THE ART OF ANDREW DOLL

Aww!!

2012-01-13T18:47:00.000-06:00

Here is the first of many more posts to come. This definitely took a lot longer than most of the art that I post to my blog, but I think it shows that I am trying something new. This was digitally painted in Photoshop. I don't believe that I have painted something photo-real here nor do I actually want to paint photo-real, but like I mentioned in a previous post, most of the art I do ends with flat fill colors in Flash, and I have since realized I can add a lot more quality by focusing on how light and materials actually react in the real world. Hope you like! Let me know what you think!

-Andrew

New Website!

2011-08-18T12:16:00.002-06:00

It has been quite a while since my last post so here is an update to what I have been up to. I have a new website!

Go check it out! www.andrewdollanimation.com

ANT Landscape Generator in Blender 2.57

2011-05-19T11:12:00.004-06:00

So I have been researching a lot of terrain generation methods lately...Vue, Terragen, DEM's brought into Maya and used as displacement maps on geometry. I had just started to follow Andrew Price from Blender Guru and noticed he's been doing some interesting terrain generation with a neat little plugin built into Blender 2.57 called ANT Landscape.

The above landscape was created with these settings:

The subdivisions set to 2048 was quite high for how far back the camera is set in this shot but when you push the camera closer to the landscape it stands up very well.

Blender Challenge (UPDATE)

2011-04-29T21:04:00.007-06:00

UPDATE - I won the challenge! :D

Thank you to everyone who went to vote. I won a copy of Blender 2.5 Materials and Textures Cookbook, by Colin Litster

Check out the challenge results page here.

Okay this was a challenge I just did for Dark Scarab. Here is a list of the restrictions:

Restrictions:
- Must use Blender
- Your entry must be a still image
- You may use a maximum of 500 faces

That last one was the tough one...I found it so unbelievably difficult to model anything under 500 faces. So here is my entry...a wooden toy car. Modelled and rendered completely in Blender. Scene total is 499...yikes that was close :P Anyway...enough nerd talk from me. Check out the website for other entries :)

Blue Final

2011-04-01T10:39:00.003-06:00

Well, Blue is done. Not 100% happy with the end result, only because I could not connect any of the facial expression blend shapes to him without deformation problems. I believe the culprit is the input connections list and the order that things were arranged, but after hours of google searching and trying everything I could find, I just couldn't get the shapes to affect his head without the head wanting to go back to the origin. I don't think there are any character riggers following my blog, but if there are or you know how to fix what I am talking about, I would really like to hear from you. Comment! :)

Blue Update

2011-03-26T19:58:00.004-06:00

The body is rigged and bound to the mesh finally. Now I am moving on to the face. Not sure if I have mentioned this before but I am a complete noob to rigging and let me tell you it is no simple process. I take off my hat and raise a glass to all the riggers and character TD's out there. A terrible rig can kill any chance of great animation so I'm really hoping that this one is able to stand up and perform. I will post some more screenshots of the process up to this point. As per usual comments are always welcome.

Blue...now with 100% more cape!

2011-03-21T23:16:00.003-06:00

I gave him a cape....temporarily....why? Because it looks funny. That is all...now....back to rigging.

Blender VFX Fluid Simulations

2011-03-16T17:20:00.003-06:00

There is a lot of water VFX in the Wapos Bay movie and here are some of the tests I did with Blender to see what type of water we can get from this program. I'm quite impressed by its capabilities.

Sneak Peek at “Guardians” Character Design

2011-03-13T19:58:00.001-06:00

Here is a sneak peek at on of the "Guardians" designs I did for Wapos Bay Productions. To see more about this project and the studio visit the Wapos Bay website.

VFX

2011-03-01T10:03:00.005-06:00

Adding water to a stop motion animated scene isn't the easiest effect to do and I hope to showcase some more cool stuff in the future about how I am achieving that effect. But until then if you want to see some behind the scenes stuff and more about the studio I work at, check out the Wapos Bay Website and the Wapos Bay Production Blog.

Dancers of the Grass

2011-02-20T23:36:00.003-06:00

This is an older project that I worked on for the NFB. It is a stop motion animation called Dancers of the Grass, and was produced at Wapos Bay Productions.

Random doodles

2011-02-11T23:44:00.003-06:00

More random doodles.

2011-02-11T23:30:00.002-06:00

These sketches are from an effect I am doing at work. I have a shot where an animator made a character put out a camp fire with a bucket of water....only thing is the show I work on is stop motion. So this effect with be a water sim...3D bucket..match animation..fluid simulation..water shader refracting and reflection on-set elements..and magic shall appear when comp'd together. More awesomeness soon!

Happy Wednesday

2011-02-09T07:41:00.001-06:00

Sketchy Sketchy.

Testing materials

2011-02-08T00:35:00.002-06:00

Doing some shader testing for work stuff I can't really get into yet but soon you will see the work that this is contributing to so stay tuned.

Blue

2011-02-07T23:55:00.002-06:00

Character I modelled and am rigging for Jenna for a project. Design is all hers so I can't take credit for that. :P

Hello old friend

2011-02-07T23:46:00.003-06:00

Just got the go ahead on a traditional commercial. Rusty as all hell so this should be interesting.

Some work doodles

2011-02-07T23:30:00.003-06:00

Work doodles that happen when Blender is simulating or rendering at the studio.

Steven Spielberg Admires Animators (1978)

2011-02-05T19:42:00.003-06:00

Couldn't agree more with this.

Fluid Simulation for VFX

2011-01-26T08:39:00.006-06:00

Doing VFX fluid simulations. Blender sure has come a long way.

Captain Snailbot

2011-01-12T22:29:00.006-06:00

Because everyone loves pirates...and photoshop didn't have a built-in skull & crossbones symbol preset, but for some reason does have a snail.

Original SimpleBot by David Drbal

Get the Maya version here.

Young and Old

2011-01-09T02:28:00.002-06:00

FRIDAY - This was the idea that Jenna came up with..by the way go check out her blog...it's awesome...just sayin' Anywho...her idea was to take the character that we designed and draw what they would look like as a baby and as an old person.

Poses

2011-01-09T01:37:00.003-06:00

THURSDAY - Late post. Draw your character in a few different poses. Friday drawings on the way.

THREE DEE!!!

2011-01-06T02:26:00.001-06:00

A bunch of animators in Saskatoon are getting together and learning 3D. First class I attended we did bouncing balls. Next assignment we are doing is a ball character with legs jumping onto a box. Stay tuned for that animation.

Expressions

2011-01-06T00:11:00.003-06:00

WEDNESDAY - Guess I'm a bit late on this post too..haha. Well today was expressions for the character that was designed on monday.

The Sasquish

2011-01-06T00:08:00.004-06:00

TUESDAY - Character rotation. This was supposed to be posted on tuesday but took a little longer than anticipated to cleanup.

Sketch-Out Week

2011-01-04T00:18:00.003-06:00

MONDAY - Design a character. Tune in tomorrow to see what happens next.

Still need to finish this one

2010-12-15T15:06:00.002-06:00

Lisa was freaking out in her animation bay about some spider.

Sasktel Print Ad

2010-12-09T12:35:00.005-06:00

Finished work on my first Sasktel Little Red Riding Hood print ad at Camosabee Animation Studios. I'm really happy with the final result. This one came a long way from the first few versions and I was able to learn a lot while working with the advertising agency.

Storyboard for a friend

2010-12-07T23:02:00.002-06:00

I helped out one of my friends with a storyboard she needed for a universtiy class. Here is a panel from it...nothing too spectacular here...just felt I needed to post and to post something recent.

I really need to get a render farm

2010-11-17T13:22:00.003-06:00

This was the only way I could keep my laptop somewhat cool while rendering an image for a print ad.

Me

2010-11-12T00:39:00.003-06:00

Still not done, but here is an update. Still have to draw the rest of me...something about a floating head seems weird...sorta like it should be in a glass bubble like on Futurama.

Superkid Returns

2010-11-01T19:29:00.002-06:00

He's back!

Sketchup Practice

2010-10-27T23:59:00.001-06:00

ARRRRRRRRRRRGGG!!!!!

2010-10-08T00:14:00.003-06:00

Avast ye scurvy landlubbers!

New Design

2010-09-27T14:53:00.003-06:00

I'm teaching cartoon design in my Flash class at the U of S tonight. We are drawing cartoon versions of ourselves in Flash. Here is my reference drawing.

Dill Armstrong

2010-09-26T16:19:00.000-06:00

Monkeys...Humans...now...Pickles In Space!

Glitter

2010-09-22T02:24:00.003-06:00

Finished the colors. I promise the next post will have a lot less purple in it. :P

Glitter

2010-09-17T01:00:00.003-06:00

Internet, meet Glitter........Glitter, meet the Internet.

I color for a living!

2010-09-11T18:06:00.002-06:00