On the Goodship Lollipop

So I made this blowpop. Its all procedural using slim shaders.

PS its only the purple one thats fake.

Bird Animated

Here's a playblast of an animation I started on today using my new and improved bird! Its not anywhere near finished, but I thought it would be cool to show what I've been working on lately.

Besides, who doesn't want to see a bird singing Sinatra?

A Preview of what I've Been Doing

Remember this Bird that I was working on a few months ago? Well I realized that it was completely awful in every way so I'm in the process of rigging a BRAND NEW bird, that is way cuter, a more operational rig, and will have more impressive feathers, so stay tuned!

Procedural Apple Shader

So here is he apple shader I did in Slim. It is 100% procedural.

 

and the turn-around I know there is a bit of a seam but I know how to fix that now with the manifolds.

And if you were curious, here is my shader network. I'm pleased with how small it is

At first, I was extremely reluctant to take Shader Programming class but I'm actually really loving it now. Go figure.

A Hodgepodge of new art.

Here is an apple I painted in photoshop 

Belly Dancer for Character Design class

I'm going to Model this bird in Maya in the very near future. I want to learn how to be awesome at rigging wings. 

See ya real soon

I drew this for a little girl who really likes me for some reason, so I dropped this off at her house and she really liked it. she gave me 6 hugs for it. Thats glitter on the balls and stuff, it doesn't scan well. Giving art to little kids is the best.

Hello World

I got a copy of image FX magazine a couple months ago and tried out a digital painting technique... on a very cartoon-ized version of myself. Just for fun. All in Photoshop

Zoo Sketching!

Last week, some friends and I went to the Hogle Zoo. That zoo is nice, its a cute little zoo that is easy to walk through in a couple hours, but its also one of those places that makes me miss Maryland where I was only a few metro stops awayfrom the National Zoo which is huge and free. Anyway, here are a few of my sketches from that day

I tried out a new calligraphy pen, and a super fancy pentel brush pen...that just leaked everywhere. Thank heavens for water soluble ink...

Figure Drawin'

Just some figure drawings I liked from my gesture drawing class taught by Ryan Woodward

The Sartorialist is a good reference.

Just going through my old art on my computer. Realized I never posted this. If I recall correctly it got torn apart during critique for being too 'safe', but I still like it. The girl reference came from The Sartorialist. The assignment was to take someone and cartoonify her. I suppose I could have exaggerated her more, but, like I said, I still like it.

Hair again

So I've been working more on hair, you can look back and see where I was a few months ago, I think I've improved a lot. Check it out!

I also gave her shave eyelashes, making her look more feminine and less alien.

There are things that bug me about the model, but I think I've gotten so much better recently.

Bird with his feathers

I''m getting further on that bird I was working on a while back, I'm working on the feathers, they're a bit too muppet-like for my tastes, but they're better than they were before. Maya Fur is what I used.

Right now I'm fixing completely redoing a horrible rig I made for him, so you'll see an update soon.

Buy War Bonds

Buy War Bonds from Meredith Moulton on Vimeo.

The updated version of my mailbox animation.

Birds and other Sketches

In a previous post, I mentioned how I was modeling a bird in maya, well here are some of the sketches that led to that...

This was my first sketch for the bird. I've been looking a lot at Brittney Lee's artwork and decided to try and make a bird in her style. Later on, I decided to take my water brush pens for a spin and I painted him with a little watercolor palette I had laying around.

I then figured that first one, although he is cute, is way too planar and flat to try and model in maya. So I looked up some photos of some lovebirds and based this guy off of them. I watercolored this during church, and I accidentally squeezed out way too much water from my water brush pen, and the red smeared everywhere, and, since I was at church the most absorbent thing I had was a program, and those aren't super absorbent, so I rubbed it into the page outside the lines. Oops. I could clean it up in photoshop but I don't feel like it right now... Moral of the Story: Don't watercolor in church when you should be listening to the testimonies.

And this is me just trying to figure out what birds look like from the front. I was really inspired by the upcoming movie Rio for all this.

And here are some other sketches for good measure

And here's a pine tree I drew and liked

And here is a girl with a sweet fro that I drew after I drew the headband girl which is why she's floating there.

Updated Hair

ok so remember a little while ago when I posted my "I'd like to kiss ya..." lady? Well here she is with textures, and lights, attached. There's something I don't really like about the ends of the hair but its hard for me to fix at this point because I drew it on with curves, and for some reason, at this point the hairs on the flip aren't getting manipulated when I change the curve. Frustrating. Either way, I am reasonably satisfied with this I still have a ton to learn though.

Also I should probably give her eyelashes at some point, I'm just not too sure how to go about doing that.

And Just for kicks, here she is without fancy added in lights.
Her face gets really dull, but the ends look less weird.

Modeling a Bird

I am modeling this bird right now. I plan on giving him feathers and I am going to rig and animate him. (He is in smooth proxy mode right now, which means half of him is still unsmoothed, and the proxy side will show what he will look like smoothed when you tweak stuff around.

Let me know if you think I should make any major changes, because I think I'm almost done with the modeling stages

Update: Here is the finished Model

I'd like to kiss ya

Rats. It cuts off the last R sound. Oh well.
Blendshapes assignment. I want to add a texture to her SO BADLY but I don't really have the time at the moment to do so. I'll probably go back and add some later, and when I do you all will be the first to see it. Plus I'll add dynamics to her hair so it isn't so stiff, but for now a lip sync is all you get.

sound clip is from a Bette Davis movie called Cabin in the Cotton

Still:

Demo Reel

Demo Reel from Meredith Moulton on Vimeo.

Teapot

This is my little teapot.

Going to the Mailbox

Walking to the Mailbox from Meredith Moulton on Vimeo.

The assignment was to animate someone going to the mailbox, then their letter was supposed to change their emotion, and I came up with this.

Ok, so I've been in a history of animation class. We just finished learning about WWII cartoons. Also in middle school I was OBSESSED with World War II spies, and then they opened the International Spy Museum so long story short, WWII interests me. Hence this cartoon.

Inez vs. The Snowbeast

Walruses would make super awesome sidekicks.

Please Feed the Lion

In Drawing for Animation class we had the assignment of drawing an Urban Vinyl toy with the theme of "Disturbed circus" I love lions, so I came up with this.


We later had to give the Disturbed Circus toys a Soviet theme. So, I gave my lion an American to chew on* and a Warning sign to fellow Soviets. (The sign, the Russian bits anyway, according to Google Translate supposedly says "Stay Away" I do not know how correct that is)

*This does not mean I want America to be figuratively eaten by communism or anything. America is a swell country And I'm sure Russia is a lovely place too.

Imaginary Friend

For this Imaginary friend assignment in my Drawing for Animation class. I liked the woods a lot.

Ants are Really Strong.

This is an assignment I did in Maya at the end of my first semester in the Animation Program- December 2010. I learned a lot from doing it.