Reboot

Ok, so I've ignored this blog for about a year. The reason is I moved to Tumblr and Pinterest for a while, but in the end I think this platform will still serve me better because it's more of a personalized type of page. I like Tumblr and Pinterest for their options on liking and pinning other artwork as a source of inspiration and envy :p, which I think could be much better on Blogger. But then again it's also nice to be sure the people on Blogger (you!) visit my page just to see my own work. Thank you!

I will try to recap the things I've done since last year in the following posts.

Update

I've started studying at a new college, following the path of traditional animation... Excited to find out where it will take me. Lots of guitar playing as well in my spare time. Kinda struggling to learn music as well as doing art stuff. I hope I can find a good way to balance the two.

During the summer I had a job at a 3D printing company, basicly my job was to take 3D printed models from the machine and clean them up. It was hard work but fun to see the process and all the different objects that were ordered. For example I've worked on a new crazy 3d-printed dress for Lady Gaga, and very expensive BMW parts, little figurines, lamp shades, ... but most objects weren't all that exciting :).

I also got the opportunity to work on a short animated film, having to make 2 main characters in 3D and also rig them for animation. This is still going on so we'll see how it goes.

Anyway, I can now post some of the work I did during my internship. Still can't show the best project (in my opinion). Just waaaaiit fooor iiiiiiit...

A new chapter

Hello I'm back! 

My 4 months as an intern at Hoaxland are over. I've learned a bunch and had a great time there. Still have to wait a bit until I can show some of the work I've done but I will post it later on.

Also, I am now a graduate in Digital Arts and Entertainment, hoorah! This means the start of a whole new chapter. Let's see how it goes!

Tiderunner

Here's the trailer for our graduation game at DAE.
Made by team Crazywhale:
- Joachim Coppens
- Pieter Glorie
- Pauwel Nomes
- Christophe Swolfs

We will also enter the Imagine Cup once again!
Check it out:

Tiderunner game trailer from Pauwel Nomes on Vimeo.

A Christmas Carol

I am now allowed to show one of the spots I've worked on during my summer job at Nobel Biocare.
This is the christmas spot we've made that was sent to clients around the world with the holidays. Enjoy!

A Christmas Charol - Nobel Biocare promo from Pauwel Nomes on Vimeo.

The promise

As promised I have spent some time making a tutorial. It's a 3 part demonstration of Maya 2013's interface and I cover a little bit of workflow and shortcuts. It's the first video tutorial I ever did and it was quite hard to do, I had to make quite some retakes. It's especially hard to keep thinking of things to say and at the same time maintain some structure in what I do. I learned a lot from doing this.
I've shared this with my co-students and they seem to like it a lot so I'll try to make some more specific ones in the future.

 Anyway here's part 1:

Also, I came across this great blog called Frame by Frame where you can see some sequences of animation movies frame by frame and in .gif. Very interesting to take a look at and see how great animators tackled some of their shots.

Go check it out here: http://framexframe.tumblr.com/

Progress

Hi! Here's a little progression reel I made with some of my animations I made the last few weeks.

Animation Progress reel from Pauwel Nomes on Vimeo.

Also, since I'm trying to make this place a little more interesting, I want to try making some tutorials of sort about stuff I learn/discover regarding animation and other things. Now let's see, what do I know.. :p

A new year

Happy newyear first of all :)
I've been buzy lately, but I'll quickly give you an update.

The quest for an internship has come to a good end. Next month I will be joining the team at Hoaxland for a while. Pretty exciting, but I'm sure it will be fun and learnful.

I've bought two books on animation in maya (How to cheat in Maya 2013, about general animation techniques and Stop Staring, about facial animation), as well as Jason Schleifer's AFR series. So I know what to do.

I returned to gaming a little bit, blame Gabe Newell and his sweet steam sales.
Recently finished Portal 2 and man, what a game :). Also 'Thirty Flights of Stairs', a very short storydriven indie game with no real gameplay whatsoever, you have to find out what the story is through the environment and the characters. I like that kind of mechanic. It really pulls you in and lets you explore and imagine.
Nice music as well :).

Also, my final exams are right around the corner, so I've got a bunch of work to do. See y'all around :)

Ball animation

Here's a little animation I made of a ball while following Jason Schleifer's rigging tutorials which have been amazing so far..

Back to the roots

I decided to start focussing on working in Maya again. It feels strange after using 3dsMax for 3 years but I still remember most things. I really want to get into animating. Taking Simon Christen's advice I tried to take things a step back and work more on the fundamentals of animation.
Here's an animation I mide with a simple bot rig. (download here: http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/simple-bot-rig-for-maya)

Ball from Pauwel Nomes on Vimeo.

I also started to learn more about animation workflow and it's really interesting. I tried to put some of the ideas in my own workflow: using step keys for blocking and later go into splining to refine things, something I really didn't do earlier. Also, anticipation, overlap and all those principles...
I can't wait to find out more about this stuff.

25 years Pixar

We went to 25 years of Pixar in Bonn with our animation class, where we saw an exhibition of awesome sketches, sculpts and other great concept art from the pixar movies.
We also went to a master class given by Simon Christen, animator at Pixar, where he presented his own history and work, and what it's like to be at Pixar. He also gave some animation examples in Maya, which was very interesting to say the least.
Afterwards me and my friends got the opportunity to show him our reels and got some very valuable feedback. Great stuff!

Artgame Weekend 2012

Me and my friend Dylan decided to go to the ArtGame weekend in Tourcoing, France.
It was a contest where we had to make an artgame (focussing on visuals/emotion/experimentation...) in less than a weekend. The first hours we shared our pitches and groups were formed. We were a group of 4 DAEers (out of 8 who came) and one French gentleman who did the sound design. Then all hell was unleashed.
We had one programmer scripting our game in Unity, he must have had a hard time implementing everything in less than 24hs, not getting any sleep basically. Luckily we managed to get even on the art side of things pretty soon, not having to discuss too much about style etc. But in the end the result was quite nice and we had a great time.

Animations update

Still trying to get an internship, this vacation I've spent a lot of time reworking my animations.
Check out my Vimeo channel for the updated clips: https://vimeo.com/home/myvideos

And my new demoreel :

Pauwel Nomes DemoReel November 2012 from Pauwel Nomes on Vimeo.

Animated food

Apparently I have some kind of obsession with animated food. I didn't even realize it until one of my friends told me I got it bad and that ain't good.

Anyway, here's a walking spaghettimonster.
A few weeks ago I went to film some footage of a kitchen. Then I tracked it and made this little test animation on top of it.

Car rig

My car rig is now done, thanks to Laurens Corijn for his tutorials. Now I need to setup some materials and it will be ready to be animated...
It has a suspension system, drift control, steering, automatic wheel rotations (separate in front and back), a momentum controller as well as options to open the doors, trunk and hood.

And a quick little test animation:

Portfolio

My portfolio website is done (for now)! Thanks to my brother Eli.
Go check it out:

www.pauwelnomes.com

Spirelli

I started working on an animated short called Spirelli. It's about pasta coming to life... :) On this project I plan to make use of some new techniques, like bendy limbs, dynamics, particles, and maybe some matchmoving. Let's see where this goes :p

And the band plays on...

Yo! School has kicked off again, we're still gonna be creating awesome things this year (woohoo!). Among other things we'll be seeing lipsync, acting, animal behaviour in our Animation class, and we're going to play around with particles and dynamics, and rendering in passes for post production. I feel sad the end is getting near :(. 

On another note I participated for the first time in the 11SecondClub competition! Critiques are hard but true and I feel I'm going to be learning a lot more if I keep participating. Check out my entry here:

11SecondClub September 2012 entry from Pauwel Nomes on Vimeo.

Preparations

Hello! At the moment I'm working hard to get my portfolio ready for an internship next year. Let's hope things turn out right!

Here's an update of my Chevrolet Bel Air render next to the old one I did last year.
Whoa! what a difference :) A nice way to see how much you've improved over time...

Hotdog animation

Just finished this funny animation of a hotdog. I got the idea while playing with particles and blobmesh in 3dsmax (the mustard). Hope you like ;)