A Last Hurrah!

Lover Boy

Lover Boy! This one has been a long time coming— made for the amazing Tran Ma’s Texturing and Shading 04 class at Gnomon School of VFX and Animation. I explained my idea for the story to my good friend and talented concept artist, Rain Rouhani, and she was able to create a gorgeous concept for me to work from. Now, I can also say that it is a Best of Term winner for character lighting at Gnomon!

Miss Somerdais

Meet Miss Somerdais! She’s a great boss and an awesome mom. She may have bounds of business practicality, but when you have a nice summer breeze, sometimes you just have to sit back and relish in your ice cream cone.

HUGE thank you to Rain Rouhani for another incredible concept for me to work from and another HUGE thank you to Jackson Lukas for the help with this piece. You are both incredible!

There’s also an Easter egg! It may be a little too low resolution on IG, but if you take a look at that photo on the wall in the back… does that little fella look familiar?

Newt

Newt! This piece was inspired by the concept art for a scrapped Pixar movie called… you guessed it… Newt. Many of you saw the beginning of this project on my stories! Clearly I fell off the progress-sharing wagon, but alas. Thanks to Miguel Ortega for the guidance through this project!

This one is sort of interesting, because I finished it, it looks how I imagined it, but I still don’t really care for it. I’m proud of it, but it’s definitely not my favorite. After thinking about why for quite a long time, I came to the conclusion that sometimes, pieces just aren’t your favorite— and that’s okay.

Thanks to Dakota Smith, too, for teaching me some python during this project, too! He helped me learn the tools to make some spiffy buttons that allowed me to create all of those lily pads and attach them to the surface of the water and their stalks all at once. I guess I know a little python, now, too!

The Circus of Spectacle

Welcome one, welcome all, to this labor of love that is The Circus of Spectacle! Made entirely from scratch, concepts and all, my lovely friends, Ethan Clark, Rain Rouhani, Alena Mealy, and I brought to life this brilliant and vibrant sideshow sight. Rain designed the characters and I designed the environments, Rain sculpted all of the characters while Ethan and I textured them, Ethan and I split the whole environment modeling and texturing process, Ethan and I split the lighting and compositing workload, and Alena was or queen of grooming on all of the characters!

All original characters and environments came to life over the course of nearly six months, as we ran into every possible snag one could imagine. We even moved this whole project, in it's completed state, from Maya to Unreal Engine to enhance our ability to choose camera angles and lighting on the fly, as well as to improve render time.

With all of that said, please enjoy the show, from Rough and Tumble's Medieval Rumble to Prickly Dan to Bingo and Bongo Bearovitch to The Rabble-rouser's Pies and Trousers! Welcome to The Circus of Spectacle! 

This is a little demonstration clip of a python tool I wrote in Maya that allowed me to dynamically change the color of the wood planks, including randomization, all with a single material and a little palette of colors. Pretty fun, I thought!

The Boiling Isles

This is a piece of fan art that I did based on the Disney Channel series, The Owl House. Exceptional show, that I can't recommend enough. I wasn't actually super pleased with this piece, but considering that I did it in Unreal Engine, without any real experience making a large exterior environment in Unreal Engine before, I'll call it a win.
Sometimes, I think it's important to share the pieces that I'm not as proud of, because I know that when I was starting out, I always wondered if the artists I looked up to were proud of everything they made. If someone out there is looking up to my art, I definitely am not super proud of the end result of all of them... but I'm proud of the process nevertheless!

Friend (scary warning)

A drastic tone shift in my portfolio, I know! But hey, what can I say, I like to do it all. This friend is an entirely original concept-- I designed, modeled, textured, rigged, animated, lit, composited, and did the sound editing all over the course of a few weeks. All in all, I'm very proud of this cute fella.

That's All, Folks!

After years in school, lots of hard work, and many fun projects that I've had the pleasure of sharing with  you all, I have graduated and moved onto exciting things at DreamWorks Animation! While I am thrilled to be cooking up something exciting with the DreamWorkers, it is bittersweet to think that next year, I won't be eligible to participate in The Rookies Contest. Nevertheless, it has been a pleasure, and I hope you enjoy this last hoorah. Cheers, everyone!