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ANIMATION, TECH ART & UX

+ a bonus retro gaming section

In the 1970's I started animating with my brothers when I was 8 years old using a super 8 camera. Claymation, stop motion, paper cutouts, and more... we explored, invented, and created characters and stories. Capturing motion frame by frame, we would toil for hours.  When the developed film came back from Thrifty Drug Store and we projected it for the first time... elation! It was alive. The payoff made the effort all worthwhile. In the 1980's, My family’s Apple IIe computer became an animation tool and we made our own games. Much later in my career, the tools changed, a Mac, a PC, an SGI workstation. Yet the thrill of bringing something to life never gets old.


Below you will find a variety of videos that encompass the skills and innovations I've picked up over the years. They should give you a look into the creative process of the game Development work I've been involved in.

DIRTY MOCAP, DONE DIRT CHEAP

3D rotoscoping technique using two cameras

This is a hack technique I've used on several projects when deadlines were tight and scheduling a mocap studio was not feasible.  Here are a couple other examples. https://youtu.be/YrUeT6rcU9s  https://youtu.be/nepLTRkRuTQ

IN YOUR FACE

EFFICIENT FACIAL ANIMATION RIGGING AND SEMI-AUTOMATED LIP-SYNCH

I really enjoyed figuring out how to expand my facial animation knowledge from working on Harry Potter and The Prisoner of Azkaban several years prior. This was some tech I was exploring for The Agency.  Another role I really enjoyed was shooting and editing monthly team videos showcasing different group's efforts within the company.  It was a real morale booster.

THIS GAME IS RIGGED

A WALKTHROUGH OF CHARACTER RIGGING FOR A FANTASY GAME PROJECT

Valkyrie Entertainment was hired to do pre-production work for a client: Junction Point, in Austin, Texas.  This compilation video shows a mix of various rigging, animation, pre-visualization, and animatic techniques.  The magical lightning tether feature pre-visualization was fun to explore.

HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN

THE PC GAME

I was hired to provide lead animation and rigging services for this game. The client was Amaze & EA. It was a particularly fun challenge to rig McConagall transfiguring into a Cat, and Professor Lupin into a Werewolf. There were so many characters in this game and EA imposed a very tight min-spec so things had to be done very efficiently, very low poly. Amaze was really looking to challenge their internal creative team to maintain their competitiveness. I was honored to be tapped for this opportunity.

HARRYpotter

USER INTERACTION

HEADS UP DISPLAY FOR SPY/ESPIONAGE SONY GAME 'THE AGENCY'

At SONY, I very much enjoyed working on the heads up display elements because they persistently made the player feel like a super spy.  It was a fun challenge to invent 'high-tech' gadgets that wouldn't feel 'magical'.

VR PROTOTYPE WORK

Unreal, UNITY, Vive, Gear VR

Here are some VR experiments in Unreal & UNITY.  Also a couple of VR prototypes targeting Gear VR.

MOCAP FOR REAL

There's nothing like working with the proper tools

This was a fun clip from an all day motion capture session at House of Moves. Valkyrie was hired to create characters and animation for an adver-game called AXE-MojoMaster for Wild Tangent and Unilever.  We needed a good diagnostic capture to test rapid range of motion.  Plus, our performer, Molly D'Amour, needed to blow off some steam so we cranked some of her music off her iPad so she could freestyle.

MATH BLASTER: IN SEARCH OF SPOT

MY FIRST GAME AS A CREATIVE LEAD

A retro-gaming YouTuber who goes by BrutalMoose did the most loving tribute to this game and it just warms my heart. Many of the creative decisions were left up to me, such as designing the characters, giving Blasternaut and Spot their personalities and defining their relationship.  Collaborating with the education experts to define gameplay was also a fun challenge.  I directed the voice actors, did all the 2D & 3D art and animation, and ran every pixel through DeBabelizer to accommodate the limited palette for, what was, at the time a new platform, this thing from Microsoft called Windows.

RETRO ANIMATION SECTION

Legacy animation work and other interesting projects

  • Animation Reel 2003 https://youtu.be/S_qweIpItnw

  • Animation Reel 2000 (Y2K) https://youtu.be/COKfyeo_y9w

  • Volvo Commercial - Valkyrie Entertainment was hired to create the first ever car commercial using "machinima", a technique of capturing footage from a game engine.  Our team built the 3D model of the car, applied the proper physics in the RallySport Challenge SDK and did all the stunt driving. The raw footage was captured from an original XBOX using the enhanced high Rez mode. https://youtu.be/4oUdFd_TJZQ

  • Manny - Here's a strange bit of character animation I did for a short cinematic project for AMAZE Entertainment.  I had fun playing around with soft body dynamics in Maya. https://youtu.be/MlvpWu9J5os

  • The Mask for Super Nintendo and SEGA Genesis.  I animated the main character using D-Paint. It was really fun to do so much stretch and squash on such a dynamic character. This project was a labor of love for the team. https://youtu.be/lTh-uFfCrI0

  • AKIRA for Super Nintendo and SEGA Genesis. I worked on this legendary 16-bit title for a couple months in the early nineties before it's unfortunate cancellation.  I animated some of the Kaneda sprites, Tetsuo and the soldiers in the isometric level, the nurses in the hospital level, and the giant-fleshy-tech-mutant-transforming-Testuo-baby-thing for the fight level. https://youtu.be/CfHOynqolOQ

  • DRAKAN: Order of the Flame. A warrior princess flying around on a dragon's back, lighting up poor goblins below? what's not to love.  Animated main characters in Softimage. https://youtu.be/foG2mInlI8g

  • T'ai Fu for the original Playstation.  I animated the main character and several other characters in Softimage.  I like to think of this game as bit of a pre-cursor to the movie Kung Fu Panda. https://youtu.be/c3JZJFg5bdY

  • Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, animated TV series.  Yup, this was my first job out of college, animating season 2 (episodes 14-21) on a unique, proprietary, all-digital input and editing system.  It was like animation boot camp. https://youtu.be/vy2V7l__3JA

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