Ponte Vecchio camera pass

This is a quick camera pass of a scene I've been modeling for several months on my free time. This is just an ambient occlusion pass and a depth pass with some nCloth mixed in to add a little life to the scene.

Butchers Block camera pass from Cody Walker on Vimeo.

Ponte Vecchio test render

Ponte Vecchio is a subject I've worked on repeatedly since I lived in Italy several years ago. It is a fantastic Renaissance bridge in the center of Florence and I seem to keep coming back to it over and over. I've had some free time since school finished so I went back to continue working on my very ambitious model of Florence as I imagine it in the 1480's. It's starting to come together, but there is still much to be done.

Fur Test

I've been attempting to add some fur and lighting to an animated character.
The first thing I've learned is natural fur is very hard to get right. There is a very large gap between the fur anyone can do with a couple clicks in Maya and the fur on Sully in Monsters Inc. that looks perfect and probably had a team of technical directors working day and night for a year. There really doesn't seem to be a middle ground. Fur seem to looks terrible until it looks perfect.

Fur test from Cody Walker on Vimeo.

Return from hiatus

Cody Walker's Lighting demo reel from Cody Walker on Vimeo.

I'm back from my year long endeavor into 3d animation, and I've brought a demo reel with me.

After testing the waters of animation, rigging, modeling, lighting, dynamics, texturing, and compositing. I've sort of figured out where I fit. and I spent the last semester really focusing on texturing, lighting and comp. with a little bit of everything else sprinkled on top. Except for rigging I really enjoy all aspects of 3d animation, but I really had to narrow it down so I could put together a demo reel without being too all over the place.

I've been studing alot of photography techniques and traditional stage lighting theory to apply to my lighting work, and watching tonnes of old movies. I'm going to try and write a couple posts about what I've been seeing in older films and how I see it appling to 3d animation.

Montreal at night

So I've been playing around with my new camera for a month or two now. I'm really loving going out for big walks in the middle of the night and taking shots of the city.
I have made a couple HDR shots, but I really need to just get the fundamentals down before I dive into mixing together multiple exposures.

Here are some of my best so far.











All shots from around Montreal, shot on a Nikon D200

Dr, Sketchy take 2

Wow, well I guess it's been a month since I last updated.
Well I have some new Dr, Sketchy drawing for ya, as always I'm missing some feet and hands

Dr. Sketchy life drawing

A few weeks ago I dropped in on a session of Dr. Sketchy's montreal life drawing group. I had a great time, and met some really cool artists, but I also realized that my life drawing is getting very rusty. I'm looking forward to the next class on the 18th

Isometric samples.

WWII

I've been working on several WWII projects over the last couples weeks. I'm not going to say much about them. but there will be LOTS of illustrator line work ... like everything I do.


First off. This is a quick isometric of a Boeing Flying Fortress.

And a set of stylized blueprints of the Bismarch. This jpg might be hard to see the details but the illustrator file is about 4 and a half feet in size.


Lots more in the works.
Cody

Creepy, Cool or a bit of both?

I got a new scanner, printer combo thing tonight. And in honor of breaking in a new piece of technology I’m going to post up an idea I had the other day that I’m still not sure how I feel about. I think this idea could be really cool, if properly executed. But I’m not quite sure how to go about it yet.
The idea is to combine sexy pin-up girls with medical cutaways…. I think Suicide girls are the obvious choice for models.
Any comments or ideas are welcome. I’m really interested in your initial gut response to the pictures.

More to come.

Cody

2 Months later!

So a lot has happened since my last post. I apologize to anyone waiting for an update.

I'm living in Montreal now,and the new job is going great. I'm working as a Medical illustrator and animator at a studio that specializes in creating interactive flash learning modules.

I haven't had much free time to work on personal art work. but I've been keeping up with the tutorials I've been writing. and they seem to be really taking off.
So far the first three are up on vectortuts. And now they're starting to pop up on illustration and design blogs. Drawn , comeuptomyroom.com

I have some big projects on the go. I'm continuing my series of technical illustration tutorials with Vectortuts. I've been working on a series of Russian nesting dolls with some other very talented toronto illustrators and animators.
And of course my Everest, the Florence illustration. This is a screen cap after 66 hours of work on the project.

thanks everyone for reading my blog and all the support. I'm getting back into the grove and settled into my new city, you'll be seeing updates much more often.

Cody

Big news

So I've got some pretty big news.

First off, I have had a tutorial published. I created a tutorial all about using adobe illustrator to draw in perspective. You can find the tutorial on the website vectortuts.com or just jump too.
http://vectortuts.com/illustration/using-adobe-illustrator-to-draw-in-perspective/
I've been getting some very positive feedback which is great. And VectorTuts has asked me to be a monthly writer, so I'm pretty happy about that. The next tutorial I'm working on for them will be the first part of a two parter all about Isometrics so stay tuned. It should be up at the end of November.

Second, I'm moving! It's all happening very quickly. I got a job at a company that specializes in biomedical communications. My job will be to create vector medical illustration and animate them in flash. So I'm off to Montreal. I guess I have to go buy a Canadian's jersey.

quick update

The big one.

So I have a tendency to take on massive projects, and this definitely falls into that category.
I think if I could I would do architectural illustration to scale, but sadly illustrator has limits... which I've found working on this.
I'm going to do my best to keep it under wraps until it's finished.
but here as a special treat for those who read my blog.
I give you a sneak peek.
This is just a small portion of the whole.
The image is called 35hours... because well I'm 35hours in.
thanks for watching.

Cody

Site update! Vanishingpointstudio 2.0

Hey everyone!

I've just finished updating my website!

http://www.vanishingpointstudio.net/

If you have a look you can find lots of samples of my illustrations and my sketches.
The new version of vanishing point studio is much more simplistic so hopefully I can update it more often. The version I've just replaced was done in Flash so it was a real problem to keep up to date.

If you'd like to take a look back in time, this is the site I just replaced. I think I'm still in 3rd year according to this site.
http://www.vanishingpointstudio.net/index.swf

A new additions to VPS 2.0
I have added a sample of work from my time at Autodesk. that can be found under "Icon Design"
in the portfolio section.

I hope everyone likes the new site.
Let me know if you have any comments or critiques.
thanks for watching.


Cody

PNG2260 first look

New locations.

I've been working on some new locations for the Butchers Block storyline. The first image is the first look at the palace and some thumbnails. Next is inside the Butchers Block, and the last the the Artists studio with thumbnail. The last two are on there way to photoshop.

Ponte-Vecchio 500 years ago.

More Butchers Block concept work

The Butchers Block

Continuing with my 15th century Florence design package, I'm getting a little closer to some polished location design. Next stop photoshop.

More 15th century Florence.

So I'm still working away on this cool old Florence story. I'll put it all up when it's finished, but that's still a long way off.