It's 2014

Again I take forever to post a blog. I think it's been two years? Wow..

"Life is what happens when you're busy making plans." -John Lennon

Isn't that the truth! So I am still currently employed at Nickelodeon Animation Studios. I've been working on the hit remake televisions series "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" for the past three years. It's been a humbling and wonderful experience to see the show grow and work alongside so many talented artists.

Over the past two years, we've announced two seasons and I've had a chance to work on some awesome assets. I released a Show Reel from the first season last year and I'm currently working on a season 2 show reel. Season 2 hasn't completely aired yet, so I'll have to wait a bit!

http://vimeo.com/72472248

I've also been privileged to be apart of Full Sail's Hall of Fame festivities this year. They brought me and three of my coworkers, Elyse Hartey, Tyler Kakac, and Derek Prieur, to Full Sail to do a panel on our experiences at Nickelodeon and how we got our jobs. It was a really awesome experience and Full Sail treated us very well. Going back was a very nostalgic experience. The school has changed so much, but some of us still remembered a lot of it. I personally felt like I had never left and giving advice to the students was a strange experience, but a fun one. We all expressed that we had wished we could have had more time to speak one on one with the students.

We even got the privilage to meet most of the Hall of Famers and some celebrities like Nelly Furtado and Jeff Timons from 98 degrees. Elyse and I of course fan girled when we found out Jeff was sitting near us at dinner one night.

As for personal work, I've been learning to paint again and going back to my traditional roots to enhance my skills. I used to spend hours at my computer at Photoshop and sometimes it feels like I was better at drawing when I was in high school than I am now. I constantly follow and am inspired by my peers. They keep me going and wanting to achieve and be a better artist. I'm hoping to have some more things to show soon.

Here are a few things I've done over the past few months. I always find new things I need to work on, but moving on to bigger and better things can be a good thing instead of fussing with something till it dies.

New adventures await me in the future and I can't wait. I am traveling to Japan this summer for vacation and I will be taking lots of video and photography!

I'll do my best to keep updated from now on, but no promises!

Ja ne~

New times, new changes

So it's been awhile.

Just passed the year mark at Nickelodeon. Been a great year. I've learned so much!

Here's some things I've been working on.

A quick texture/lighting challenge from http://yoorlife.dyndns.org/tc/?p=165

Next, last year I started an A-Z painting challenge on Tumblr for myself.. but then I got a job so I turned it into a picture/painting thing with my boyfriend, so check that out here.. http://threecatsarabbitandacouplehumans.tumblr.com/

Annd, I've been wanting to improve my painting skills.. so I've been experimenting with some painting... here's one of my doodles.

Update

Well, just passed the 6 month mark at Nickelodeon!

I've been learning a lot about lighting and have been kept quite busy!

My student license of Maya just ran out, so I don't have any personal work to show just yet, but hopefully in the next few months I'll get something out!

Patience is a virtue :D

The New Frontier!

So!

Awesome news, but a little late.

Four months ago in May I got a job at Nickelodeon Animation Studios! I have been having the time of my life. I've learned so much in the past four months and met so many amazing people. I am so grateful for this opportunity.

NAS offers so much for it's employees. We've had numerous employee get togethers and lots of extra incentives. They really make you feel at home.

Now it hasn't been all play, work has been super crazy too. I was thrown into the throes of the beginning production of a brand new show! Now I am not legally able to say what I am working on, but I can tell you that it is a must see for ALL ages.

As a brand new graduate from college, I can definitely say I am lucky and I very much appreciate my supervisors for hiring me. This job is a dream come true.

I will try to update more often! I've got lots of tips and tricks to share.

Keep it cool!

Nodes and Connections - Iridescence

I was working on a friend's model of a mosquito the other day and I found out how to make a pretty good fake of iridescence for insect eyes!

In maya open the hypershade. Create a mia_material_x(_passes are preferred), blinn, or other kind of material with reflection color. Then create a ramp, found in the 2D Maya textures. Then under Maya Utilities, still in the hypershade, create a Sampler Info node.

Now it's time to hook everything up! Pay attention, though it's quite simple!

Middle mouse drag the sampler info onto the ramp and your connection editor will pop up. On the left click facing ratio and on the right expand UVCoord(it will be grayed out), then select the vCoord and hit close. This hooks up the ramp to the cameras, so that whenever you render the ramp faces the camera.

Next, MM drag the ramp onto your material and again the connection editor will pop up. Select outColor on the left and reflColor on the right, then hit close!

Render your scene with the material applied to the geometry, and voila! You have a pretty neat looking iridescence!

Enjoy!

You're always learning!

So it started off and I had only worked on my Bottle's piece for two weeks. I though I was doing pretty awesome seeing as how it only took two weeks! But then Panel Review during PCC3 came around. This is where a group of our instructors come and critique our hearts away. We put our render next to the real image and they tell us what they see wrong. Then when they've all said their piece about each asset, they tell us whether we're hirable or not. Pretty brutal if ya ask me! But it helped me to improve.

So therefore, I fixed a lot of things on my Bottles scene and I think as of now, it is one of my best works so far.

So without further ado, here it is again :]

PCC2

My first project for the month was working on a Demon Horse as a group project with a few other students in class. I produced all the textures for the model and lit it for my own turn in. I will post an image of that later.

Towards the end of the month I picked up my original PCC project and started working on it. I just finished it today.

Ended up tweaking some things, thanks to a few critiques by some good friends. Plus I wanted to do some more work on it anyway, because turn in wasn't for a few days. So here's the tweaked version, not too much has changed, but it looks a tad better anyway :]