Creative Assistant Needed:

I'm looking for an assistant in my Marin studio. Digital and practical art, design, photography, editing and some fabrication work. Great opportunity for student / Intern level person. Pros welcome also. Contact me at FPDesignFab@gmail.com if you or anyone you know in the SF Bay area may be interested.

Design and Fabrication of an EMD

My best work days usually involve creating something from scratch. It's often about taking a conceptual idea from my head to a sketch, then into Maya or RhinoCAD and then fabricating it in the shop. I enjoy covering the full spectrum of conceptual, functional and aesthetic design to fabrication and realization. Some of my work only exists in the computer but on certain projects I get to see and hold actual items at the end of the day.

Last Friday Dec. 2nd was time to fabricate the EMD, a component part for a large prop I designed several months ago. I started the day over a morning cup of coffee while making a sketch to help visualize alignment of the internal parts and details for the sculpting I would do. Next I went into the shop and fabricated it. Lastly I took the formed part back to the computer and used CAD/CAM to design and laser cut ring and cover plates.

In the shop I sculpted what we call a "plug" which is used to create a shape to pull a vacuum form over. Here's the plug with a thin test pull.

Here's the first full pull using 0.90" thick Styrene. It looked good so I cut it out and called it done.

Here's the final plug and the vacuum form. You can see holes I added to the plug to ensure a tight pull.

I wired up LED's, cut a ring plate to mount them and trimmed out a radial fit in the top section of the part. Next I need to solder connections, cut LED holes, add a switch in the cover plate then assemble, mount and paint the component on the final prop.

My time at Lucasfilm Ltd.

In the beginning of January 2010 I started working at the Lucasfilm Letterman Digital Arts Center in the Presidio of San Francisco. I worked there as a lead artist on Star Wars projects until summer of 2011. *(The photos included here are only of common, open to the public areas of the campus).

Some days were good for a lunch break by the creek or a quick bike ride to the beach which overlooked the Golden Gate and Alcatraz.

I visited the Clone Wars studio at Big Rock and was fortunate enough to go to "The Ranch" four or five times. Including a fourth of July picnic and a special trip to hang out in the archives building which houses all the original Star Wars art and movie props. The archives visit was very rare, very impressive and quite epic. Here are a few images from The Ranch. I can't show any from inside the archives but the SW Blu-rays reveal enough for everyone to get an idea of how neat this place is.

 

It was fun being able to take my son on tours of ILM and The Ranch and have him meet the team making the Clone Wars at Big Rock. Being a young animator, film maker and SW/Clone Wars fan, I think the experiences left good impressions on him. 

Bobba Fett holding it down. 

 

Hanging out on Tatooine - the Anakin home set. (This photo was shot several years ago while I was touring N. Africa for Activision's Call of Duty games).

F>P Design Fab

In 2009 I started F>P as a label for my practical art, design and fabrication projects. Making stuff only in the computer for the digital realm was great but not enough anymore. I needed to also work with my hands again and see more practical designs built for real like I did before the games industry captured my soul. Most of my F>P practical work was centered around film props, gear, costume and character designs as well as some full scale and miniature sets.

I found that as a video game art director I often built practical art pieces and examples as part of my styleguides and relied on practical artworks to get the look I wanted in CG. I'd hand fabricate sections of character armor, throw paint around on real surfaces and always utilize photography when working on character designs and texturing styles. Just because we can technically do everything inside the computer doesn't mean we should. I like to start with reality as much as possible for the style work I do most often. With F>P I started doing Nerf gun and airsoft weapon mods, painting helmets and stuff like that on the weekends just to do more hands on practical art and balance out the major amounts of time I spent doing art & design on the computer.

Now in 2011 as an independent artist, designer and director I spend a portion of my time each week working in shops with some of the best practical fx and model makers in the industry here in the SF bay area. Most all of my F>P props work I do nowadays is fully custom built from scratch. I still use the computer heavily as an art and design tool but most of my final product is now actually hand fabricated and able to be filmed in camera instead of existing only as a computer rendering.

FPDesignFab@gmail.com

VFX Jobs.com

Animators, CG & VFX Artists & Technicians, check out my friend David's new website - VFXJobs. It's a great resource if you're looking for work in the industry: http://www.vfxjobs.com/

MORAV

Check out my friend Fon Davis' project: MORAV. I've been helping out on this project over the past month and Fon has some very cool stuff in the works for it.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/morav/morav-missions-live-action-series-pilot

Siege Beast

This is my Siege Beast I designed and built for a fantasy themed isometric 3rd person action RPG. Its primary role is to breach enemy fortifications and destroy enemy towers. It also does heavy damage to enemy monsters and players that get within range. This post documents the stages of development showing the progression from two initial thumbnail ideation sketches to the final rigged 3d model.

As I started thinking of the overall form and structure for this beast, my initial ideation lead me towards a blend of rhinoceros, komoto dragon, bulldog and armadillo. I wanted it to have the following characteristics: Aggressive size, weight and power. A low center of gravity for stability and linebacker like power to blitz thru enemies. Heavy armor to withstand weapons attacks from towers above. Long forklift like tusks for getting underneath objects and flipping them over.  I also wanted to add a weapon like a whipping tail or an ability to fling projectiles. I decided to go with a long whipping tail similar to a blend of rat and stegosaurus. I also decided to root the tail between the shoulder blades where it looks more unique, has a longer forward range and can attack similar in manner to a scorpion.

Below is the first pass complete diffuse textured and rigged model. In this attack position it lunges forward while rotating its torso and flings its tail in a whipping motion.

Below shows the orthographic model sheet, flat shaded and textured model. Once I roughed the form in 3d I stretched it out by lengthening the torso and hips.

Below are the first two ideation sketches. Do you remember the Herculoids? While ideating this creature I think I had a faint impression lingering in my memory of Tundro from the Herculoids - the big heavy creature that shot lava from it's horn. I was a fan of the Herculoids as a kid in the 80's. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herculoids. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKhIckp4ccY Ideation sketch #2 was more of a boar like creature with a type of horned claw/pincher on it's head. I stuck with the basis of my first design and tightened it down in the model sheet and into the final 3d model.

Check out the Project Realm facebook page where animations will post soon:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Project-Realm/219139128133897?sk=wall