APII's Portfolio Daily experiments and interesting thoughts

Personal Project – DOTA 2 Hero Showcase

Personal Project – DOTA 2 Hero Showcase

So, it has been a really long time since I’ve posted here, partly due to a lack of inspiration for the better part of the year. A lot of things happened that shook up my life, but now that I’ve taken care of it all, I’m ready to get back to some personal projects in my free time.

Anyone that knows me will tell you that I’m an immense fan of the game DOTA 2. The complexity and ever changing nature of the game keeps me coming back time and time again. Needless to say, it’s probably my favorite game of all time. Because of that, I really have been looking to create a piece of motion for something so prevalent in my life. I’ve decided to create a massive project that will showcase all 100+ of the characters in the game using snippets of dialogue and iconic features and symbols of those characters.

So here today I leave you all with the first frame of my project so far. Enjoy and look forward for more to come!

Clockwerk

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Neon Trees – Sleeping With A Friend

Over the past 2 months, I had the privelage of working on the official music video for the new hit song by Neon Trees. It was a great experience working with the wonderful folks over at the small shop in Brooklyn called Surround.

Overall, it was a really long process as a few hired hands dropped the ball on their parts resulting in Tamara Hahn and myself to have to animate and composite the entire music video. Of course it resulted in many long days and sleepless nights, but overall it was a rather enjoyable experience. I was able to really get in and lead up the animation and compositing of our team. It really helped to push me more in not only responsibility, but my skills in 3D to live action integration.

I would definitely work with these gentlemen again on projects as they push to retain their creative vision in any and all projects. Anyway, lastly I leave you with the final music video we produced! I’m pretty happy with the end result.

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Adventure: Savannah by Train!

Adventure: Savannah by Train!

So, I decided that I am going to travel down to Savannah, Georgia to visit my girlfriend the week after midterms to hopefully surprise her and cheer her up :) She has been the absolute highlight of my life ever since I met her my senior year at school. Never has someone been able to simply relieve all my stress by just simply smiling and talking to me. She’s absolutely beautiful, and I love her more than all the stars in the universe. So as a way of thanking her for being so supportive through all my projects and work, I’m planning on visiting her throughout the school years to show my commitment to her like she has to me. I love you Maria Gardon!

In my search for the best price to travel, i was shocked to find no flights cheaper than a ridiculous $600+ for just one way! Then I had an idea. I have never taken a train across states before, especially down almost the entire east coast. i figured this would be the best time to start that practice and make use of our wonderful railroad system! Here is to adventure!

In case any interior design firms are checking this out, here is a link to her portfolio site that I built for her!
Maria Gardon’s Online Portfolio

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Many Thanks to LoyalKaspar!

Many Thanks to LoyalKaspar!

I just wanted to give a shout out to everyone that I had the pleasure of working with while I was interning and freelancing over at LoyalKaspar, even if they never see this. It was an incredibly enjoyable experience with some amazingly talented people. They treated everyone of us as competent individuals and weren’t afraid to give us challenging projects to work on. I personally got to work on the brand new Fox Sports 1 package that is now live on television and it’s incredible cool to finally see it. One thing I definitely learned while working on that project was how invaluable AE scripting and using expressions to quickly and efficiently develop a toolkit for broadcast. For those of you who don’t know about this studio, I’d highly encourage you to check them out and follow their work over at:

LoyalKaspar

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Indie Game Spotlight: Stonehearth

Indie Game Spotlight: Stonehearth

So I recently stumbled across this incredible looking new indie game from Radiant Entertainment entitled Stonehearth. It’s essentially a sandbox building game taken from an RTS/RPG perspective with a kickass voxel style using the Qubicle Constructor. This game is shaping up to be something that is definitely worth investing in. It’s available right now to back on Kickstarter and has already surpassed it’s original funding goal so this is DEFINITELY getting produced. All additional pledges will now be added in towards awesome stretch goals that add even more content into this already spectacular game. I personally backed the $50 tier for my girlfriend and I as it also comes with a digital art book (wish there was a hardcover one, just saying guys :P ) I hope anyone who reads this definitely checks it out and donates!

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Swimming Koi (Senior Film Test Animation)

So as shown on my work section, I’m doing a hybrid After Effects/Cell Animation styled film pertaining to the Chinese myth of Pangu. This is my first time attempting real frame by frame animation out of photoshop and it seems to be working quite well. Now that my workflow is in order, I can go ahead and knock out all the cell shots in my film fairly easily. Here is a gif of my animation.

 

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Learning Premiere Pro – Day 01

I decided to take an editing and cinematography class this quarter at SCAD in order to become more familiar with different editing styles and programs while building up the live action portion of my experience. I took a screenshot while using the Multi-Camera Tool in Premiere Pro in order to learn how to edit with syncing in points of videos to a single timecode and audio track. All the video in these exercises were given to us by our professor solely for practice.

 

 

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Daft Punk – Get Lucky Preview

Daft Punk – Get Lucky Preview

I can’t even begin to describe how excited for this new album I am. Daft Punk is without a doubt my favorite group of all time, hands down. Mix the sweet, infectious rhythms that they put together with the awesome vocals of Pharrel Williams…I can’t even contain my excitement. This album will be in my hands the day it comes out.

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Obscure Words – Day 2

Obscure Words – Day 2

Kalon (noun) 

\kal-en\

Definition of KALON

  1. Ideal perfect beauty in the physical and moral sense, especially as perceived by Greek philosophers

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Obscure Words – Day 1

Obscure Words – Day 1

A friend of mine who goes by the name of Joseph Dunlap started a very awesome practice on his blog that I now aim to follow. Each day, I will find an incredibly obscure word and learn/document its meaning(s) in an attempt to expand my vocabulary. Today marks the first day.

Relict (noun) 

\’re-likt\

Definition of RELICT

  1. Widow
  2. A survivng species of an otherwise extinct group of organisms; also: a remnant of a formerly widespread species that persists in an isolated area.
  3.  A relief feature or rock remaining after other parts have disappeared
  4. Something left unchanged.
  5. A surviving remnant of a natural phenomenon.

Related Terms

  • delict
  • delinquency
  • delinquent
  • derelict
  • relic
  • relinquish
  • reliquary

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Life Aquatic Minimalist Treatment

Anyone who knows me can easily say that I enjoy The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. Bill Murray is just..the man. I decided I wanted to do a simple minimalist design poster for the film. I’m thinking about doing a series for the whole run of Wes Anderson films because he is honestly one of my favorite directors. Anyway, ehre it is. Enjoy!

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TESTING 1.2.3

TESTING 1.2.3

This is a test blog Post. HUZZAH!

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