. Each were raving about this stuff called EVA foam. You may recognize that as the squishy playground floors with the puzzle piece edges. Even though Mass Effect and steam punk are as opposite as you can get, I decided to use EVA foam. Unlike the N7 armor, I used the untextured side.


The foam didn't disappoint. It was very easy to work with, lightweight, and most importantly, cheap. I got eight 2' x 2' squares for $20, and I still have six sheets left (so I might just try my hand at making that Mass Effect armor).

All the major parts laid out. Sloppy I know, but that's what sandpaper is for.

I measured out all the individual pieces, beveled the edges, and put them together with rubber cement. The one thing I had to get used to with the foam was how soft it was. It could be cut without trouble with a thin bladed band saw, but the belt sander just ate through it and I had to use a Dremel on the lowest setting. There were a few nicks, but overall it worked.

The colorful foamy internal structure of the arm.

I wrapped the whole thing in thick poster board and filled in any gaps and imperfections with acrylic modeling medium, a thick, quick drying paste. I sanded it down, but kept some of the texture because it looked like welding joints when painted with Hammered Silver spray paint.

All that remained was embellishing, weathering, and adding lights.

My basic technique was spray painting the piece and then dusting it with another color. If I painted it hammered silver, I dusted it with hammered bronze and vice-versa. This gave it both a metallic and a rusted look. Then I took some gold acrylic paint and applied it lightly with a piece of steel wool. Afterwords I scratched it up with some heavy grit sandpaper, applied actual dirt and mud, and in some cases beat it with a dull machete that just happened to be lying around.

Weathering on the box.

I'm glad there was randomly a machete!

The bronze strips are craft foam. The box on the top of the arm was going to be filled with electronics as well as the plastic tube, so I didn't want bolts in the way. Instead of buying a big bag of screws and cutting them down, I decided to buy one bolt and cast the head in resin.

I pressed it into a block of clay several times, and poured in the resin. It was my first time using the stuff, and the biggest thing I learned was to have a measuring cup that does ounces handy. The mixture of resin to catalyst needs to be relatively precise. I eyeballed it and it took a couple of tries to get it drying right. Like all the other pieces, I sprayed the bolt heads in paint and dusted it with bronze and gold.

Afterwords, I partook in my favorite pastime, going to Home Depot to find stuff that looks like other stuff.

A ceiling bracket, toilet o-ring, some tubing, and
a neat clock face that I cut the numbers off of.

The pressure gauge is my favorite part and the piece de resistance that really made the arm steam punk. It's made of a water pressure testing gauge, some brass piping, and a shower drain. I had a lot of fun antiquing the gauge, going to town on it with sandpaper and paint, even at one point smashing it on a rock.

Gauge detail. I really like the little lines of gold paint.

For the light tube I coated the inside with several layers of resin. I turned the tube as it dried to give it a warped "filled with liquid" look. Then I coated the inside with a few layers of frosted spray paint to make it opaque. I rubbed the outside with sandpaper to both make it look banged up and make the light even more diffused.

I'd like to say that the lighting was something special, but it was just a cool flashlight I found that had settings for red, blue, and white light. I glued it into the tube and cut a little door so I could reach in and change the color of the light on the fly.

Blue.

Red. It looks much better in the dark (see the first pic).

White.

I ordered a bunch of electroluminescent wire that I was going to use to light the arm, but my shipment didn't arrive on time. As of writing, it still isn't here. Let's hope it gets here before Halloween. I ordered it a month ago...

I still have a little more modifications to do. There are a couple bits I need to reinforce, maybe I'll add a few more bolt heads, and I want to install the EL wire, but otherwise, I'm incredibly proud of this. It was the most professional prop build I've done. It was very light-weight (weighing in at a surprising three pounds!), comfortable, durable (survived two full days of partying), and most impressively, it was functional. With that big glove I was able to eat, smoke cigars, play pool, and daintily hold champagne flutes and beer glasses.

Plus the wedding party commandeered it for their official photos. I can't wait to see those!

Badass.

Show Reel Rough Cut

I have come across several amazing job opportunities and I need a show reel, something, I admit, I should have had over a year ago. Better late than never I guess.

Below is a very rough cut. I'm going to trim some edges, add credits/contact info, transitions, etc. I purposely omitted the music. I wanted to nail down the content first. Also I had to bring the resolution way down for Blogger. The finished one will be higher res.

- Is there anything that doesn't belong (aka something of poor quality)?
- Is there anything missing, or anything you'd like to see more of?
- Is there anything there is too much off?
- Does it give you a good picture of who I am as a person?
- Does it show that I have skill and experience?
And most importantly:
- If you were an animation studio, would you hire me?

I appreciate any and all feedback, and don't be afraid to be brutal.

I'll have a more final version with music, credits, etc. tomorrow night for added critiquing.

No More Heros Blood Berry

Today was a pretty terrible day, so I decided to build something awesome. I give you Travis Touchdown's signature beam katana, the Blood Berry from the amazing Wii game, No More Heroes.

The finished Blood Berry.

The man himself. I think I did a good job.

A little hint of what's to come.

I almost forgot. It lights up too.

RUUUUUUN!

The final drawing of Gwen is done. Now I can put her to rest, at least until I decide to use her in something. Which I most likely will.

However, at the moment, it looks like she's in a sticky situation. Tsk. Should have been more careful stealing that treasure.

Koi Glider

I'm in the home stretch (my portfolio has to be mailed out before 5pm on Friday), so I've been a bit stressed/losing my mind. I've got a ton of stuff I haven't posted, which if it isn't up before Friday will be up during the weekend.

In the meantime, I did make something that was really awesome, so here it is: Gwen in the heat of battle, riding her Koi Glider.