IZation Labs

Finals are looming, with the first final projects due next week. I’ve been busy working away in 3ds Max, Inventor, Blender, and Final Cut, but I’ve neglected my posting ‘duties’ in the process. Apologies!

This year I was asked to be part of an Undergraduate Symposium along with a fellow classmate of mine, Gary Tatrow. The Symposium was to focus on something I was already getting into in my independent study. The goal was to create a quality sports graphic using the equipment we had on hand to demonstrate what students in the SAG program at Eastern Michigan University are capable of, as well as to start the process of developing the workflow required to create our sports team’s graphics in house.

The following video shows a breakdown of the different components and how they were laid together. All in all it was a very interesting experience, one that I would be happy to do again next year.

-Lace

‘roB’ is a robot character I made for a short film at Eastern Michigan University. He’s a spunky little bot with a get up and get it done kind of attitude, and he can often be seen hanging out on my desk.

Okay, so not really. This a special effects test involving matchmoving and compositing courtesy of Syntheyes and Blender. It is a shot I’m quite fond of, and it even has a special effects breakdown to show the ‘steps’ taken to go from raw footage to final composite. I think the visual effects breakdown took as much time as the tracking and compositing work itself.

The raw image sequence was processed using supervised tracking in Syntheyes, meaning that each bright green triangular point shown in the video I actually supervised the manual tracking of from frame to frame. Time consuming? Yes. But look at the results! How cool is that?

Of course, my trusty Blender came through for me on all of the 3D aspects. Modeling, lighting, rendering, and compositing were all handled by this powerful beast of a 3D package. If you haven’t looked into it yet, really, what are you waiting for?

-Lace

It’s been ages since my last update, and I apologize for that. Things have been rather busy at school, and it’s not about to slow down as exams move closer and closer.

However, I do have for your viewing pleasure a test/demo reel of Blender works that I’ve been doing for my upcoming animated short ‘r0B’, a story about a little robot who has to fix a broken down assembly line before the clock runs out. These shots were mainly all tests of some kind, the last one is my favorite, which shows the overall environment to date, as well as some test camera animations with random noise added to the movement for realism. This is an assignment for my SAG 245 class at Eastern Michigan University, which is due Tuesday, November 30th. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

-Lace

It’s that time of year again. The time when a (relative) site overhaul is a necessity! Okay, so it was more like a face lift. Not that much was changed, at least when it comes to site mechanics. Visually, on the other hand, long time viewers should see a big difference. (I hear one young woman even found it necessary to gasp at the difference a simple theme can make!) I’ve been toying with a few new ones that I downloaded from WordPress, and this one seems to keep the clean feeling that I like without being so bland. Now for the customization. At any rate, the full change list is below.

Changes:

• Blendered a custom header!
• Upgraded WordPress to Version 2.71
• Changed themes
• Added a sticky plugin, for announcements and sticky posts.
• Activated the ScratchSpace (think Facebook Wall) feature. This one is pretty cool. It’s over on the top of the right hand column. Type something, and it updates automatically. You can just type simple things like comments on the blog or site in general, or you can use it to chat with other users who are currently viewing the site. (Hint, Hint. Use it to let me know what you think of the new theme!)
• Cleaned out some old plugins that had become outdated, were taking up space and memory, or just didn’t serve a purpose any more.
• Reviewed, cleaned up, deleted, and updated the information on some of the pages.
• Toying with the idea of a single ad placement. It currently resides in the side bar, and I don’t think it takes away from the site any. This site costs a decent chunk of change to keep running on a yearly basis, so if you could find it in your heart to click an ad once in a while it would be much appreciated.

–Lace

Who I am: