Preparing for New Designers 2012

Good news everyone - as I'm happy to announce that I'll be going to the New Designers exhition in London to showcase my work on the Isle of Cirrus and The Wolves Within. As such, I have been busy getting things exhibition ready these past few weeks, refining both animations and preparing promotional material such as business cards and art books.

Isle of Cirrus
The Isle of Cirrus received a number of refinements as a whole, improving models and textures in areas such as the roof and chimneys, minor fixes to Volan and additional light wrapping and colour correction to the island.












Art Book
New and updated art book for the Isle of Cirrus, which has been printed by Blurb books (last few refinements did not make it in the printed version).

The Art of Isle of Cirrus v2 by Leo Tsang


Zoetrope
We were also asked to prepare a zoetrope sequence for the show. With the island being the central focus of the Isle of Cirrus, I opted to have a looping sequence of the island in flight; so wheels turing, chimney pipe pumping, cloth waving and a cloud or two flying past.

Here is the 24 frame sequence below, watch in full-screen HD for best results!

Isle of Cirrus Zoetrope Sequence from Leo Tsang on Vimeo.

The Wolves Within
With The Wolves Within, it was decided to showcase the project separately between characters and environment in order to best reflect Jolanta's and my areas of work respectively. As such, I've had to edit the animation into something more of a showcase demo as the wolves are no longer present in the environment. Refinments include improved texturing and models to the environment, dynamic effects and some new camera shots.








Business Card
My business card design that I will be using. The idea behind the logo is my initials of 'LT' shaped as a square, where it is uniform in its design it can be viewed upside down and still form the same initials. The verticle lines encourage one to turn the card over, where a QR code is also present on the back.

Front

Back



Showreel
And finally I'm proud to present my first showreel. I had some fun making this seeing the best of my previous work altogether - it serves as a nice compilation of my time on the course.




My portfolio website is next on the agenda as a temp page is being used for now. Once the site is at a more refined state I'll make a new post to promote it fully.

Otherwise, the New Designers exhition is on July 4-7 as part of the 'Part 2' set of shows. Tickets are still avalible online here.

The Isle of Cirrus - Final Animation

Here we are at last at the end of the final major project. I'm proud to present the Isle of Cirrus.

'Only fragments of land remain in a world that has been flooded. These lands are scarce, piloted by individuals over the inhospitable waters below.

Alone and isolated, Volan soars the skies in search for new land and life...'

Isle of Cirrus from Leo Tsang on Vimeo.

(View in 720p!)


The making/art of document for the Isle of Cirrus:


The Art of Isle of Cirrus by Leo Tsang
The current version of the Art of Isle of Cirrus will be updated at a later date.

CD and DVD label

The Wolves Within

Project is over! Jolanta and I are proud to present The Wolves Within. Big thanks to David Keefe for the soundtrack and Philip Banks for the voiceover!

A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight between two wolves.
One is evil – he is anger, hate, arrogance and greed
The other is good – he is peace, hope, benevolence and serenity.
Which wolf will win?
The one you feed…

The Wolves Within


The making of The Wolves Within.

The Making of the Wolves Within

As well as a little production video providing a peek into the development and process behind the project.




You can find more behind the scenes over at our blog.

Enjoy!

Tribe 17 - Final Animation

Transcription project is over! I am proud to present Tribe 17 - performing a ritual to attract fireflies which in turn power themselves

Final Animation


Its been a very challenging project that I've certainly learnt a lot from; namely from character design, rigging and animating in Maya. Unfortunately due to time constraints, some scenes did not make it into the final cut. Namely a opening sequence moving slowly amidst the junk piles to better establish the scene of the ritual, as well as resolving the animation in terms of context with a firefly awakening a new tribe robot amidst the junk.

Despite this, I’m happy with what I have achieved in the 10 weeks that this project has taken. There may be opportunities to return to this project in the future, but in the mean time, the skills that I have learnt and developed in this project has been invaluable to me.

Catch a look behind the scenes with the art of publication below, as well as the technical paper which outlines the stages in the rigging process in more detail.

Art of Tribe 17
Art of Tribe 17

Technical Paper
Tribe17 Technical Paper Leo

Enjoy!

KLED Animations Presents: 'Day of the Chainsaw Wielding Baby'

The studio group project came to a close last week, I'm proud to present my team's animation trailer: Day of the Chainsaw Wielding Baby.

‘Project 6’ – an experiment to create the perfect killing machine, goes astray when their latest subject escapes from a secret laboratory located in the depths of the Earth.
Alone and confused, Project 6 is out of control! Who can stop this ‘baby’ now?



This is actually version 2 of our trailer which I feel works better than our initial version, that featured a narrative trailer voice. You can view the original here.

For a little bit of fun, we actually included some small Easter eggs for the competing studios including Gremlin Box Productions, B3D Studios and Creature Studios and their respective animations - so see if you can spot them, and be sure to check out their respective trailers. Unfortunately, we were not able to fit in Void Canvas Studio, Inspire Studios and Lucid Studios (apologies!) but be sure to check out their works too!

The main share of my work in this project included Concept art, modelling, texturing and rigging our Baby character, creating the Laboratory scene as well as general compositing including small special effects such as bubbles and smoke. My apologies that I couldn't give more frequent updates to this side of the project, as things were pretty tight on schedule. Hopefully, the documented Making Of publication below will make up for this, providing a behind-the-scenes look into much of the process my group and I worked on.

The Making of Day of the Chainsaw Wielding Baby

Here is an additional walk cycle I attempted with the Baby model. I tried to capture the baby's walk cycle by making him a little off balance and slowing his movements.



Where I've also presented a Turnaround of our Baby character for your viewing pleasure.



Feel free to head over to the KLED Animations blog for more details on our progression throughout the weeks.

Otherwise, the next and final project for the second year is soon approaching, entitled Transcription. More on that in the coming days.

Final Animation - Ling Zhi Mushroom Life Cycle

The final result for the last project of the first year here at UCA Rochester. The life cycle of a Ling Zhi mushroom.



HD is available at Vimeo!
Ling Zhi Mushroom Life Cycle from Leo Tsang on Vimeo.


Youtube HD also available!

I am pleased with the results with what I have managed to achieved in just 5 weeks. The days were short and the nights grew long, but everything came together in the end. Despite the evil projector throwing a blue screen of death during my animation (twice this has happened now!), I am glad it was well received and that our client, Dr Klappa, also seemed to like it.

I think a well earned break is in order, though I will pop back on here from time to time, as well as not forgetting that the summer project now rises on the horizon...

Final Animation - Cantankerous Refrigerator

The final result after hundreds of drawings, I can present to you the Cantankerous Refrigerator.



Despite the amount of time spent over a lightbox, I've certainly enjoyed the process of animation as the one feels a great sense of satisfaction when it all comes together; nothing quite compares to feeling of seeing a character you designed come to life on the big screen. Needless to say, I have developed a huge respect and appreciation towards the world of animation as a whole, requiring vast amounts of talent and dedication that is truly remarkable. I've learnt a great deal in this project, which I can hopefully take further and build upon improving my approach to animation as whole.