coming 2012

KWAQ COMING SOON

Diamonds are forever.....you aren't

This is a sneak peek at what im working on at the moment. you will all be told whats happening early next year :)
KWAQ

Garmz

So ive been pretty busy at the moment, working partime behind the counter and trying to do a few bits and bobs. I cant talk about anything officially on here but ive got a very very cool project in the pipelines thats going to be pretty daymn fun. More on that another time though ;).

I finished a character for Garmz apparel a few days ago. this is the outcome. i don't really work in this style so it was nice and refreshing doing it.

Check out their stuff on

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Garmz-Apparel/199509710090455

pretty much finished

ok so this is the pretty much done piece of the Four owls group, im pretty happy with this one, now all im gonna do is mess around with the layout and see what i can come up with




Check out their stuff

work in progress continued

Four owls WIP

This is a WIP of an illustration for the group Four owls.
New UK hip hop talent and their gonna do some big things,
this is the style so far but that could change
i guess we will have to wait and see

ASTROID BOYS

ive been doing a little bit of design work for the astroid boys, a uk grime and hip hop group thats doing big things these days.


here are a couple of the designs
check out their blog at
http://astroidboys.wordpress.com/

Im Back

so im back from Chicago now, i had learnt a lot from this project, hopefully when its done i will post up the final result. But for now i need to find another job. Times are hard these days and right now i don't have the portfolio to get a job in the place i want so what im going to do is work on my showreel for a while. In the mean time i am going to be using my creative skills to get a job else where. Right now i have been given the opportunity to work for Bea couture, a Kent based bridal designer who needs to revamp her image.

Calabash studios

I have been in talks with a studio in chicago called Calabash Animation, they create Animated adverts for Products such as Luckycharms Cereal and Trix yogurt

This is one of their luck charm adverts to see what they produce


I managed to get work with them as a freelancer on their new project which is actually quite exciting. I cant tell you anything right now, but for my first working project its actually a pretty good piece to start on.

Living in america!

so i am messing around with some modelling lately, this is a house i have created in the style of one of Brittney lees illustrations. its not really finished or textured yet so still have a fair bit to do but once its done i think its going to look pretty dope!

P.S sorry about the lame angle, but i am having mouse issues! laaaaame

Lonely

ok so this is a style that im trying to get right, its a Brittney lee style of painting. I love her style of painting. What i've tried to do here is to use the gradient tool to get a nice shade and blend of colours. today i think im going to model some stuff up! so probably more mosts later in the day! :) i should be starting work this week, so fingers crossed! once the job is 100% secure ill let you know what studio it is.

Stargate piece

its late, im tired. this is stargate.... the pyramid, but i thought having a solid black pyramid would look cooler. i am just trying to play with the brushes in photoshop, i havent painted for tiiiiiimeeeeeeee. hope your sleeping well. x

Stages

Things are really hectic for me at the moment, i have secured a freelance job in Chicago, so i am just finishing off the paperwork for that, but while im doing that i thought i would upload some photos. These are some photos of the original vine house piece. As you can see the pencil drawing was really different from the fine liner finish.

A House of Vines

So i have been really busy recently, iv'e moved to Chicago for a few months. Trying to get some work out here. While out here I've done some sketches, I've been practicing some different styles and techniques.

This was A5 in Fine-liner.

Youtube Showreel

I finally started a youtube account, so my showreel is up on youtube too!!
:)

Fantasia CV

So i have been really lazy recently, lazy but at the same time i've been working loads! if that makes sense! 'ive been getting my CV together which has been quite strenuous, because i am a bit of a perfectionist it took me 3 different CVs to finally get one i liked! the first ones were too feminine. I just thought it was giving off the wrong impression of me.

This was the image i used on my final one, it is inspired by Disneys 'Fantasia'
I am going to do a couple others like this, because i feel it really works

Updated Pinup

I updated the pin up drawing this morning! its looking really nice now! i think im slowly finding my style in digital art!!!! :)

Pin up series

i had the idea of doing a pin up series and seeing if i can sell the illustrations!
this was the first try at them, i may use this in the collection i may just use this as a practice, i can certainly see myself improving!!

Red Alert

see what i am trying to do is to find my style, find out what i can do, and what i enjoy to do, i want to be able to create beautiful art wihtout too much time, but at the moment its just taking too long, this took me a couple of hours,

Flowers in Love

this is a border i created for some of my work. I am trying to thicken out my portfolio of illustration at the moment. I plan to do some short concept art courses soon, as i need to actually be taught some of the more technical side of the digital painting.

2011 SHOWREEL

This is my showreel from my 2 years of animation in university!!

Mermaid Update

For some reason i woke up at 8 this morning!
urgggghh! Now my normal morning consists of me drawing something, but i decided to update one of my old drawings! ive been needing to do this for a while! so here it is! my nearly nearly nearlyy! finished painting!
unfortunately studying animation has made me a perfectionist so i will keep on updating this image untill i am totally happy with it!! :) enjoy!

me jane u tarzan!

This is a work in progress of jane from tarzan, i can see my art getting better!!!
:D

My last submittal

So i finally handed in my last project at university, it has been a roller coaster but am amazing experience.

I just wanted to evaluate my work in this project. The collaboration project was an exciting experience working with a large community of people to achieve one goal. I have realised that i would rather work on a large project than my own animations. It feels more satisfying knowing your work is going to put into a film. The spyder chase scene was a fun little project too, i created a short chase sequence with my friend chris while he was animating a man free running i animated a robot chasing him. it actually ended up working quite well! i had created a quick flying sequence for the chase scene that i thought could be quite nice, but we decided not to use it in the end. Unfortunately we had to create and finish it within a week or so as the rust project i have been working on collapsed due to poor rigging.

I am really happy with my single character performances, the female one, i feel needs some more work, but the 5 second male piece works really well in my opinion, the only thing is that the arms on the rigs were a little fragile to work with so it was quite a delicate procedure to animate the scenes.

The horse rigs worked really well, but for some reason i couldn't render out the walk cycle, the play blasts worked fine and so did the view port, but whenever i rendered it out the animation would go a little weird. i think this is something ill have to look at as i really want the walk in my final showreel.

Starting Rendering

So i have been really really busy recently, a lot of late nights and early mornings!
I am slowly getting there, finishing of my pieces is quite a challenge as this has been such a long project! and being an animator i will still rip my animation to pieces! But.... i am really happy with my performance this year, to be honest i did't really keep to my schedule but my work rate has been consistant this year. i had a real drive to try to improve my animations to get better and better. You can really see this improvement in my work.

At this point ive finished the animations on most of my creatures and collaberation projects, i have a little tweaking to do for the rest. So i rendered my first Animation today, the Dino run cycle. and its looking good!

Im really looking forward to showing you guys my work!

:D

updated chase scene

This is an update of the shot!
i am really enjoying animating this piece, and i think you can tell from the standard.
the rig is really simple to use, but the legs can be a little tricky. I really thing that robotic and creature animation is the way forward for me, but lets see.

NEW PROJECT

ok, so less than a week to the deadline and we have started a new short film :o

Unfortunately the rigs for rust didn't work properly and we had to drop it because of time restrictions. So Chris and I decided to create our own cinematic. This short film was visualised within a couple of hours, and i think its going to actually look quite good. Its not a long film so dont expect anything extravagant.

but heres a quick snippet of what i have done so far.

hope u like!

Dancing in love

this is a digital sketch of mine!
im really happy with the results im slowing getting better at using my graphics tablet!

Colour adjustments

I played around with the hue of the Images, i actually really think they work! For my final image i will most probably keep to the original, but its nice to know what else works with this image, for possible future use! i wanted to achieve a Trippy, Hippie style with eh hue adjustments, and i think they work perfectly. I will most probably retouch the image slightly in the near future just to polish of the piece really.

Don't Abandon Us

This is a slightly updated Animation, In this i have smoothed out alot of the curves and tried to get all the little kinks out. There is still a few problems, and i still need to render to make sure the lip sync fits! once i have animated it all, i will re texture her, and light the scene, as well as create the background.... theres alot of work to do!
The last thing i have left to animate is the hair, i have never really animated hair so this could be a challenge, the main thing is, is to get the weight of the hair constant, and not make it look too heavy, then too light.
The next update should hopefully be a nearly finished animation

LET YOUR IMAGINATION GROW

this is the finished painted piece that i have been working on, this piece was the influence for my website with the title 'Let Your Imagination Grow'. The piece shows a girl reading a book, but as she is reading it her imagination grows and all these beautiful plants and colourful smoke starts to appear.
The idea was that hopefully people start to use the full potential of their imagination more.

'The imagination is more important than knowledge'

15 Day Countdown

So i've only got 15 Days till i submit my work, I STILL HAVE A LOT TO DO! ouch.
I want to talk about my progress so far. This year has been very different from last year, i know a lot more about the business of animation and the process of it. This point last year i had a lot more work to do, and the quality of animation was a lot worse. Understanding how to animate personalities in characters was something that i hadn't quite gripped until now, i'm not saying i'm a professional at it but i know much more now.
Now its coming to the end of my education i need to really ask myself what i want to do with this trade. I find i am better at animating creatures and the body mechanic style of animation rather than the character based animation you see in pixar!
To be honest i think i really have to work in the industry to see which style i feel more comfortable working in! The reason i wanted to work in the computer animation industry was because of epic Hollywood blockbusters like Transformers and i think that's where i would feel the most comfortable working on.

Prince of Egypt dialouge WIP

this is the full animation of the prince of egypt dialogue, the play blast is running slow so the animation lags slightly, i can see quite a few problems in this piece but its definitely getting there.... :)

Horse Cycle (1st submittal)

This is the run cycle for my first submittal for my show reel. i will most probably smooth out some of the animation for my final.
I have looked at this cycle so much that i cant see all the problems with it. Hopefully i receive good feed back from this cycle.

Animated aliens

This is the finished animation scene for the VFX project. Now it needs to be textured and rendered out then combined with the footage taken.
I have tried to create some interaction between the aliens so they look more like an intellectual race.

The top video is my first attempt at animating the scene, as you can see the alien is blocking out the other, so I needed to create a way that the aliens could all be shown.

The second video is my final attempt.
Im looking forward to the final result.

horse gallop

i have been working on a horse gallop for a while now, this is the out come.
i still am working on this. After a looking at it on vimeo i think i should be a little faster. but im pretty happy with the results so far!
the final video will be lit up and look quite professional... i hope :P

Vfx Film

So for one of my collaboration projects i am working on a Vfx Film two guys on my course are directing. The film is similar to the halo reach advert. The film is basically a mini war scene between cadets ( who have been filmed) and aliens ( which i will be animating).

Here are a few animated scenes which i have animated so far, some are still WIP.





I am not the only person animating on this film there are around 5 other animators. im looking forward to the final outcome.

Let your imagination grow.

i haven't uploaded any of my artwork for a while, things have been very busy.
im in the last 2 months of my education so i have focus primarily on my animation.
For one of my modules i have to create a final image, and this will be it.
i plan to paint it digitally, having her in normal colours but everything else around her extremely bright!

Horse walk cycle Wip

This is my first attempt at a animating a horse, i have mainly focused on trying to get the timing in the legs more than anything. Still needs a good ol smooth out.

For my showreel i hope to have a Horse walk cycle and a horse gallop cycle.
A horse is meant to be a hard horse to animate and i wanted to include some real challenges in my showreel so hopefully Production companies see that i can animate well.

Untitled from Michael Das on Vimeo.

Stay Tuned

Through my blog, there is obviously a lot more Illustration than Animation, at the moment i have been focusing on my Animation in the last few months because my course has very little that encourages Concept art and illustration for animation. I hope to soon put on my animal walk cycles.

In this blog i am going to start using a lot more of my hand drawn work, this is actually what my strongest talent is, but for some reason i haven't been using it on my blog.

Stay tuned.

Animal animation problems

Ok, so the plan for my show-reel was too have 20 seconds of great lioness animation, including a lion hunt and chase where the true elasticity of lions are shown, as well as several chained lioness attacks where the lioness is held back by a chain.
Unfortunately after trying to use the rigged model there were some problems with the mesh that meant that the model is unusable.
This was not due to a poor rig it was due to the model itself not being created to an industry level, the model was made by someone outside of university.

Due to this i have had to change around my show-reel, instead i have created two different horse cycles, and one rapture walk cycle.

Lioness Rig

This is a Rig one of my talented friends made for me to do some nice hunting animations with.
I am really looking forward to using it!!!



if you want to see more of her stuff out check it out at

http://danimation-x.blogspot.com/

MAGIK MOMENTS ( new blog)

I started a separate blog. it focuses on Images, Music and Videos that inspire me. I think it is important to keep a diary like this as there is so much creative work out there it is hard to keep a track on all of the influences in my life.

I always search for other peoples work to help evolve my creativity and imagination. i feel that this is an important part of being an artist.

Magik moments.

http://magikalmoments.tumblr.com/

check it out!!

All my Life

Prince of Egypt : Dialogue from Michael Das on Vimeo.

This is a piece of dialogue from 'The prince of Egypt' this is only a 5 second extract from a 23 second clip.
It is still a Work in progress so hopefully the final piece will look great.

Elderly Gent

Untitled from Michael Das on Vimeo.

This is a loop i animated for one of my uni projects. It was one of the first animations done in Autodesk Maya. there are a few problems. but i am actually happy with it. i always strive to do better, which is good. I learnt that everyone starts from somewhere.

super katie!

OK so I haven't really posted much up recently I've been working pretty intensely.
This is actually a present for one of my very good friends who is leaving Cardiff to go on to do better things!
So I decided to do an illustration of her as a superhero! I didn't want to do something simple I wanted to push myself so I chose to have a lot of fire and lighting in my image. I think it works quite well.

And oh if you cant tell, she's smoking a cigar. ( even though i have never seen her actually smoke a cigar)

I will put up the process of my drawing in a few days.


SUPER KATIE!!!! TO THE RESCUE!!!

Sea Sight.

i finally managed to finish this off, its looking pretty sweet. the lighting wasn't exactly how i imagined it, but not too bad!! i tried and tried to get that Disney smile but for some reason it just didn't work so i threw a beard on him, i think it suits him quite alot and then gave the mermaid a little mermaid feel with the red hair!

if you know anyone that wants illustrations done please email me or facebook me.

mermaid wip

I have this overwhelming feeling to do a mysterious mermaid piece. this is how far i got today, i can see it progressing into something quite nice. The hardest part of this is actually getting that Disney smile without making him look creepy!
the final image will be set at night so i am focusing on getting the lighting looking right. This is actually my first attempt at a well lit scene so I'm not hoping for anything amazing.

Rust concept art

Here are a few concept art pieces ive done for a game cinematic i am working on.
I recently saw Tron so there is a huge influence from that. I really like the Look of the neon lights against a black surface. There wasn't much direction for this artwork, it was more of me just going for it and seeing what i could come up with. The more i draw the more i remember how much i love it!