What a week!

School is starting next week and because of that I've been scrambling to finish up some DIY projects before my time is snatched away. It's been a whirlwind of a week, let me tell you! It seems strange to me that this will be my last summer vacation ever (unless I go for my Master's that is!). Speaking of school, I realized that I never shared what became of Winston, a character from my animated short. I posted about him almost a year ago now, so to do a quick recap: As juniors, our major project was to create a 30 second animated short by ourselves. We had 8 months to complete our projects, including working out a good story idea, visual development, modeling our characters, environments, and props in 3D, rigging, skinning, animating and texturing everything. My story was based on a nerdy guy, Winston, who notices he has a dead pixel on his computer screen. Here's how it came to be:

Quick character sketch and color comps

Since the overall feel of my short was comical, I chose to use light and airy colors throughout to keep it happy and upbeat. I saw this room and couldn't help but pull colors from it. How could anyone be sad in a room like that?
Model Sheet Turnarounds


The first step for 3D was to design the environment (or in other words, the scene). This is just a rough design, but I've come to realize how much I enjoy working as an environment artist (it shouldn't have come as a surprise for me, considering I'm head over heels in love with home decor/design, but up until this class I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do once I graduated.)


The room changed a bit once I hit the final stages and I still feel like it isn't perfect, but then again this was the first environment I'd ever designed in 3D, as well as the first human character. I'd show you the whole 30 second video but quite honestly I am terrible at animating (something I realized during class) so woohoo for screenshots! And without further ado, here's the story:

Winston is working away in his office when he happens to notice a dead pixel on his monitor screen.



Confused, he begins to poke the dead pixel.
We zoom in to see his finger poking the screen in slow motion. The camera pans to the inside of the monitor...
... which reveals the dead pixel surrounded by thousands of tiny pixels screaming for their lives as the giant finger pokes the screen. The stress is too much for them. With each wave of shock a handful of pixels turn black and die until...
The entire screen goes black, leaving Winston very confused indeed.
So there you have it! Someday (when I'm actually decent at 3D) I'd love to re-do this short and make it worth writing home about, but I'm glad for the experience (and for finally figuring out what I'd love to do for a career!).