Heath IT lABS

Category: Animation

  • Get Rickety Rickety ‘Recked, son!

    I’m pretty stoked that Rick and Morty will be back in 2016.  This is one of the most subversive, brilliant and utterly insane sci-fi stories told.  It’s humor might be lost on some, but the story lines and plot concepts they introduce are amazing and surreal.  Mix in a dose of cynicism, edgy humor and a way of not taking yourself too seriously and you have the formula for one of my favorite shows.  It took me a bit to get used to the animation style, but the writing and rapid fire dialog just sells the show.

    Fun show, worth a look!

    Rick and Morty
    copyright Cartoon Network

     

  • Moving pictures!

    This is a quick test of the ship’s computer screens.  You can see where I have set all the screens to a magenta color to help me replace them in the compositing program.  The beauty of this workflow allows me to render all the way up to a 4K frame (that is, a super HD image of 4000 pixels!).  It’s taken me a bit to get to this point, but I am starting to see some real progress in the look of the cartoon.  Once the screens are done, I am ready to start animating!

  • Retro style Suzi

    I have been kicking around alot of stylistic considerations for the animated series, and I am really leaning towards a retro 80’s styling in the series. I hacked this poster together from some tutorials on the net. I think it fits the bill. I will be updating Radio Cosmos with some new retro wave soon!

    80poster

  • Suzi’s control rig

    Here is the initial facial rig for Suzi. What this does is allow me to quickly pose her. I needed the make the controls clear and quick for me to use, since I am a one man shop. Anything I can do to reduce the time it takes me to animate her is critical. This is my first custom rig, so I consider it still a work in progress.

  • Suzi dreams

    I have been very busy the past couple of weeks.  I have made huge strides in the pre-production of the Suzi animated series, and I will be sharing some early footage of what’s happening behind the scenes.  I will do my best to document the process of bringing Suzi to screens of all sizes, from concept to completion.

    In the mean time, here is a quick doodle…

    spacemoon

  • Late, but not forgotten

    Sorry for missing today’s page.  I will get it uploaded by Friday.   I can, however, share a test shot from the Suzi animated series.  This is from issue one, with some low res proxy models for the debris field.  This was mainly to just get all the scene elements in place.  Next up will be detailing the debris a bit more, and getting a star field in place.  Look for the 24 minute first episode on 3.19.15!

    Scene_dev01

  • Unreal Suzi!

    I have been hard at work doing the pre-production of Suzi’s first animated adventure, and I let the Tuesday comic slip. Normally I would be aggravated, but I am too excited for that now. You are looking at a fully rigged and Unreal Engine 4 Suzi! It took me quite a bit of time to learn the skills I needed to get this far, and I am keeping a full head of steam going. I will get the comic back on track for Tuesday, but in the meantime, let’s celebrate a mini-milestone in the animated adventures of Suzi!

    unrealsuzi

  • Coming along

    The control rig for Suzi is almost complete.  I will be ready to start blocking in the motions for the Issue 1 animated episode by the end of the month.  Exciting times!  It’s all finally coming together, and I am very excited.  I am targeting 3.19.15 for the premiere, so I have to get crackin!

    controls2