Wild Racoon

Bautta & Samson

2009-07-31T01:50:00.000-07:00

Bautta & Samson:

So here is My 3rd Character of my Venetian Masquerade Project!

Bautta!... which is from the Mask famous from the Venetian Carnival.

I used my Samson Horse model based from the Disney Sleeping Beauty Movie as part of the knight style and design i wanted for these model in which I implemented my own designs and life reference for the Armour and pose of Samson

So here I have a one shade of color version of the model,to better appreciate the Model details.
I used Maya and Zbrush to make and do these model that was Designed by my friend Robert Barros, who took all my suggestions,ideas and reference and came up with these awesome design for the Bautta character and took even further the already cool design of the mask to an even more bad ass look!. Thanks Rob...WTHM!

So here is the Wireframe of the Models at different angles where can be appreciated all the different details as well as the structure of how I made the models.

So here is the Samson horse Wireframe by itself.. with the purpose to show, the topology of these model, and show that these horse can be rigged and deformed to pose and yet is possible to keep good detail on the areas of deformations.
These is something I wasn't really paying attention and implementing on my previous models, but is something I learned while at Disney to build models that are not just good looking when rendering.. but that can be actually used for animation and able to deform well.

Was these part of the Disney training....???

Bautta without Bautta...???

2009-07-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

Bautta character Without Bautta Mask!

So here is my 3rd character from my Venetian project, which I re-did from almost scratch. That was because while at Disney I realized of certain things I learned and was doing wrong, so the logical thing was to put into practice what I learned and fix the many mistakes I had on the topology of the original model which found it easier just to start almost all over again!.. which wasn't a bad idea at all.
I certainly experimented with these one on the Head and went a bit too Hi res.. but it was a good practice to do more organic modeling.
Also these is just the character itself.. which was designed by my friend Robert Barros, and soon enough I will be posting "Bautta" as it should be with the Mask! and rest of the costume.
I will be showing it on my next post!..

Can't wait to get these done and move to the Doge Palace, while I apply for jobs!

until then.. hope you guys like these new model! and come back soon for the other version!

cheers

Alfredo

Sleeping Beauty: Samson

2009-07-18T21:45:00.000-07:00

So here is the Samson Model I have been re-doing!

These has been an awesome, fun and challenging model to do. as I tried to figure out the best possible way to have a good topology that would be good for deformations for rigging and Animation.
I had the Great chance to see Stuart presentation at Disney about Horse Anatomy.. which solved many of the mysteries and confusion about the pectoral area of the horse, which I had tried to figure out before.. but never truly understood why it changed soo much the muscles on that area, but after the presentation and trip field to the Burbank Equestrian center.. now it does make sense.

I will in the future try to explore further the horse anatomy.. but for now.. hope you like my Samson Horse that I did in Maya and Zbrush.

Here I am with the rest of the Disney Trainees! .. I am the one with the Mickey ears.

Resistance 2 Models:

So here I have posted more Resistance 2 models I did during my internship at Insomniac Games!
I also did Many of the multiplayer maps found on the game and strategy guide of Resistance 2.

with the upcoming release of Ratchet and Clank a crack in time later these year.. you might be wondering where he has been...
well he was on a short vacation in the Panama Canal with VIP access during his visit! lol XD

I will have more Disney and Mickey Mouse pictures on future posts! :D WTHM!

My Dad 3D model!

2009-07-12T20:35:00.000-07:00

Hi so here is a Model I did of my Father! who's birthday was a couple of days ago.I wanted to do it as a present for him, since Thanks to my Dad and the support of my family I am grateful that I have been able to study and pursue my artistic career and accomplish many of my dreams as a kid!, which it wouldn't had happened if it wasn't for their belief on me, as well as their support.
So Thanks! DAD I am dedicating these for you!

So I did these model in Maya and used Zbrush to sculpt the proportions, although these model looks more like a younger version of my father.
It was also a good exercise to practice my organic modeling skills, which is an area I have to keep practicing to keep improving.
hope you guys like it!
I will have more work up pretty soon!

Disney Apprenticeship WoOt wOoT!!!

2009-06-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Disney Apprenticeship!

Hi guys.. I am exited and well.. also sad.. to have just finished my apprenticeship at the Walt Disney Animation Studio.
I had the Great pleasure of working and learning under a great group of Modeling mentors and also had the chance to work and collaborate with an awesome group of apprentices these Spring of 2009.

So here is what I can show from what I did during my time at Disney.

I worked on a recreation of a shot of the "Alice in Wonderland" 1951's 2D animated movie for the purpose of practicing and collaborate with the other apprentices.
The goal was to try to recreate a shot from the 2D movie and make it into 3D.
and hopefully it will get shaded lighted, rigged and animated by the future group of apprentices, so it can be used also as demo reel pieces.

So here I have the final scene of the group project for the environment we did.(no texturing yet.. we have to wait until the texture apprentices get to it. so we used simple shaders to mimic the colors found on the movie.

Props I did from the Alice Tea Party.

The Mad Hatter!

The Mad Hatter was the character I did. and well It was more challenging than I though it would be. Since he needed to be modeled on a neutral pose for rigging.. but was tricky as not only he had extreme expressions on his face during most of the movie. which was until I tried to make the expression that I knew if it actually would look like him, but found out I needed more geometry around his mouth to be able to do the expressions.
There was also proportion inconsistencies per shot, which made him more challenging to find the right balance for him. Also his hair was a tricky one to figure out how to translate it from 2D to 3D and look good on all angles.
I only have the Wireframe of it to show, as the shaded and the expression version of him, didn't got approved to keep and show. but no worries I will have very soon more new pieces where I am putting into practice what I learned during my time at Disney.

I wanted to thank one more time to all the Amazing Group of People I got the chance to meet, learn from and work along during my apprenticeship at Disney!

Thank you for the chance to be part of these Awesome and one of a kind Experience!

Cheers

Alfredo

stay in tune for more, as I am finishing new pieces to begin applying for jobs in July!

Dr Plague

2009-01-05T16:09:00.000-08:00

So here is Dr Plague or Doctor Plaga or Medico della Peste... another character of my thesis, which was designed (character)by my friend Edelmiro Espinoza (the Dr Plague costume was designed by me to fit Ed's character design).
Both pieces were modeled by me using Polygons only. also I did UV mapping for the pieces.. but I will show that on a later post after I finish the texturing.

These was certainly a Fun character to model and try to figure out the flow of geometry to have a clean model. I have yet to add a cane and a few more details on the textures.
Any suggestions and feedback are greatly welcome!.
Thanks
Hope you like my version of the Dr Plaga Costume!

Arlecchina

2008-12-30T11:05:00.000-08:00

So here is Arlecchina!.. one of the characters of my thesis based on the Venetian Carnival theme.
so of the 3 characters I did.. these was the most complicated and challenging overall to do, as it had alot of details, as well as making the face was challenging to get and get a good topology as well.
The Concept was done by my friend Robert Barros (can check his work on the links)and the modeling was done by me in Maya using Polygons only.. but switching back and forth with the interactive subD preview to see how the smooth will look like.
There are some details that I could have done using textures.. but it was fun to model for the challenge.
Certainly in the near future.. I will texture it and add extra details like folds and some patterns.. but that will be for a near future. for now enjoy the actual model.
Any suggestions are more than Welcome! thanks enjoy!

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So here are the Wireframes for the War Galley I posted before.
it was modeled using mainly polygons, but i used nurbs for the initial modeling of the hull of the ship and also for all the rigging.
also I am planning to add more details that are missing after gathering newer information from my trip to Europe where i was able to get most of the references for missing pieces.. and also I have a much broader knowledge of why they had certain things on the ship as well on how the sails worked and were put together in real life.
hope you like it.

Props I did for Resistance 2

2008-12-07T10:27:00.000-08:00

Hi guys!.. here are a couple of props I did for Resistance 2, while I was doing my internship these past summer at Insomniac games!.

So here is the Iceland Hut Radio I did for the game.
I modeled It based on an image provided to me and did the UV mapping, texturing of it!
I got to use Parallax map for the first time while I was at Insomniac.(really cool to see the effect of Parallax on the model in real time while tweaking It up)It is like pushing the normal maps a bit further into more of a 3D Illusion.

For the Stove I did the research of it by gathering many pictures of stoves of the 1950's era and modeled it from those pics.
I also did the the UV mapping and texturing of it. In which I did a set of textures for color, Normal, specularity and Parallax(even thought i didn't put it on the pic).
for the rest of the stove, I did a tiny white tile texture in which we used overlay texture and detail textures of dirt, for the rest of the stove. as well as the use of Steve's shader for the other metal pieces that don't appear on the textures I did.

Also I wanted to give special thanks to Yancy Young for mentoring me, and helping me out in learning the proprietary tools necessary to get the models done properly and providing feedback and Fun while I was working there.
also thanks to rest of the environment team and all others who made that summer a fun experience of learning and working while still having fun!

Ingermanland Ship new renders

2008-10-23T20:59:00.000-07:00

So here is some new renders I did of my first Ship the Ingernmanland.. but these time around I used Mental Ray to render it instead of the regular Maya Render.
Also I used Ambient Occlusion pass and composited against a digital Matte painting of a sky and ocean.. quite happy from the results considering was my first time painting an ocean.(sorry.. no ripples splashing against the ship yet) i will have to Paint them on the future.
so yeah.. hope you guys like the new renders.. certainly they look much nicer than the ones i did in the past.. possible on MR only with the new machines at the lab that have 4 gigs of ram!! XD

Also showing in here I have some screen captures of the footage of a Matte Painting I did last semester for my class.
it can bee seen a frame of the original footage, then on the next pic with the green area which is the mask area were no changes take place and where the action goes.
and on the last but not least is the final comp.
it does look like a very simple Photoshop job.. but damn.. it was challenging to get some pictures that I could use on it and with similar values to the background plate.
also the color correction was pretty hard to pull as well as many minor details.. including actual painting of small gaps.
it was until the very end that I added the blur to the images and a bit of grain that the matte painting came to look like it was part of it.
I am quite happy with the end result! I learned soo much from these class!! soo glad i took it.

War Galley / Galera / Galere!

2008-08-17T23:57:00.000-07:00

I am really proud to show these Galley (Galera, Galere) model I did from scratch in 3 insane weeks of work toward the end of my last semester... and yes if you are wondering i was like a zombie for those 3 weeks, but it paid off in many ways besides the obvious fact that I got a new model! It also was the learning experience that I got from working on a tight deadline as well as problem solving and trying to figure out things to make these ship as accurate as possible despite the lack of enough reference to figure out the rigging and positions of the sails and the way they work and look as believable as a real Galley would be on the Mediterranean sea.
These is a Work in Progress as I have to add more details and missing things!
2 weeks after I finished these renders In August of these year I went on a trip to France and Spain where I visited 3 amazing Maritime Museums that had not only great info of the Galleys, but they had in Barcelona a real life size replica of the famous Galera Real de Don Juan de Austria!!!
also I was able to take Tons of pics for reference, I bought the Blueprints for it! (i have to figure out a way to scan these bed size blueprints.

so here you go! hope you like these model and pics as much as I do! XD

these is the work in progress of my Venetian Galley model.

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And here are a few pics from my trip where i gettered a lot of reference and information that will help me finish these model with all the major details on it.

La Galera de Don Juan de Austria miniature model.

Front of the Life size Galley in the Museu Maritim de Barcelona!

Back of the Galley

and now from France I have these pics from the "Le musée national de la Marine" which had a scale model of the La Reale and life size decoration of it! very Impressive!! as well as some amazing collection of ships miniatures with some insane details!

there was another Great maritime Museum in Madrid, but unfortunately there was no picture allow.
but on the good side, i was able to buy 2 great books that are helping me understand everything about the galleys... but more on that on a future post! ;p
also now that I have all these great materials I can finally finish these Galley the way I want it!! Wo0t WoOt!!

Insomniac Games!!!

2008-08-09T15:58:00.000-07:00

Whoowhoo!!! I am happy to finally announce that I am already starting my 3rd month on my internship at Insomniac Games
It has been an awesome experience in soo many levels!.
I have been learning a lot of new things, working a lot, while having a lot of fun at the same time!
One thing that I have learned is that there is a lot of things that goes on, into the making of a video game!. Certainly much more than what I thought!.

Here is the trailer that was shown at E3! for "Resistance 2" video game which is the game we are finishing up right now.

Also I am really glad to have the opportunity, to be working at the moment with such an awesome group of people that makes Insomniac games!

also in other updates.
Here is a preview of the work in progress of my thesis. Which I am showing Arlechina! one out three characters that I am working on.
these is a work in progress of it, which also shows a bit of the approach I took to model and do the character up to these point.

on these particular character "Arlechina", the concept art was done by my friend Rob!
You can check out more of his work on his blog. Which you can browse on the links!

At last a new update!!

2008-07-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

Uff at last I get the chance to update my blog since GDC and alot of things have been going on since! , which I will reveal on my following posts... soo much things to show!! XD
So i will start with the Gondola I was working a few months ago, which has all the modeling done, but still need to do a few more details with normal maps for the extra details en decoration.

Gondola Render

Gondola Wireframe 1

Gondola Wireframe 2

So these Gondola Model is part of my Thesis project, that is based from the Venetian Carnivale Theme that I am doing!.
These is 1 out of 5 pieces that my Thesis consist of.
The other ones are 3 Characters and 1 environment (Dodge Palace)which you can see the WIP on previous posts.
Hope you guys like it!
Soon there will be more posts and a few cool surprises that i can't wait to say!

Getting Ready for GDC ! ! ! :D

2008-02-19T23:10:00.001-08:00

whoohoo!! getting ready for my first GDC! woot wo0t!
uff it has been a lot of work these past few weeks working on several different projects for all 4 classes that i am taking currently as I am working on my thesis project and finishing texturing my airplane for my portfolio, which has been a headache to do, but hopefully it should come out good once is done... lets hope!
So here is a preview of what I am working on the environment for my thesis project!

wireframe pic of part of the column of the Doge Palace from Venice that I am working on.

Here is a render test preview of a corner of the wip of the Doge Palace!
(I have yet to finish modeling and texturing it, so it will look different on the final version, when done!)

Funny enough it kind of looks like a postcard!

any suggestions are more than welcome!
thanks!

uff can't waint for GDC to play the new Smash Brothers! hahah, hope they have it!! lol
and hopefully i can get and Internship for the summer! that will be awesome!!
can't wait!
see ya until next time!.

2008!.. :D

2008-01-14T20:30:00.000-08:00

It was about time for me to put something up!
is already 2008! , A big year ahead for me to accomplish several personal milestones. Among them to Finish a new Demo Reel for GDC to apply for summer interships and with the hope to get one. Also finish some of my work to have it ready for the AAU spring show, and most important to finish everything from my thesis project on time is a must! So I can have it ready to apply, by the end of the year and then get ready for Graduation!!! w00t woot!
quite a lot of big challenges and things to do...

so here is a WIP of some of my thesis project!
in these particular one is a Venetian Gondola!

part of the decoration of the Gondola.

Also not everything has been just work... also a bit of vacation helps a lot to relax as well as get new ideas for things to do!
here are some pics from Isla Iguana in Panama, where I come from(not the island, but the country) from these past weekend!! it was awesome to visit these small island, and get a lot of pictures for fun, reference and textures, trying out these amazing little camera I got, a Nikon P5000! which has been marvelous for taking some pretty good images.. as you can enjoy now..

Isla Iguana!... can you find the monkey!

Me.. in the jungle of the island!

Mr Krab!!

the end...of the trip

B24D Render Tests

2007-11-28T22:35:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone! here are some render test I was doing earlier by using GI with mental ray at the new machines at school.. so nice to use dual core xeon with 4 gig of ram to render previews so much faster than on my machine! but still not good enogh for the Ship I did, which i am still trying to figure out a way to render without crashing maya 8(
anyway enjoy the HD pics for the meantime until next semester when I am going to do the texturing of the plane to hopefully achieve realism on the renders by composing them to a background plate.

Sculptures I did during the Summer of 07

2007-11-06T22:35:00.000-08:00

Hi guys, here are some of the work I did in my sculpture 1 class these past summer!
as you can see, I have posted my progression of how we started with the basics of blocking the figure and making sure the proportions were right before jumping into adding details.

The early pieces took long to get the blocking done right using different methods to measure proportions in relations with the other pieces of the body as I was still learning the very basics!

It certainly wasn't easy to do, but it was a lot of fun to work on clay from live models! as well we had some great classmates that were a lot of fun to chat while working in class.

These was the 3rd standing figure we did in class, yet still on blocking stage.

These reclining figure was challenging as it was a bit hard to deal with the forth shortening perspective to work.

The portrait was very challenging to get the blocking as close to the actual person.

These was the 4th standing piece and perhaps the best I did because the extra session allowed me to take the time to add and fix the subtle detail of the forms.
It was hard to pull off the subtle plane changes on the body, and it was very challenging to do the face in that small size for me as i was struggling trying to make the face look real and not looking cartooney as the first couple of times i was trying out without success.
In the end I really enjoyed learning and working on these class and can't wait until next year to take another sculpture class.. as I have sooo much to learn and practice!!!

First Post !!!! whoohoo!!!

2007-10-13T20:35:00.001-07:00

So finally I got a blog
so for my first post I wanted to show the latest work I finished which is a B-24 Liberator.
you can find a high res version of these post on my web page, but I will be showing here on future posts a bit of the making of it, and also I will be showing the progress of my thesis project as well as other stuff I have done.
Thanks for passing by and hope you guys like it.
Any suggestions and comments are welcome
thanks

Cheers

Alfredo