Tomas Patlan - Demo Reel

72+ hr GameJam

My girlfriend and I had been toying around with the idea of putting together a little game for an idea we had but had trouble finding time to sit down and push something out. This week we finally decided to develop the idea a little further and do a 48 hr. game jam.

We've both done game jams before but with a few other people. This time it was only the two of us trying to put something together and 48 hrs was just not enough time. We're running close to 72 hrs now and I haven't even been able to start programming yet so this project is going to be a bit bigger than originally anticipated but we're not in a hurry.

Anyway, here are some samples of the artwork and animation I did.

I also came across some playback issues with the GIFs in different viewers. IE and Explorer wouldn't play them at the proper frame rate so if you find the animations are really slow, just imagine they're silky smooth... or watch them in a different program.

Takeoff

Here's another 3D animation update. This time I've got two to put up.

The first is a box jump. The criteria was that we had to have the little character step up to and jump onto a box that was at least half his height. What came after that was completely up to us but he had to get off of the box somehow. I chose to have him launch himself off with a mighty jump. It was originally going to be that he farted and that would propel him off the box but I couldn't figure out how to optimize the particle system enough to keep render times under an hour per frame.So I got rid of it. Anyway, here it is!

...and the other animation I have is a walk cycle. We were given a new rig this time; one with arms. It proved to be quite a bit more complicated, simply because there was more parts to move. I had my guy walk to a pretty sweet beat (71 bpm) inspired by this song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJjhNqUzcPk).

He's a little jerky in places and I had some trouble incorporating overlapping action and follow-through but hey, I ran out of time. It's possible I might come back to tweak him some more but chances are slim. It depends on whether or not he'll be making it into my demo reel at the end of the year.

Here's the video:

If anyone has any comments or critiques, fire away. It really helps.

Ball With A Skirt

We're starting to deal with drapery in our animation class now and as an intro to dealing with cloth, we had to animate a simple ball moving up and down while wearing a skirt.

One of the challenges we were given for this assignment was to refrain from turning on the light in our light table, preventing us from seeing the drawings beneath the one we were drawing on. This was to get us back in the practice of flipping where you hold sheets of paper between your fingers and "flip" them back and forth to simulate the animation. Like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFFq_-XCfq4.

It's a good way of seeing if the animation is working the way you want it to without having to take the time scanning and compiling one frame at a time.

Anyway, Here's what I cam up with:

Stairmaster

So we're in the beginning of a new school year and I'm now in my second and last year of animation.

One of our classes is 3D animation and we received our first assignment which was to animate a little ball guy walking up a flight of stairs. This was my first 3D walk cycle.

Some Layout Designs

Here are two layout designs I have made to be used as backgrounds for animations either already done or to be made. They were both made in Adobe Flash as class assignments to learn the program.

The first is a mad scientist's laboratory to be used with run cycles that have yet to be posted and the second is a "pirate ship"...

Ghost go BOO

The ghost goes BOO. Using the haunted house layout we did for another class.

Whip Action Animation

Here's an animation of a monkey character cracking a whip. It was supposed to be incorporated into a background but there were issues compositing the two. In any case, the background will be posted soon. Look for my jungle layout and imagine the monkey standing somewhere in it.

Leaf Drop

A short animation of a leaf dropping from a tree. The point of the assignment was to time a convincing drop of a light object.

Heavy Ball Drop Animation

Pencil test of 3 heavy ball drops.





The Flash version used to determine timing for the hand-drawn version.