-dlally

Video Tutorial: Speeding up your Zbrush Workflow with GoZ

Relevant Software: Zbrush 4, Maya, 3DSMax, Modo, C4D

How long will my laptop battery last if I’m sculpting on a plane?

Here was the initial concept and low-res block out. The idea was to create an intimidating throne set piece for some type of antagonist that decorates his throne room with the mounted heads of dragons he has slain, etc. The mood was to be menacing, and to make this feel like a place you just didn’t want to be.

I did some initial sculpting in ZBrush to get the high resolution details on the models such as the head of the dragon.

I then used a combination of Maya and Topogun for retopology across the high-resolution mesh, and for baking/transferring ambient occlusion and normal maps from the high-res model to the new low-res model.

Here was the first test I did:

I then took some time to work on a candle, experimenting with some other brushes and techniques before moving on to the throne itself.

Using what I learned from the first two props, I decided to start bringing things together and developing the throne a bit further. I imported a variety of sub-tools in ZBrush to keep things separate as I wanted to make sure I could have an easier time working with the UVs of the hero elements, arrange UV space appropriately, and possibly vary the shaders a bit across the hero props of the throne.

The heads of the dragons line the arms of the throne which is made up of an organic, yet hardened rock at the surface. Leather and cloth padding lines the back of the throne, while other dragon bone pieces arch upward to create the region of the back. While it will ultimately be a bit more asymmetrical, I’m trying to keep certain things quite symmetrical so it has much more of a classic powerful throne room vibe and less of a makeshift, haphazardly assembled chair. I also added a portion of a character into the back, that is something like an angel, trapped behind the throne, with it’s wings expanded to further emphasis the royalty of the set piece. Here’s the latest:

Thanks for checking it out!

On top of their comic, Mike, Jerry, Robert, and the rest of the gang over at Penny Arcade run the increasingly popular Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) each year in Seattle and on the east coast, which has become a gaming expo that is now taken as seriously as an E3 event –but arguably less ‘serious business’.

Penny Arcade also created Child’s Play in 2003, a charity for children’s hospitals to receive toys, games, and books. The charity has received over six million dollars in donations, and stands out as an iconic way to combat the idea that games and play aren’t essential to our everyday growth.

Penny Arcade finished it’s first season of Penny Arcade TV (PATV) earlier this year and is now beginning their run of Season Two. Take a look at Mike and Jerry’s creative process, into the mind of business manager Robert Khoo, the struggles behind managing a conference like PAX and the inspiring things the company has done for other people, such as Child’s Play.

PATV Season Two is here!: http://www.penny-arcade.com/patv/

My rating: 75%

I thought Buried was surprisingly good. I wrongfully assumed that they wouldn’t keep the camera with Paul (Ryan Reynolds) in the coffin for the duration of the film but they somehow managed to pull it off and keep it exciting throughout.  Of course there was a lot of CG help to make the area feel more spacious at points, but in terms of keeping the entire narrative of the film locked to one location, I think the crew did a fantastic job.  Other characters, though never actually appearing on camera, really found a way to remain prominent all through audio alone.  Lovers, traitors, and more phone in throughout the film to interact with Paul as he struggles to find a way out of a wooden box that terrorists’s placed him after his truck is gunned down while working for a American contractor in Iraq. Some elements felt stretched in terms of reality such as the frequent use of a lighter that seems to not bother the coffin’s oxygen supply, but with limited light sources to choose from, I was willing to let that one slide.  The audience has to see the action some how, though the dramatic opening over black was pretty cool.  The film undoubtedly had great sound.  I won’t go on and spoil anything about the film, but I will say that I appreciated the more modern ending of it all, and I could have done without the bit with the snake.  Solid film, otherwise.

Industrial Light & Magic: Creating the Impossible

My rating: 90%

The director of The Pixar Story, Leslie Iwerks takes on the task of compressing all of ILM’s history into a feature length documentary, from how the studio’s foundations were laid out, as well as how they’ve achieved the rank of one of the top visual effects houses in existence.  ILM has allowed some of the popular directors of our time bring their wildest dreams to the screen with both practical and computer animated effects and much is revealed about their individual stories and appreciate for the studio throughout the film.  Spielberg, Favreau, Howard, Bruckheimer, Abrams, and more provide interesting commentary, with truly funny input from actors that worked with ILM, such as Robin Williams, Samuel L. Jackson, and Tom Cruise, who also narrates the documentary.  Pixar’s John Lasseter, Ed Catmull, and Jim Morris have a lot to say as well, discussing how Pixar branched off from ILM with the goals of tackling feature length animated films.  Any VFX enthusiast will definitely find this documentary worth their time. I believe this is airing on the Encore station sometime soon.

Tangled

My rating: 87%

Tangled, Disney’s computer animated spin on the story of Rapunzel, is hitting theaters on the 24th and I think this animated feature is definitely worth your time, especially if you’re a fan of the traditional Disney princess films.  The film is filled with witty banter between Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) and a swashbuckling thief named Flynn Ryder (Zachary Levi) and at points can feel like a little much, but the animation on the non-speaking characters such as Maximus the horse and Pascal the lizard rectifies any minor annoyances in dialogue between the protagonists.  All of the performances are great, the majority of the sets and effects looked pretty good, and Rapunzel’s hair, of course, looks amazing in it’s hyper-realistic style throughout.  But at the end of the day, it’s all about the story and while you might see some similarities in other Disney princess films, there is definitely enough new content here to keep things fresh, without losing any of the charm.  There is a full set of songs in the classic Disney style with original score and lyrics, with one or two of them sticking out to be pretty memorable. The story mechanics are simple, but an odd introduction will keep you curious about the outcome until the end.  If you have any younger kids in the family, definitely check this delightful fairy-tail out when the film releases.  You’ll both enjoy it, I promise.

Enjoy going to the movies!

Character Design

There is often much discussion surrounding the FInal Fantasy (FF) series in terms of repetition in design, specifically of it’s characters across the series of games. This is due in large part to Square’s use of the same lead designer, Tetsuya Nomura, who has been involved with the series since the development of the ever popular FF VII. Nomura was the co-designer of VII, alongside of Yoshitaka Amano, and was responsible for the final character designs in the title, including the beloved protagonist with a classically dark past, Cloud. Nomura goes on to design a similar series of characters as the lead designer of FF VIII, X, XI, XII, and the recent XIII, as well as it’s related upcoming title, XIII Versus. Amano actually returned to design Final Fantasy IX, which many fans of the series refer to as a breath of fresh air for the series, visually. I, personally, enjoy much of Nomura’s work, however, I often wonder if Nomura’s influence is the reason behind the turn toward the hyperrealistic appearance of the Final Fantasy characters or if it’s simply in good tradition with the series. Without a doubt, Nomura’s skill has grown since the early release of VII in 1997, with most of present-day work featuring much bolder line-art with similar instances of design repetition in character proportion in both the Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts series. Below, is Nomura’s original image of Cloud (left), followed by a more modernized design for the release of Final Fantasy: Dissidia (center), as well as a recent piece of character concept artwork for the character “Lightning” of FF XIII.

The last two designs have a number of similarities, which brought me to a forum discussion that I found on ConceptArt.org [LINK], in which forum members discuss the similarities of Lightning to the design of Cloud. Reading through that forum, you would come across a popular image comparison of the two characters which attempts to emphasize just how similar the facial features and structure of the two protagonists are. This image samples from the original:

In an EGM Interview, Motomu Toriyama, one of the game directors of FFXIII, noted a specific request for Nomura when designing the characters. Toriyama states, “We can’t tell you all the details, unfortunately. Looking at the history of the FF series, there were already female main characters, like in FFVI, FFX, and FFX-2. This time, one of the characteristics of this heroine is that she’s not that feminine. I tried to make her someone very strong, independent. When I asked Mr. Nomura to design this character, I requested someone like a female version of Cloud from FFVII.” This is a direct request for Nomura to design similarly to one of his previous works, most likely due to the popularity and franchise success of the previously designed character. But this isn’t to say that Nomura wouldn’t have designed something very close to Lightning’s design as it is now, without the overhead from his director. In the same interview, Nomura states, “I’m relieved that FFXIII will honor the traditions [of the series], so that I can feel free to experiment with everything that I want. Versus XIII isn’t a simple combination of Advent Children and KH2, though. The game parts of Versus XIII will be created by the KH2 team, and I’m much more interested in what type of a game my team will create on the basis of Final Fantasy.” From a gameplay perspective, sure, Versus XIII appears to be much more action-oriented than the ATB systems of the other FF games, that is, based on the small bit of footage that we saw at TGS2010 from one attendee’s pocket camera. However, I honestly don’t think it’s fair to say that Versus XIII isn’t just a mash up of Kingdom Heart’s gameplay and design similarities to the FFVII spin-off feature film, Advent Children. Based on the early trailers of Versus, the overall mood of the game seems quite similar to that of Advent Children, with our protagonist coming off as some spikey-haired, angst-filled teenager with an over abundance of mechanical swords. Sound familiar? Well, it seems quite redundant to me, but I also think it’s pretty damn cool in small doses. Here’s some compiled clips of each for anyone that hasn’t seen them to compare:

Every artist has their own style, and this is clearly where Nomura has decided to stay stylistically. And with over 30 Square titles under his belt to date, Nomura is definitely one of the most successful game character designers in Japan, if not the world. And for those of you that were interested, Nomura did a lot of his early learning on some of your other favorite games including Chrono Trigger, Parasite Eve, and even Super Mario RPG with positions ranging from field graphics to boss monster design, before finally getting into character design with Amano on FFVII.

Environment Design

Breathtaking. I really don’t need to say anything else when it comes to the environments of Final Fantasy XIII. They will constantly have you guessing if you’re staring at real-time graphics, pre-rendered cut scenes, or just straight matte paintings. That being said, you might also wish that there was a bit more life to the environments, rather than what you’re seeing at face value. Most of the environments, while heavily detailed, will appear flat and static, only having some more obvious ambient effects at certain points in the game. Having played the Playstation 3 version, I never noticed much geometry or texture popping, so the level streaming was quite good. There was some frame rate slow down at points, but usually only when the story called for the entire cast of characters to be present on screen for major story points. The translation from their 2D concept paintings to 3D renderings are quite good, especially for the real-time limitations they dealt with.

Digital concept art painting from FFXIII

From the video below, we can see that at least some of Square’s team primarily used Maya at some point in the development of their environments. Whether it was modeling, initial shading, or lighting, this video shows an artist panning around Maya’s viewport, with some additional views of the same environment being rendered in real-time in Square’s proprietary Crystal Tools.

FFXIII Pipeline and Process

Now let’s get to the good stuff. Many people are under the impression that Square fully uses proprietary software for the development of their games, but as far as I understand, the use of proprietary tools, aside from plug-ins, stops at Crystal Tools (renamed from the White Engine during the development of FFXIII). The Autodesk market has spread internationally, with a variety of Autodesk tools being present in the development of the Final Fantasy franchise. For example, Maya was used heavily in the development of Advent Children, as we can see from these images of character rigs, simulated cloth and hair, and more, sampled from the art book collection titled “Reunion Files.”

The character, Tifa, as seen in Reunion Files (Maya)

Cloud’s setup as seen in Maya

However, Maya doesn’t appear to be the primary tool behind FFXIII. In fact, the Japanese XSI site plays up the fact that the game took advantage of a new XSI and Motion Builder pipeline, which, due to the heavy use of motion capture technology throughout FFXIII, would come in quite handy throughout development. From early concept artwork and storyboards, it’s easy to see that Square was interested in having extremely detailed characters and environments, with a truly cinematic feel to the game –but in real-time.

Early iteration of the game’s storyboards from the opening sequence

Detailed concept artwork of FFXIII’s take on “Shiva”

For the first time, Square makes use of next-generation game technologies in order to reach this level of detail. The Crystal Tools engine appears to have been modified quite a bit to handle all of the content it would take to realize a game like FFXIII. The feature break down for the engine includes:

▪ Advanced Audio Processing
▪ Realtime Physics Calculations
▪ Cinema-Quality Special Effects Rendering
▪ Progressive Scan Loading
▪ High Quality, CGI Realtime Rendering (both cutscene and gameplay) graphics capabilities
▪ Seamless cutscene to gameplay transition

Engine Programs/Functions

Crystal Tools uses the GRAPE2 Communications Server.
▪ Functions
▪ Character Viewer
▪ Effects Editor
▪ Cutscene Editor
▪ Sound Maker
▪ Layout Tool
▪ Plugins
▪ Photoshop
▪ XSi
▪ Maya
▪ Advanced Audio Processing
▪ Realtime Physics Calculations
▪ Cinema-Quality Special Effects Rendering
▪ Progressive Scan Loading
▪ High Quality, CGI Realtime Rendering (both cutscene and gameplay) graphics capabilities
▪ Seamless cutscene to gameplay transition

Engine Programs/Functions

Crystal Tools uses the GRAPE2 Communications Server.
Functions
▪ Character Viewer
▪ Effects Editor
▪ Cutscene Editor
▪ Sound Maker
▪ Layout Tool
Plugins
▪ Photoshop
▪ XSi
▪ Maya

This is the first Final Fantasy title that we see a heavy use of normal mapping and advanced shader effects to achieve an increased level of detail. From this page of the Japanese magazine CGWorld, we can see that much of the character detailing was handled using ZBrush, and interesting break from their previously Autodesk-dominated line up of tools. That being said, some of the lead characters of the game boasted high specifications, even prior to normal mapping.

CGWorld shows off some ZBrush viewport images of FFXIII characters

The character’s “Lightning” and “Snow” were made up of around 30,000 triangles with multiple textures ranging form 1k-2k resolution maps.

Here is a quick video compilation of some developer walk-throughs showing off some of the models as represented in Maya, XSI. It also shows a good look at the diffuse and normal maps for the supporting character, Snow.

GamesAnim.com pulled together and translated the following pipeline description on how XSI and Motion Builder were used throughout the game’s development:

FFXIII’s XSI to Motion Builder Pipeline

Their animation breakdown seems to go as follows:
A & B level cutscenes will incorporate fully keyframed facial animation with individual lip syncing done for both Japanese and English versions of the game.
C & D level cutscenes use procedurally generated facial and lip-sync animation.

The cutscene team is broken up into four groups:
The Motion Capture Group: Shooting and cleaning up motion capture data.
The Body Motion Team: Creature keyframe animation and over-the-top human motions.
Facial Group: Facial acting and lip syncing.
Simulation Team: Hair and cloth simulations

The facial controls for Lightning in XSI

A scene with multiple characters composed in Motion Builder

The Japanese XSI page (translated by GamesAnim.com) provided some other useful information regarding the rig statistics on the hero characters. Lightning and Snow featured up to 223 bones which spans the basic skeleton, auxiliary, facial, and hair bones. About 20 of these bones were used in the character’s hair alone, with a dynamic wind system developed for in-engine animation of hair and cloth.

Some facial and hair bones as seen on Snow

Below is a video displaying the use of spherical object that influences the joint chains that are skinned to Lightning’s cape. Notice how the wind level can be previewed and adjusted for more turbulent dynamics. In addition to this, Crystal Tools, also features some real-time post processing features which were used to correct the images in both cutscenes and gameplay sequences. The image below shows what the in-engine menu toolset might look like for tweaking the parameters of color correction, depth of field, glare, blur and more. The video contains some additional comparisons of just how much the post processing added to the visuals of the game.

In-engine Post Processing Controls

Maya does return for the generation of some the game’s real-time effects such as weapon hits, gun fire, magic, dust, smoke, fire, and so much more. This image shows the development of an effect, with a menu of shaders exposed, including some presets for Mental Mill related shaders. Very cool stuff.

Setting up an effect for FFXIII in Maya

Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy always delivers when it comes to meeting the visual standard of any generation of console, and that technical muscle is usually backed by a strong foundation in story and design. Looking to the future, Final Fantasy XIV Online was just released and maybe some more details regarding that will be dug up, following the game’s launch. Until then, here’s a short video showing a similar character design pipeline as seen in FFXIII, using both XSI and ZBrush for character creation.

Sources:

-David Lally (davidmlally@gmail.com) | (Twitter: @davidmlally)

]]> http://www.davidmlally.com/?feed=rss2&p=140 0 http://www.davidmlally.com/?p=230 http://www.davidmlally.com/?p=230#comments Tue, 05 Oct 2010 06:11:25 +0000 davidmlally http://www.davidmlally.com/blog/?p=230 In recent weeks, Ninja Theory released a trailer showing the first glimpse at their new character design for “Dante” of the Devil May Cry series. Anyone even remotely interested in games has witnessed the uproar this seemed to cause across internet forums and gaming news sites. The discussion has had me thinking about character redesigns in the context of a franchise and I decided to look into it a bit further.

Regarding Dante

I’m far from a devout player of the Devil May Cry franchise, but anyone that came up with the Playstation 2 could point out Capcom’s original character design for Dante in a line-up without hesitation. The DMC franchise has been considerably successful (selling over nine million games since 2008 with only four installments) and even spills out into a series of manga comics and anime cartoons. Hideki Kamiya designed the original Dante according to what he felt was “cool” and “stylish.” In terms of character history and background, Dante is a demigod of sorts, pledging to avenge the death of his mother after demons attacked his family as a child. His father was a demon named Sparda who fought to save mankind long before Dante’s birth. The third game in the series was a prequel, explaining more of the relationship between Dante and his later possessed brother, Vergil. The fourth game introduces a new demon-slaying character named Nero (that looks strikingly like Dante), and then we arrive at the fifth installment in the series.

For the first time, Capcom takes a back seat on Devil May Cry as Ninja Theory (Kung Fu Chaos, Heavenly Sword), with lead designer Tameem Antoniades, take control of the series. According to Antoniades, the major justification for the character change was that Devil May Cry is all about “cool” and Kamiya’s version of a “cool” Dante is outdated. Here is Kamiya’s version of Dante as of Devil May Cry 3:

Kamiya’s Dante that appeared in the first four games of the series.

I’m not qualified enough with Japanese culture, particularly it’s street fashion, to determine if this was ever consider “cool” let alone “normal” (as far as street fashion goes), but in terms of design, it looks just about as eccentric as most other mainstream male anime protagonists. The big point to note is that Devil May Cry, now being four games into the series, has established an icon. It’s very Japanese in it’s appeal. There is a large market for that, even in the west. Shiny metal guns, huge and complicated swords, long white hair, a blood red trench coat, biker gloves, and nothing more than a gun holster on his bare chest. That is Capcom’s iconic Devil May Cry lead, Dante. So how far has Antoniades gone in terms of appearance shift? Well, the initial release of the design came with the announcement trailer, revealing the new Dante as pictured here:

Dante from the DMC5 reboot

As mentioned previously, fans went into an uproar over the redesign, with certain humorous accusations being made, including the idea that the new design looks much like Antoiniades himself, which is a bit fishy since we’re trying to redefine “cool.”

A questionable comparison

Letting that one slide, it seems as though this reboot is gearing up to be a prequel, much like Devil May Cry 3, however, we’re looking at much younger years, and the character redesign will have a story context. With story driving the change, I think I can get behind the idea, but it still feels radically different from the original Dante concept and definitely feels way more westernized. Another grungy brown and grey game to throw on the pile or are we in for some surprises? Capcom alluded to the idea that everything would come back together over the course of the story on their Facebook page to quiet some of the rioting. Fans can be pretty passionate about this type of thing.

Back in July when Sucker Punch attempted to change the design of Infamous’ protagonist, Cole MacGrath, the fans spoke out, and Sucker Punch responded by dialing back the change, making Cole closer to the character in the first game. Will the outspoken community of Devil May Cry cause Antoniades to shake the design? Does Capcom maintain the right to step in and reconfigure the design choices of Ninja Theory if they wanted? Was this all just one big intentional media hype generator? Time will tell. But with cases like Infamous, the fans can always hope that the studio will listen to their complaints.

The Icon Revival

We won’t see DMC 5 for quite some time, but we will see the original Dante (Kamiya’s design) in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, a series that is known for compiling the most iconic characters across multiple titles in both the Marvel and Capcom universes into a single fighting game. I think this is a strong point in terms of the original design being the ‘icon’ for the series.

Last Words

Regardless of the outcome, there are roughly three lessons I’m personally taking away from this situation in terms of character design:

1. Even though it’s apparently built into our subconscious, artists should try harder to design away from characters that resemble themselves, or at least away from the person with the most camera time for your game or film (I’m half joking).
2. Be careful to not design a character’s appearance so heavily associated with popular culture or modern fashion, that is, things that rapidly change and will just as quickly change the view of your character.
3. If you as an individual or a studio are fortunate and privileged enough to have a character become recognizable and loved by a large body of fans, where your character becomes an icon at any capacity, and more than a rough sketch in your drawing pad or a 3D model you posted on a forum somewhere, you should recognize the significance of what you have and appreciate it for all it’s worth. Reboots, especially when they are arguably unnecessary, will only weaken the presence of a character who otherwise had a definitive appearance. Unless the DMC5 story arc brings everything full circle, it is likely that when DMC fans hear the name “Dante” moving forward, you can bet that their brain will hiccup for a moment as two characters confusingly pop into their minds.

Sources

-David Lally (davidmlally@gmail.com | Twitter: @davidmlally)

Spector says, “Back in the day, when it was 10-20 people [designing a game], I would think of things as talent over team fit. I would work with Attilla the Hun if he was the best programmer in the world.”

“Now that teams are so big, communication is such an enormous issue, and it’s become team fit over talent.”

“Obviously you need to have incredibly talented people, but if they don’t buy into the culture of your studio, or don’t buy into the mission of your design philosophy, you’ve got a world of trouble.”

Spector goes on to say that if you work this way, “You’ve just taken an incredibly hard communication problem and made it impossible. You can’t make a great game if your team isn’t cohesive and all heading in the same direction.”

The final idea is that if you have a larger studio, you should be hiring based on how well a person meshes with the culture of your team, even if there was another candidate that seemed to have a stronger skill set but conflicted with the personalities and beliefs of the studio and their process. Can you always know this from an interview alone? Probably not, unless the candidate embarrasses him or herself in the interview outright. That being said, this would be another reason to encourage studios to offer more internship and residency opportunities for both students and those with experience, as they provide stronger contractual agreements that you’re undergoing a “trial run,” which from a business standpoint, has much less risk in the event that that employee doesn’t appear to be the right fit for your team. But that’s slightly off topic.

Having worked with Pixar for a short period of time now, an animation studio that houses over 1,000 employees involved with production to some degree, I can verify the importance of communication on multiple levels. These levels could include communication with your direct team, with your department, with your production coordinators, with related teams, and ultimately with the director of the film as well as his or her staff. Ideas, informations, notes, and fixes all need to trickle down through that pipeline and get to the artists that can make it happen, and that artist is likely to also be considerably talented in multiple areas, as their responsibilities could change from show to show.

So to people on the verge of job hunting, I think there’s a good lesson here: Never underestimate the importance of your ability to communicate and articulate your thoughts. Be willing to listen more than speak, at least initially, and allow yourself to transition into the culture of the studio without other employees receiving the wrong idea about you.

Be humble and lose your ego. You might be a talented individual but a pompous attitude about your own ideas or work will make you appear hard to work with. Sure, you’ve done some incredible things, but your supervisor is likely to be able to run circles around you. Be willing to learn, and never stop learning. It’s best to approach the situation as “consistently increasing your skill set” rather than “working toward mastery” since, in this line of work, while people can be “masterful,” it’s likely that they can always learn something new too. Be open-minded.

I think this is a great topic for discussion so it’s likely to come up again. Let me know if you have any thoughts about it yourself, wherever you see this post.

-Dave (davidmlally@gmail.com | Twitter: @davidmlally)

The film was directed by Colin Levy (Twitter: @effstops) and was of course, developed for the Blender Institute. The film was funded both by Blender and thousands of donations from the internet community. Funding grew as more was released about the project, including trailers and related marketing materials that the team could generate.

Here’s the breakdown of the Blender Institute’s independent production:

Title: Sintel
Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Director: Colin Levy
Length: 14m:48s
Studio: Amsterdam Blender Institute
Team Size: ~14 People
Budget: $550,000 (Blender + independent donations).
Completion Time: Over a year
License: Liberal Creative Commons License (commercial reuse permitted)
International: English, Spanish, French, and five other languages.

Sintel is available for free streaming and downloading all over the net, including YouTube which you can watch right here:

Related works include:
Elephant’s Dream
Big Buck Bunny

Sources:

http://www.geeks3d.com/20101001/sintel-blender-based-3d-animation-movie/

http://newteevee.com/2010/10/01/blender-foundation-releases-open-source-movie-sintel/

-Dave (davidmlally@gmail.com | Twitter: @davidmlally)

A quick video of my last few weeks in Philadelphia before moving out to Emeryville for the Pixar Residency. It’s always good to have some video of friends to look back and watch, huh? And no, I’m not a big fan of the Goo Goo Dolls, they just happened to play a show on July 4th and the Philadelphia Art Museum so the song was stuck in my head! Here’s the video:

We took a trip out to Jessie Amadio’s farm to unplug from computers for a bit following graduation. Just a lot of smiles, laughs, and fire pits.

A quick video blog, having some fun at Drexel’s Senior Show for the undergraduate class of 2010. Us graduate students are always intruding…with cameras.

As of a month ago, I was accepted as a Technical Director Resident at Pixar Animation Studios where I’ll be working with some incredibly talented people on crowd simulation for upcoming films and related projects.