Well, 2013 was a great year in my personal life but also creatively. I really feel like I was able to focus my creative drive into more project output than I have in years past and as I flip through my blog, I’m generally happy with that effort.
Professionally, I worked on Monsters University as a Character Cloth Artist and a Crowds Technical Artist for the first few months of the year, as most of my work on that movie was done in 2012. It was great to see it finally release and to such a positive response from fans at that. Just as I was wrapping on MU, we saw Brave win a Golden Globe and an Oscar, which was incredible. Most of the year, however, was spent working on The Good Dinosaur, which is now one of Pixar’s 2015 films, as a Character & Simulation Artist. I’m also briefly helping out in early development on “The Untitled Pixar Movie About Dia de los Muertos” which has been super fun.
As far as more personal projects go, there’ve been quite a few!
Short Films
While I’m not writing/directing them all, I’ve been involved with about four short films over the past year. There are two animated shorts that I can’t speak much about as they’re still in production, but I’m helping out as a Character & Sim Artist. ‘Gift’ is a live action short film that I helped direct with Roxanne Paredes just to dust off the cobwebs as I haven’t shot anything live action since college. We had fun, we learned a lot, and think it’s a good first attempt at writing/directing some more comedy shorts in the same style. We even had some fun planning the short out in previs, before the day we shot, which was especially helpful.
There’s another short that I can’t talk too much about yet, but have set up a story reel / animatic for pitching around. Roxanne also worked on this with me and we think it’s pretty cool. I hope we can share more at some point. Here’s a mysterious glimpse:
Tutorials
First, I’ve put out more tutorials online in the structure of “The Modeling Minute,” trying to create tutorials that are helpful, but super quick to watch, with most videos clocking in at roughly a minute. In the grand age of immediate gratification online and more terse, limited communications on networks like Twitter, I thought that the structure of the Modeling Minute would work great for busy CG artists that still wouldn’t mind some tips but can’t sit down to watch a 45 minute training video. The good news is that I’ve learned some new tricks myself while creating the videos, so it has been quite a win/win! 🙂
The Modeling Minute videos can be found on my site here: http://www.davidmlally.com/modmin/
And on Vimeo at: https://vimeo.com/channels/modelingminute
Character Modeling
It’s no secret that taking on larger character projects (or any artistic side project) is difficult to manage with a day job, relationship, etc., but I was determined to take a stab at creating a more realistic fantasy game character with my current skillset. “The Wanderer” is what came of this, after revisiting a character design that I had done in 2012. I had a great time making this character and learned a lot. This was my first time trying out some new features in ZBrush such as ZRemesher and Dynamesh, as well as going through the process of baking a number of maps that would play nicely in a game engine and other real-time rendering software such as Marmoset Toolbag (version 1 at the time), and Maya’s Viewport 2.0. This was also my first time working with Marvelous Designer as a cloth modeling starting point, which has lead to extensive Marvelous use in other projects. Here’s the final Wanderer turntable:
And here’s one of the earliest WIP post from the project: http://www.davidmlally.com/wip-wanderer-character-revisiting-old-designs-long-post/
I also did much of the set up for a Jesse Pinkman fan sculpt for Breaking Bad, which I hope to finish in early 2014. Here’s the latest on that project:
Speed Sculpting
When you can’t take on larger modeling projects, speed sculpting is a good way to stay on top of your game. I really picked up on speed sculpting toward the end of this year, sandboxing different styles of characters, as well as different techniques for sculpting more quickly (which is the fundamental idea of speed sculpting, I suppose!) I take on some of these projects with a modeling group at Pixar, and online with Danny William’s Lunchcrunch group and Henning Sanden’s Daily Spitsculpt group. Here are some of my recent favorites:
Alt View of Ebony Maw
For “Unicorn Ogre” Theme
So What’s Next?
Well, from the previous list, two animated short films are ongoing which should finish in 2014. We may even short some more live action films from the ‘Gift’ series.
I’ll be uploading another Modeling Minute video in early January and am always taking suggestions for new tutorial videos to create. I’ll be finishing up the Jesse Pinkman character sculpt as well, which will get a similar treatment to ‘The Wanderer’, though this time, I might do the final render set up in Marmoset 2, which seems amazing. More speed sculpts are definitely in my future as well, probably with the Daily Spitsculpt group on Facebook –join us! 🙂
Other than the aforementioned projects, there is one big writing project that I’ve taken on in 2013 that I’ll be assembling more seriously in 2014 for a tv/web series pilot that I’d like to make at some point. I’ll have the first full draft of the pilot script finished soon, so look out world, things are about to get dangerous rewritten!
Thanks for checking out the site, blog, tutorials, and artwork throughout the year. I really appreciate the support. Here’s to a creative and productive 2014!
-Dave