plein air acrylic painting

I love my job! The lighting department here arranged a plein air painting class for us. The weather was awesome, the teacher was awesome!

It's been a very long time since I painted, that too with acrylics, so these count more as warm-ups than anything else:

New Microfighters Episode!!

CLICK HERE TO SEE EPISODE!!

The first episode of the Microfighters series has been posted! I am so excited about how this turned out!
This was one of our studio's first longer episodes. I had the privilege of lighting all but three shots for this episode and compositing most of them in Fusion. Definitely had quite a few hiccups and there are things we would have liked to have done better, but it was still very fulfilling to work on :)

Enjoy!

Updated Lighting Reel

Lighting Reel 2013 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Updated my lighting reel with some shots from the LEGO Star Wars webseries that I am working on at Doodle Pictures Studios. As always, the demo reel break down is listed under the video description on the Vimeo page.

Check it out! 

I will be updating this as soon as more episodes are released online for public viewing. It would be nice to be able to show more than Geonosis ;)

LEGO Star Wars

Here's the episode I did some shot lighting for during my first two weeks at my new job at Doodle Pictures Studio!

And... PART II !

=)

Epicity

^ Excited to start working on this as a Lighting Technical Assistant at Blue Sky Studios! Just finished my first week at the studio and it's been great!

For the past 3 months, I had the privilege of working as a freelance 3D artist at BLT Communications on some awesome movie posters. Unfortunately, only one of them has been publicly released. I only contributed to a tiny fraction of the pixels on this one (modeled the bases underneath the armors), but still! Click to view larger!

Lighting Sketches, contd.

More lighting and mood "studies" from reference. Did these while marathoning Mad Men. :) This is actually a really fun exercise! I'm challenging myself not to use the eyedropper tool while doing these.

Lighting Sketches

I recently bought a DVD of Jeremy Vickery's master class on Efficient Cinematic Lighting and got the idea of making quick Photoshop sketches of different lighting scenarios from film stills and photographs. Thought I'd begin with a portrait... I was mostly just trying to emulate how the face is lit (and also practice painting and shading in Photoshop since I don't do that enough). Hopefully, doing a lot of these will give me a subconscious and better understanding of color, lighting, shadows, how different subjects react to light, etc. etc. On a side note, I'm getting better at hand-eye co-ordination using my Wacom tablet. I still miss my Cintiq though :)

Reference

Oil Paintings

Work from my oil painting class this quarter. I have never really worked with oils before so this was technically my first time. I wanted to take this class to get a better understanding of color and light and I think I learned quite a lot from this class! I'm pleased with how the materials/surfaces turned out, because I was hesitant about my ability to accurately paint the reflectivities of materials. We used water-based oil paint for this class.

This was my very first monochromatic painting for the class, done in one night. I was mostly trying to get a better handle of the medium and technique in this one.

This one was a two-night still life painting. Started with a subtractive underpainting and then used glazing techniques on top.

Quick portrait painting. This one was tough because of the absorbent nature of the canvas. We stretched out our own canvases and applied gesso on them. It was hard to keep the canvas wet with paint.

And this was our 3-night final project of a still life with a model. We were allowed to choose any part of the set up with the model and objects in front of us and make a composition out of it. This was my first time working this big (20x16). I tried to push myself here by introducing and experimenting with more colors than I usually do on each object.

 This was a really fun class!

Lighting Reel 2011

Current lighting reel! I'll add my thesis shots as and when I complete them.

1) Group Project with Paul W. Gerla during the Summer Pixar Undergraduate Program (2011). We had to come up with a short, two-shot narrative. I was responsible for the lighting, set-dressing, layout, some of the modeling as well helping develop the concept and design of the piece. Paul was responsible for modeling, shading as well as the fog-effect. 

Time taken for all aspects of the visuals: 5 days. Rendered using Renderman.

2)Lighting from Reference: a one-day exercise during the Pixar Undergraduate Program. Rendered using Renderman.

3)Final Compositing Project for a school Lighting Class. I worked with a photography student, Jami Ann Plekon. We planned the concept together and set up the lights in the photoshoot. I then built the CG cage to be composited into the photograph. Rendered using mental ray. Time taken: 5 days

4)Final project during the Pixar Undergraduate Program. I was responsible for changing the time of day from the original shot in Toy Story 3- from day to night. All the lights from the shot file were removed except for the default character light rigs. I was responsible for all the lighting. Everything else was created by Pixar. Time taken: 10 days. Rendered using Renderman.

(I chose this shot for its level of complexity: it has both a main human and toy character and the focus shifts from one to the other during the shot. In addition, there are several props, toys with fur, and a human with sub-surface scattering. I also wanted to challenge myself by trying to light a playtime scene at night while still keeping it friendly and warm. I took the liberty of cheating a night-light screen left, which was not there in the original film)

Lighting Class Updates

Final composite project. Each CG lighting student had to pair up with a photography student, come up with a concept, go on a photoshoot and then composite a CG object into the photo. If anything, I learned a lot about studio-lighting itself from this project, more than I did about lighting in Maya.

Updates!

Thesis character turnaround:

Snippets of work from my Summer internship at Pixar Animation Studios:

Compositing!

This is for my lighting class. We had to do an exercise by pairing up with a photo student in our school and going on a photoshoot. We then had to bring the photo into Maya and place a simple CG object into the scene, lighting it to match the photograph.

Primitive Still Life

I finally got into a lighting class and I love it!!

Here's our first assignment- we were told to light a still life using primitive shapes, a white lambert shader, spot & ambient lights, and direct illumination with Maya Software. I decided to find a painting use it to influence how my still life looked. Here it is!

Reference:

And then I decided to do another render with some white blinn and phong shaders just to add some specular highlights.

render party!

Modeling, Shading and Rigging Reel 2010-2011 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

[2012 UPDATE: If you wish to view this older version of my 3D Generalist Reel, the password is "reel2010". Please note that this is not my current demo reel. Thank you!]

Quickly threw this together today. Well not so quickly, but finished it in one day, compared to my first reel that took me half my academic quarter to compile.

I want to refine it further, and re-render some things that our Renderfarm messed up. Also wish I knew better last year than to smooth my typewriter model. It's not the best reel, I admit. Either way, I at least have something right now, so I don't have to panic near deadlines. I want to focus more on working towards an animation reel in the coming months.

Ohkay, good night!

lighting tests, cntd.

[2012 UPDATE: The passwords for the following videos are "test"]

Shot001_LightTest_11.10.10 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Re-did some lighting tests, with the character textured correctly this time. It's not bad, but it still feels flat to me. Going to play around with the lights more before break starts and I don't have the privilege of rendering in the lab anymore.. Rim lights should help break out the flatness a little, and probably a little more contrast. Other than that, I don't want to get carried away with lighting and texturing. Animating the clocks from shot-to-shot is going to take some meticulous thought, and that's next on my list to tackle before I start animating next quarter.

I also plan on thumbnailing most of my shots over break.

Shot010_LightTest_11.10.10 from Shreyasi Das on Vimeo.

Also, working title has been changed to "Dissonance".

enter protagonist

Here's my bot for my upcoming student film, almost done!! These are two renders I did for my Advanced modeling class.

And here's proof that my rig actually works so far! The poses should be familiar from Richard William's book of awesomeness. I slapped in the extreme poses for the character for this quick test animation. At first, I was going to animate something for a shot in my film, but I decided to do something more "cartoony" with broader movements to really push the rig. In actuality, the acting in my film will be subtler, but I wanted to make sure my rig was capable.

I can't wait till I can start animating!! But for now, on to more lighting tests!!

sneaky peaky

These tests took about 11 hours to do. The character isn't done texturing yet. Now that he's in the set, I have a better idea of how to texture him so he doesn't blend in with the background so much. Till now, I've been using the Norman rig in my 3D animatic, so now I have a better sense of where I should be going.

Also, rigging is still as terrifying. But I have to thank my self from the past for making life easier for me in the present by practicing rigging all of summer =)

^ I goofed up on the timing of the light for this one.

Maya Update!

So here is all the other modeling work that I promised.

The bedroom project was our first "major project". We had a choice between a bedroom and a living room. I chose to make a little girl's stylized bedroom. And by stylized, I mean using less realistic proportions, to show that it's a little girl's world in a normal sized room. I'm really proud of this work. Of course, the light from the lamp could be perfected and made conical. Also, the lighting could have been better done to make a better circular composition- perhaps show less of the ceiling? Turn off the fan light and put in a night light on the the right so there's only the moonlight, the lamplight, and the nightlight?

Perhaps fix the curtain rings, and lessen the scale of the curtain rail?

One of the critiques I had was that the ceiling was too high. It was supposed to be like that, like in Britain? But I can see how it might look odd.

Here's a jpeg showing off my moonlight, which took a long time to reach his stage. Of course, it could always be perfected...


Again, here, the night light on the right would've made it look better, and drawn the eye around the composition.

Here are some random snapshots I took for myself-- not composed.



















AND HERE is my second project- the machine project!!



It's an ancient, wonky, sanskrit typewriter. This jpeg here is a little messed up. A lot actually. I spent a lot of time on the modeling and texturing, and then, for some reason, my Maya file got corrupted and the shadows were rendering awfully or not rendering at all. The highlights are speckly, and all sorts of things. Basically, my textures weren't rendering true.

It was my problem partly. I'm not too happy with my texturing. Yes, it gives the old ancient look to it. But firstly, it isn't accurately what I envisioned. Secondly, it's just too much texturing.
I'm pretty sure most people will not know without me telling them that the main body is made out of rusty bronze and not wood. The textures on the two sides, and the modeling of the lever on the top doesn't look too good to me either. All in all, I'm not happy with this particular rendering.

Here's another one... With the wonkiness more clear! I'm quite pleased with the keys and the sankrit script, and the typebars on top with the subtle wonkiness to them.


And THAT is my favoritest image! :D I like the way the paper fold along the paper feed, how you can see the scale on the platen, the wonky look of the typebars... The ribbon spools look a little out of place and "unrealistic" here though..

Anyhow, it was all well received in class and by the teacher. And I got an overall score of 99% in the class!!!

More to come!!

In India now, and extremely exhausted.

3D Update

It's been a while since I updated my 3D modeling stuff. So THAT up there is my final still life composition. 'Twas received well. But my exposure's too high. You can't see all the texture of the fruits I worked so hard on :S

The helicopter and pig were tutorials.. They'd probably be better if I didn't have to follow the tutorial. But I learnt processes, which was the main aim I think.




And THIS over here is the start of a major project we just started. We had to choose to model either a bedroom or living room. I'm doing a little girl's bedroom. You know, the kind with white wood detailed furniture and linen and all that lacey stuff. I'm excited about it- we have to put in walls and ceiling and windows and doors. I still have to model a dresser, a chest, a bed table and pillows, along with the walls and things. Then texturing and lighting! I don't know if I'm off to a good start or not- there's so much left to do!! It's due Tuesday after next. I think I may have focused on too much detail than I should've from the start. I had to work on the chair more than once. I've been having unlucky days. I'm just hoping when I go to texture everything the modeling doesn't go haywire. I feel like it'll happen anyway. wood wood wood.


I've started working on storyboards for Milo, the Firefighter. The teacher liked my first draft. I have to go over it and refine things now. I don't think it visually tells the story without me explaining it yet. The thought of making a scratch track for it is worrying me..

Anyway, apple picking time.