Field Notes

Thought Encounters 10 years ago, my company was celebrating our 100-year anniversary. There was a lot of excitement about the future and reflection about the past. There was all this tallk of Bill Boeing and what he meant to the company, how he took a mail delivery service. What now? More content I’m working on now like 3-camera video…not just using audio anymore.

Unreal Engine 5 is just…wow! Working on some frames for a fictional game release I’m calling “Space Force.” It’s unbelievable how quickly we can render somewhat believable-looking characters in a fraction of the time it took in the past. Unreal Engine 5’s Lumen technology is exactly what was needed for me to really use this engine for client projects. Up to this point, Redshift and Cinema 4D gave me much more creative control, but now, I’m not so sure they have the edge. I will always have a spot in my heart for Maxon, especially if they end up selling off to Adobe to make my creative career go full circle. But Unreal Engine is just soooo good! ...

Rendering in Unreal Engine Another fun week, especially as we are finally tackling character animation! Up to this point, I’ve played around in After Effects and Cinema 4D, but rendering from Unreal Engine is on another level. C4D is great because I have a character rig made by the very talented Alan Towndrow. With the power of alembic files I can render my animated character model and material channels so I can place and texture them in Unreal Engine. ...

Learning the Game Development Pipeline I’m halfway through my first class on the game development pipeline at SCAD taught by Professor Nye Warburton. I’m still working full-time so my progress is limited to the time I can spend in the wee hours of the morning chicken-peckin’ my way around Unreal Engine. It’s a lot of fun so far. I’ve been able to wrap my head around the workflow from grayboxing to modeling, texturing, and even blueprinting in Unreal and Cinema 4D. ...

Learning to make things move in 3D! Looking at my older blog posts I can’t believe how many words I’d write. I’m saving those precious words for my thesis. Oh yeah, I’m starting my MFA in Motion Media Design from the Savannah College of Art & Design in two weeks! Enough with the words! Here are some images I’ve been moving over the past few months! ...

36 Days of The Office Sarah Ryan and I are both huge fans of The Office. I’ve also been learning 3D modeling with Cinema 4D in my spare time, while Sarah has been practicing her Photoshop skills. In the spirit of the 36 Days of Type project, we shipped one render every day for 36 consecutive days (May 13 - June 17, 2020). ...

Meet Mira I’ve been on my journey into 3D animation since January and I’m itching to put together more character work. Up to this point, the only 3D characters I’ve done have been a robot, lego man, and a little ice sculptor. The ice sculptor wasn’t what I’d call a 3D modeling masterpiece (nor was it supposed to be). The lego man and robot were fun, but they also consisted of mostly hard edges and features that didn’t need to look very organic. Now, it was time to try modeling someone a little more human. ...

Schedule, cost and quality…you only get two Ask anyone in the project management world about “triple constraints” and they’ll have at least one good story of an unreasonable stakeholder who didn’t believe in them. They were that one client who wanted the perfect product, yesterday, and for nothing. I’ve been observing a lot of freelance designers getting stressed about cheaper and faster design talent. After all, Upwork has the following slogan on their front page: ...

What I learned from “Be The Ice Sculptor” I just wrapped up an intense, 6-week animation course built by School of Motion. We studied the animation principles (squash & stretch, overshoot, anticipation, etc.) that make animations look great. In this final project, Be The Ice Sculptor, we were asked to build a 60-second animation using all of those principles. They gave us some beautiful 2D boards and professional voice-over to get started. ...