Creative Sheep *Biology of Animation*

Hello, I have not updated my blog in quite some time.  As I mentioned in my last blog post I’m under going a renovation with my page and blog and the progress has been good thus far and a lot faster then when I had originally launched my site and blog.  The new look will focus on professionalism, which I’m gaining more confidence with every day with the tools I use. I’m also working on new Animations and Designs simultaneously, if you have any questions you can ask.

More updates will be coming within the next few weeks so stay tuned, remember you can RSS feed my blog if you are unaware of what RSS is as I’ve been asked you should just Google “RSS” it’s a easier way for you to keep track of blogs without always having to visit the blog, saving you time and for some of us if not all of us time is important as it seems to be going way to fast.

Thank You for stopping by to my blog and I hope you will enjoy the new professional look to come.

Christopher “Creative Sheep”

Animation/Rigging & Texture Specialist in the field of Animation and Design.

Hello, everyone.  I want to first mention that “The Creative Sheep” will be undergoing a change, I can’t mention how the change will look at this point, but I can mention now, that I will be dropping the word “The” from “The Creative Sheep” making it just “Christopher – Creative Sheep“.  There were some things not addressed in the current format and style of what you see, and those things, plus a few more will be addressed and fixed, hopefully making me “Creative Sheep” stand out and get new clients and business 🙂  I hope to have the Renovation in effect soon,  but no date is being set at this time.

I would also like to mention that, I am working on new projects, some of which I’m very excited about doing, as I know the outcome will be beautiful.  I plan to show what I’m working on shortly, so stay tuned.

Merry Christmas everyone, even if you can’t afford to spend what you could spend the previous years you still can afford time with those you care about which is always free. You don’t even have to exchange gifts or fancy foods or drinks. A simple drink and some simple food with someone you love on Christmas is more important then exchanging dozens of gifts and putting on that false Christmas spirit we so commonly see each year.

I will have some updates with new stuff that I’ve finished as well as what I’m currently working on, very soon. If you have any feedback or comments you’d like to make please post a message on the blog, I’d like to hear from you.

I’m always amazed by people who can create art from things that most of us would never even consider creating art out of. Paul Hazelton is an artist, what makes what he does amazing is he creates everything from Dust Where I currently live there is a lot of dust, not from a lack of cleaning or I’m a slob, but the fact that it builds up at the rate that a Indy car driver makes a lap. If I could collect my dust and maybe sell it to Paul for a few dollars, it would make the dust that my place collects worth it 🙂

Hello, sorry for the long delay. I know I said my posts would be more frequent after the previous delay and I didn’t keep my promise 🙁 I’ve been working on a few things, and I hope you will enjoy the final results, but in the meantime I will show the work-in-progress that I’ve been doing. While I’m creating other things, I’m also creating other things 🙂 I’m practicing digital painting and I thought I’d show you a rather crude but abstract little painting that I did within Photoshop, it’s a symbol maybe it’s a symbol like Prince 🙂

I wanted to post the story board I did for the Maxtor Drive Animation a while ago which you can find on the web page. As you may or may not be aware that the blog is the child of the web page, the web page being the parent.

Welcome, well I was suppose to show you some finished images of an animation that I’m just about finished, unfortunately I ran into a few minor road blocks that I will have paved out for sure this week as well as some employment opportunities in which I’m seeking.

In the meantime I have a Photoshop Action Tutorial for automatically creating a resize this is especially useful for web images where you usually have to keep the size of the image to a specific width and height.

Creating a Resizing Action in Photoshop

1. Open an image

2. Create a new action and start recording

3. Go to File > Automate > Fit Image

4. Set Constrain within to Width <XXX> Height <XXX>

5. Click OK

6. Go to Image > Canvas Size

7. Set the Width to the width you entered in Step (4)

8. Set the desired Anchor point

9. Make sure Relative is unchecked

10. Click OK

11. Save the file

12. Stop recording the action

13. DONE

Now onto another Photoshop Tutorial.  In this tutorial you will learn how to scan a magazine using Photoshop, this is useful for your own blog or for emailing to someone a magazine article in which you scanned and you want to show to whomever.

How to Scan a Magazine using Photoshop

1. Scan the image at a resolution approximately 150-200% higher then what you need for final output.

2. Go to Filter > Noise > Median

3. Use a radius between 1-3.  Typically the higher the quality of the source, the lower the radius can be. Use your own judgement, but you will probably find that 3 works well for newspapers, 2 for magazines and 1 for books.

4. Go to Image > Image Size (Image > Resize > image Size in Photoshop Elements in-case your not using the power horse Adobe Photoshop)

5. Make sure you are zoomed to 100% Magnification.

6. Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask

7. Exact settings will depend on the image resolution, but these settings are a good starting point;

Amount 50-100%, Radius 1-3 pixels, Threshold 1-5. Use your eye as the final judgement

Tips: If you still see a pattern after applying the Medium filter, try a slight guassian blur before resampling.  Apply just enough blur to reduce teh patter.  If you notice halos or glows in the image after using Unsharp mask go to Edit > Fade. And use these settings: 50% Opacity, Blending Mode: Luminosity (Some features are not available in Photoshop Elements)

NEXT WEEK I hope to give a brief tutorial on something in Autodesk Softimage the 3D visual effects animation software that I use for my animations.  I also use on occasion Autodesk Maya but my primary is Autodesk Softimage.

Last week much went on and I didn’t get around to updating.  This week I’m back again and I want to show you the final work in progress of my current animation project that I’m just about close to finish there is one or two things that I’m trying to get to make it complete.  Here you can see a image of what it looks like at this stage.

Also while I’ve been animating I’ve also been doing some painting (digital).  I’ve never done any painting before but it’s something that by learning helps me in creating master pieces in my animations or in pictures.  This picture that I created is showing simple shapes but the key here is my study of painting shapes and lighting and shadows.

I’d also like to share with you, something that is not my area but which I did a few years ago.  I had been trying

this audio creation software and some of the audio files you can here I created for animation(s) years ago.  I haven’t since created any audio sound bits as you will hear for many years, and I won’t in the future either as it’s not my area.  I thought I’d share these with you to listen too.

(there is a slight problem with posting the audio files, this post will be updated soon)

And finally, for those of you that own a iPhone or (maybe) iPod Touch. You may be interested in this amazing program
which allows you to sculpt in 3D on your iPhone using your finger, really awesome you have to
check it out SculptMaster 3D 1.0 for iPhone

I want to show a project that I’m currently working on, you can view the wireframe of the current phase of the animation below.  In the video scene you see is a wireframe of the animation, using Softimage ICE for some particle work.  I will show pictures of what it looks like soon.

current-project

QuickTime file

(I plan to add a video previewer directly on the blog)

While animating I’ve also been doing some Painting within Photoshop.  I will be adding my recent work that I’ve finished to the web site.  Photoshop is an amazing tool, and I enjoy using it.  I also use Adobe Illustrator on occasion which I enjoy the gradient mesh feature although you must have alot of patience to use it. The results can be almost if not realistic. Those are just some things I do when I’m not animating or reading to give myself a bit of an animation break.  If you are a Softimage user I would recommend Bradley Gabe’s excellent ICE Master Class from 2009 SIGGRAPH, Bradley’s knowledge in ICE is just superb I envy what he knows !