Long overdue update

Here is an update from various projects I've done here at Ringling. Also, have a new website!

Check it out here: http://webspace.ringling.edu/~mcurtiss/

These were part of the Moonbot workshop held here at Ringling. Us students were broken up into groups to create a story and pitch it. The story my group came up with was about cavemen, the invention of the wheel, and time traveling folk from the future who dress up as spirits to influence the cave men. This workshop was held the same week that my final Pre-pro project was due, so needlessly to say, it was a pretty difficult week.

This is the final project of my 3D class. Farmer dude. I have a turnaround of this that I am having trouble uploading.

The rest of this is for a failed prepro pitch. Well, not failed, but teachers decided that I should work on a separate thesis. 

Dirty Rick

This was for a class assignment, where we had to caricature a famous person. My natural choice was, of course, Richard Nixon. Only had a little over a week (on top of other classes) to get this done, so couldn't finish off the plinth. Was a lot of fun. Low res stuff rendered in UDK. Oh, and the mouth has weird topology because part of the assignment was to keep the mouth closed. And the low-res is pretty high-res, but hey, it is still under the limit for the assignment . Also, First time animating a face! Pretty crappy job I know, this is just here to see it move around. If you watch in full screen it looks better!

New Clothing line

This MC hoodie will be in stores in time for the new spring lineup. Get yours before they are all gone.

Some Winter Break Fun!

Did this for some fun times. I know there are some problems with how this would actually physically exist, but hey, I'm not a marine biologist.

The Craytin is a marine creature that roams the coastal waters, reefs, and shallows; the common denominator of these habitats being large populations of minnows and juvenile fish. The Craytin preys upon these small fish in much the same manner as the jellyfish - ensnaring them in its poisonous thread-like tentacles (11). The venom that the Craytin utilizes is a unique and potent and blend of neurotoxins and hemotoxins that can kill a small fish within seconds of injection. This venom is produced in the sacs that lie to either side of the 'head' of the Craytin, and is pumped to the tentacles via a large vein running the length of the Craytin's sail (10). The Craytin produces such large quantities of this highly potent venom that it is estimated that the life-time output of a single Craytin would be enough to eliminate the entire population of Madagascar.

The Craytin has developed a great degree of locomotion. It uses both its swimmerets (8) and its pectoral fins (6) combined with the flexing and contraction of its body to swim. The gills located on the 'head' of the Craytin (4) indicate that it must be in relatively constant movement to filter oxygen from the water. This is constitutes a large expenditure of energy, especially when compared to other venom-ed and tentacled marine creatures such as the jellyfish. As a result, the Craytin has also developed an extremely sophisticated method of predation, which is highly successful.

The Craytin's primary sensory organ is the horn-like structure protruding from its head (1). The filaments extending from this horn can detect the slightest changes in pressure, temperature, and direction of the water. When the Craytin detects prey within its vicinity, it will release large amounts of its neurotoxin out of the pores in its head (3) into the water, with the directionality of the current pushing this small cloud of neurotoxin towards the prey. All it takes is the ingestion of just a few molecules of this neurotoxin to slow the movement of a small fish. This allows the Craytin to swim around the fish, ensnaring it in the Craytin's tentacles. The Craytin uses its long sensory antennae (2) to aid in this maneuver.

Upone entanglement, the Craytin will then use its posterior and anterior maxillipeds (9,5) (appendages modified to assist in feeding) to transfer the food from the tentacles to the mouth, which is located on the underside of the Craytin (7).

Fantastic Environment

Here is the fantastic environment that I made. Not entirely happy with the final product, but man, did I learn a whooooooooole lot about process and technique for modeling/texturing things. I'll try to write my thoughts down in a future post...

Here was the rough concept that I painted. It is a house that is built into the statue of a sleeping woman.

Here is a layout of all of the assets used to construct the scene.

Contact sheet, for those interested. I know nothing is nearly as optimized as it should be, I just ran out of time.

And some beauty shots: 

And a crappy camera move through the space... I really need to think about this camera before hand...Bad cameras are becoming a habit for me, I need to fix that.

Heheh. Had some fun. Not too much fun, but some fun.

Realistic Environment

This environment was based off of the Tlingit culture of Northwestern America. 

Here is an animatic that a buddy (Christopher Lewis) and I worked up  to pitch the environment - It has sound, so make sure you put those headphones on!:

 

And here is my section of the environment. Everything you see (aside from the trees poking through the sky-hole) was made by me: 

Everything is pretty low-ish poly. I think the polycount for the entire scene is around 20-25k...Well, that may be high...I don't know. Texture resolutions are all pretty high though...

Here is a small contact sheet that display the more higher-res objects in the scene:

Here is an admittedly atrocious camera move to show what it is like to move through the space. Youtube killed the lighting, so forgive me for the darkness....watch in 480!