Return to Prime Focus
I am pleased to announce that I have returned to Prime Focus in Vancouver as their new Rigging Technical Director. I am now a permanent employee and have moved my life out to the west coast. It has been an incredibly busy couple of months moving out here, but the storm is finally calming and I’m able to relax a bit.
Returning to 3ds Max has been nice. It took a bit of getting used to after working in Maya for the past 6 months. Although it has been nice, I am looking forward to switching back to Maya again in the future. I was only using Maya 8.5 in production, but even then it had some important tools I am constantly missing (skin weight holding!!!).
Read MoreTree Of Life Trailer
The official trailer for The Tree Of Life has now, finally, come out. This is the movie I was working on in Vancouver last year from March-July.
It has been a long wait to see anything at all from the movie, but the trailer looks great. Very proud to have worked on this, and can’t wait to see the final movie. It is currently scheduled to hit the theatres on May 27, 2011.
Read MoreNew Job at Guru Studio
I’ve started a new studio job recently. I am working as the character rigger on a television show being done at Guru Studio in Toronto. I started at the beginning of September, and it has been going great.
This is my first Maya production. I’ve really taken to Maya and am enjoying the rigging workflow very much. Scripting in MEL has also been going well. I’ve found it very easy to pick up and create tools, but I really don’t like the language. I feel limited using it, and also feel it is kind of awkward in how it works. I am already starting to learn Python so I can start writing more generalized functions, using nested arrays again, all that good stuff.
Read MoreYou’ve got red on you
I have been spending the last little while learning Maya, and have just finished up my first Maya rig. You’ll recognize the character as Shaun, from Shaun Of The Dead. Modeling was done by Stephan Perreault – www.stephanperreault.com
I kept the rig somewhat simple, working just with rigging methods I already knew from working with Max and Maya. The rig is just a body rig at this point in time, although I plan on creating a facial rig for it in the future as well.
Read MoreSkinning Quickies
This is a collection of macros for completing quick tasks while skinning. Most of these are just simple tasks found in the modify panel for skin which did not have macros already available, but there are still some custom ones in the mix. I decided to put this together when starting to use my new Wacom tablet for skinning, as it was annoying to always have to go to the UI to accomplish some of these tasks.
Macros include:
Read MoreDemo Reel – July 2010
I have updated my last reel to include characters I rigged and skinned (body only, facial rigs done by Paul Neale) for an Actimel Commercial. I also added in a demo of the mirror rig tool I was working on in spare time a few months back.
I have done a lot of other work within the last year, but some of it cannot be shown yet, and I wanted to get a quick update done. I will likely create a new reel once the other work has the go-ahead to be shown. Who knows when that will be though! In the meantime, please enjoy…
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