2010 Show Reel Intro

Here is the intro for my 2010 motion graphics show reel. I used a couple of new distortion effects on this: Flo Motion, CC Smear & Displacement Map.

Joseph's Rhino Man

Joseph sent me a rough model he was working on in Maya at home. He said he wanted to stay "sharp" on his Maya skills. So I brought it into Max and started playing with VRay's SSS2 shader. We talked about the character being a Rhinoceros Samurai. Here's a simple test.

Virgin Millionaires Album Art

Recently, I received an invitation to design the album art for the Virgin Millionaires' new CD. We ended up going with a DigiPack layout which is more friendly to design. Here is the outside cover (front, back and inner art). I don't typically do print, but I must say, there is something about holding my work in my hand. The CD is now in stores at Best Buy and FYE.

Artifical Paradise

Here is an inspiring short film from JP Frenay.


This is from the Vimeo page:
Artificial Paradise, Inc is an experimental film anticipating a future where a major corporation has developed an unique software, based on organic virtual reality, which holds all the lost memories of humankind. A user connects to this database of the forgotten…what is he searching for?

Selected at the ONEDOTZERO festival in the WOW+FLUTTER 09 category onedotzero.com/programme.php?id=373&event=31216

Selected for the Autodesk 2009 Siggraph Show Reel
youtube.com/watch?v=Gj5tLOMxLOU&feature=player_embedded :


Production : Condor
Director / editor / compositing : Jean-Paul Frenay
Main 3D artist / compositing : Sandro Paoli
3D artists : Sylvain Jorget and Sébastien Desmet
Additional 3D operators : Otto Heinen and Okke Voerman
Sound Design : Seal Phüric feat. Neptunian8

PSST!3 Indianapolis Screening Trailer

Here's the offical event trailer:

PSST!3 Indianapolis Screening 9.11.09

After months of preparation, I can finally announce the event and provide solid details!!! PSST!3 is a series of 17 collaborative short films in which a different group of artists work on the beginning, middle and end. It's an animated version of an Exquisite Corpse. The screening is on Friday, September 11th at Big Car Gallery on Virginia Avenue and costs $5. The film will screen twice; once at 8PM and again at 9:30PM. This film has been screened in many cities including New York, LA, London, Tokyo and Amsterdam. This will be the first screening in the Midwest. Please come out and enjoy this surreal animated experience with me.

Presenting at the Flash Users Group

I will be presenting tomorrow night (Thursday, June 25th) at the Indianapolis Flash Users Group meeting. I'll discussing a recent design project I did for Mr. Clean Carwash. Here's some text from the event description (in this case "He" is "Me"):

"He will discuss the idea, inspiration, sketch, process and final design comp. He will share some of his techniques in PhotoShop and 3ds Max. Afterwords, we will open the floor for questions about tools, concepts, and anything else design related."

The meeting will be at Nothing But Noodles (near IUPUI) with drinks afterwards at McNivens.

New Basement site 3D still

Here is a still from our new release of www.thebasement.tv. Joseph and I have been working on this on and off for the past couple of weeks. Joseph killed the furnace model! It kinda looks like a spraycan. This entire scene was modeled and animated in Max 2009, rendered with VRay 1.5 and composited using the EXR pipeline in AfterEffects. We will also use Max2AE to implement the interface elements (buttons) that will be in the scene. I try and get out of Max and into AfterEffects as soon as I can. This is a WIP so I'll post progress.

VRay RT demo videos

Here are some demo videos on VRay RT. VRay RT is an ActiveShade renderer that complements the VRay production renderer. Apparently, It uses CPUs on your network to provide the image. Mental Ray introduced the final gather preview which I found helpful when tweaking physical settings that can be counter-intutive at times. I found leaning Vray very challenging because of the "tweak and wait" pipeline. This should help artists new to VRay.

Conner Prairie Brand TV Spot :30

Final Spot:


Here the newest spot we produced alongside Publicis for Conner Prairie. This was one of the smoothest projects I've worked on. I worked with the agency from initial concept and scripting through design and animation. I learned so much during this project. My biggest lesson was the importance of the pre-planning phase, specifically writing a treatment and the animatic. I've included our final animatic.

Visually, I wanted to create a world of cutouts similar to the ones I made in shoe boxes as a child. I wanted the frame as a whole to be rich and have depth, but individual elements needed to have imperfections. Darren and I wanted to do something visually different for this market. Hopefully, this stands out!

Animatic:


The animatic was extremely critical to the spot. It allowed us to effectively communicate our ideas to the client and spend more time polishing the layout and animation.

Credits
Agency: Publicis Indianapolis
Animation Studio: The Basement Design + Motion
Audio Production: Earshot Audio - Post
Creative Director: Darren Halbig
Account Executive: Kara Warner
Director / Art Director: Brian Phillips
Producer: Ross Woods
Photography: Darren Halbig / Brian Phillips
Illustration / Board Artist: Dan Thomson
Design / Animator: Joseph Cross

floating-heart-shaped-carwash design

For the past few weeks I've been working on an interface design for a client. My concept became a floating-heart-shaped-car wash. The site will be a super-duper flash site if they buy it.
Anyway, here is a sample of the interface. I'll post the full image soon. I am planning to present my creative process on this design at the Flash Indianapolis User's Group in the coming months. The presentation will cover everything from conceptual sketch, into 3ds, rendering process to final setup in Photoshop. Hope you like what you see.

Indianapolis Flash Users Group announced

I wanted to post about a new flash platform user's group that is being started by Mark Grossnickle (ickydime). Lemme say this is NOT a Basement focused user group! It is Indianapolis focused. The goal is to grow the city's network and share knowledge on an equal ground. Professional and students are encouraged to come out. Offical information below:

Flash Indianapolis is a Flash Platform Users group intended for Flash users of all levels and interests. Everyone in the Flash community is encouraged to attend: from designers to developers, students to experts, game enthusiasts to application developers. We hope to span the entire Flash Platform, giving members a place to explore new areas of Flash as well as bring together talent w/ different specialties. By doing so, we hope to bring together the Flash community in the Central Indiana area and provide a unique place to learn, network, and have fun.

The ultimate goal is to have the community run and direct the group. We would like to see the meetings cover topics chosen by the group and be held in venues all across the Central Indiana area. With that said, we plan on using the Ning platform to keep everyone up to date and involved. To get the discussion started, please join our free social network:
http://flashindianapolis.ning.com/
We plan on having our meetings on the 3rd Thursday of every month at 6pm. The venue will change depending on the speaker and topic. We would like this to be a traveling group so that it is truly owned by the entire community.

The first official meeting will be February 19th at The Basement Design & Motion's studio (address below). Our first speaker will be Mark Grossnickle (http://blog.ickydime.com), Lead Flash Developer at The Basement. He will be talking about the development of the Surf The Crowds flash game (http://www.surfthecrowds.com/). We will then open the floor and discuss what everyone would like to get out of this user's group and what direction it should take.

Address:
The Basement Design and Motion
8902 Otis Avenue
Suite 107B
Indianapolis, IN 46216