Best of Spring 2010

The Spring Semester was my first full time experience at the Art Institute of Indianapolis AND THE STUDENTS WERE GREAT! My Special Topics course MMA 311 turned out some really awesome work, it quickly became one of my favorite courses. We also had a Character Modeling class, a VFX course (particles, cloth, hair, fluids, dynamics), and the the first half of capstone shorts.

Below are some of the best of each class in no particular order! The capstones will be kept quiet until the next quarter. :) Keep up the great work guys!

MMA 306 - Character Modeling

The students were charged with learning Maya's modeling tools towards organic modeling. Their final was to develop a low resolution skin, and then take it into Zbrush 3.5 for high detail sculpting and painting. The output is back in Maya some applied Displacements as well.



MMA 311 - Special Topics

Jason Roll studied in depth Environmental and object Unwrapping and texturing for low polygon environments. He used only Maya's unwrapping tools, something I stray away from in most cases! You can reach Jason @ his website, he does many commissions for Matte and Environment Paintings already.




Christopher Perkins decided to study both Maya and After Effects and how he could integrate 3D and Camera movements into After Effects. Chris is working on many independent projects. Chris is a great 2D animator and has his own 2D animation series currently. Check out his website Guttamind.com



Cuong Tran decided to jump into Maya Cloth and NCloth Dynamics systems for his topic of research. The students were charged to create something both Technically Difficult but Artistically Beautiful. I think Cuong did just that. Check out Cuong's website kiareri.com



Finally, Ian Dillingham decided to research that art of Fur in Maya for his upcoming short. Ian successfully applied Fur onto a Horse model, and will also be adding fur to another model for his short. Ian can be contacted @ ibdillingham@gmail.com




MMA 405 - VFX

Visual Effects class was a interesting experience because we were switching topics every few weeks. (Particles, Fluids, Cloth, Rigid/Soft Dynamics, and Hair) For their Final the students were required to render a short amount of frames revisiting a favorite topic, or to combine several effects for one shot.

It went very well. Stay tuned for a compilation. the videos are so different, I'm trying to figure out the best way to present them.