Spring Time

Sorry about not updating sooner, but I just got my Experiment-457 pictures developed. So here they are:

Ears:

Tail:

Head, Shoulders, Tongue:

Side View:

As you can see, his design slightly shifted due to the material. Now what's left is to fire him so he becomes hard and then I can paint him. But of course I don't have a kiln or a big enough oven. One suggestion from the delightful Maria was to line a big enough cardboard box with tinfoil and put a heat lamp in it. I told my Mom this suggestion and she said that a box oven would be better since a box oven would get much hotter faster then a head lamp. So this rabbit will be fired.

We officially enter Spring on the 20th, yes Luke, the 20th. It's my favorite season, but I get my spring allergies during this time. My nose runs, my eyes and mouth get dry and scratchy, all due to the spring pollen. It seems to get worse every year. But it's not too serious, just an annoyance.

The Jan-March semester ended on the 23rd and my short was done and rendered and is ready to be shipped out to be entered into the EA Reveal. I'm sorry for not posting updates on here, been busy with the animation part and grabbing people for input about the animation here and there in person since no one commented on it here. The short is ready to be burnt to DVD, but I must wait for audio, which has me a little nervous, the 2 audio guys who said they were going to do it let me down. Not a surprise. So I have someone else doing it. Hopefully he'll be done by Saturday or I'll have send my rabbit on him...

The 26 was my 23rd birthday. I'm soooooooooo old! I got a few interesting things for my birthday:

-A Batman placemat-Night Watch (DVD) - part 1 of a 3 part movie series about the battles of the warriors of light and dark, from Russia.
-Equilibrium (DVD) - an awesome Orwellion take on the future where human emotions are outlawed. Too bad the director went and make Ultraviolet (had some good ideas, but just failed horribly!)
-Monty Python and The Holy Grail - If you have not seen this movie then you've lost 1000 cool point in my book. See it now!!!
-Mario Kart DS - online Mario Kart action! Has tracks from the Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, GameCube, and GameBoy Advance versions and original tracks as well. Also can host up to 7 other people with one game cart.
-Tetris DS - Tetris for the DS, but with tons of new twists! There's (of course) Touch Tetris, where you move blocks with the stylist, Catch (my favorite new mode) where you rotate your blocks around and catch falling blocks and create squares while avoiding metroids, Push where you go against a computer where the computer builds are the bottom of your puzzle and you need to push him down, There's also missions and puzzles to solve. Very fun and makes a Nintendork like me very happy to see the use of theme. This makes 3/4 of my Nintendo DS games Wi-Fi enabled. Pretty nifty eh?
-The Arcade Fire - Funeral (CD) - One of Canada's most dramatic new bands to emerge within the last few years, proclaims some magazines. I've been hearing their songs here and there and finally decided to buy their CD once it met my art student budget. I can say that it is a very interesting CD with some very cool songs.

I can cross another thing off my to do list for my life, this week I became a professional teacher (well, Instructor, I'm not certified by the board of education). I'm teaching a group of 10-12th graders Level Editing Tools at school with the assistance of my classmate Nolan. We have a very nice group of guys and are the envy of the school apparently because we look like we're playing games all the time. We play test levels that we are making, but sometimes some of them do a bit too much play testing and I have to hit their Escape button and tell them to get back to work. It's almost like giving them a sandbox and a couple of tools and letting them create with a couple of guidelines and adding a few more tools when they ask to know how to do it. We also have music playing, we were listening to OCremix.org music and seeing if anyone could name the game the remix is from. I look forward to seeing the end results and I'll be leaving a link to their work and photos in here once I know the websites. Check back soon.

The Principles of Design

My 3rd Tutorial is up over at digimill.net, I highly suggest you read it and give it a rating. Much like the Elements of Design tutorial, the Principles of Design tutorial is full of helpful hints and shows you clear examples of these art terms. Also features a super weird looking carrot!

Digimill Link

Update: Sadly Digimill.net is gone, but you can still read the tutorial HERE. HERE

The Elements of Design Tutorial

I have created another tutorial over at Digimill.net, this one is about the Elements of Design. This tutorial features my photography and you'll learn something too, visit

http://digimill.blogspot.com/2007/03/tutorial-by-stephen-chmilar.html

Don't forget to vote as well. And check out my first tutorial for animation tips.

UPDATE: Digimill.net is no more... you can now view the tutorial HERE

Another Reason Why I Love Nine Inch Nails

Most people who know me can clearly say that Nine Inch Nails is my favorite band. I do apologize if I have NIN-ed anyone out lately. I'm just so excited about their new album called "Year Zero" which is going to be released on April 17th. If mysterious websites and puzzles and such weren't enough to entertain us fans, the first music video was released last week along with talks that the new album (which is a concept album that is about 15 years in the future and things are not ok) might be made into a film. Trent Reznor (Trent IS NIN) said that he said the new album would be like a sound track to a movie that hasn't been made.

I got carried away there. Anyway, the big news of the week thus far is that Trent has released the audio tracks to their latest single “Survivalism". Trent released the audio tracks to "The Hand That Feeds" and "Only", both singles from NIN's "With Teeth" album. With the audio tracks released, fans can use them to remix the song. But “Survivalism" isn't the only song that's going to be up for download! ALL THE SONGS ON THE ALBUM WILL BE RELEASED LIKE THIS!!! In other words I'll be able to remix the entire album myself and listen to it my way. Pretty neat eh?


If you're interested in hearing my fan remixes, visit http://www.ninremixes.com and search for Theday.
To get the audio files, visit http://www.nin.com

Have You Seen My Rabbit....?

With my focus on animation, I've forgotten to post some pictures of my rabbit. In Life Drawing Workshop we get to create our own character and then sculpt/mold it into a 3D Structure. I've been working on it since February and it's finally finished. Unfortunately for you readers, you'll have to wait a week or so until I finish up my roll of film to see the finished product. But I do have a few sketches and development shots to show. So here are two of the concept sketches:



As you can see, this is no fluffy bunny. This thing is beast. It's design has shifted, but here's it's back story:

In another 30 years the human race will be pushing the planet to a breaking point. The constant thirst and hunger of the human race will bring terrible changes to the planet. Droughts will leave water levels bare, the reshaping of the land will cause it to loose its rich textures and alter the climate resulting in fires, mudslides and more. The population will continue to climb past what the world can handle. Most of the jobs will be taken by robots and thousands of people will be thrown into the streets as one of the biggest economic crashes happens. Some scientists seeing this problem decide to find a way to slim down the population. Paid by rich employers, the scientist create the perfect killing machine, Experiment-457. With the keys to DNA being unlocked as we speak the scientist begun to slice genes of several animals to create the Experiment. It's mission is to be set free during the night and feed upon the homeless people. It's quick metabolism completely burns off all the energy within a short time, leaving the creature to rest during the day after it's feast. It's long ears and slim body have tiny little hairs which can sense the slightest movement and can help it predict it's pray or foe's movement. On one outing the Experiment broke into a house and devoured a family while being captured on webcam. The creature then got away from it's masters and is now running rampant, finding a dark lair to sleep in at night. How long will this threat last?

Hollywood, my e-mail is in my profile. Hint.

Anyway, here's the steps I went through:

First I did about 3 hours of straight drawing, just quick drawings to get ideas out. I came up with the idea after looking at the shirt I was wearing, the mad bunny, a shirt for the band Jakalope. ( http://www.jakalope.net ) After the sketch was done I tweaked the design a bit more. After that I got my Dad to create an armature base. My Dad made it out of pipe and it was tough getting the pipes separated to make the armature shorter. Once the Armature was ready I cut up 2 metal coat hangings and got the glue gun and paper clips and created a skeleton structure (seen below, top). By the way, be careful with coat hangers, they cut bad.... I put blood and sweat into this project...
After the structure was ready, I covered it in tin foil and glued it together. The tin foil helps flesh out the body structure so I don't use a ton of Sculpey on it(see below, bottom) . If you use Sculpey, make sure you have hand lotion ready because it sucks the moisture out of your hands.



So there you have it, the beginning of my rabbit. Sorry for the first picture, kind of hard to see the wire frame body. My rabbit stand 25 inches tall. Wahahahahaha. When people see it they think of Frank from Donnie Darko and think it's so cool. People who haven't heard of Sculpey always touch it. I've had at least 6 people touch it already. Stop by here in a week to see more picture of Experiment-457.

Why 457? It was my grade 8 locker number, and I like the number.


Anyway, more animation time! Yeah! I took some advice given to me on the Digimill.net forum and shaved a good 15 seconds off my animation and cleaned up some more curves. Still a bit to go, but it's getting there. The new body is getting closer to replacing Robot head. And look, even more camera angles! Critiques are welcomed.

Let's Hang Some Art Up On the Walls

Ok, busy time in Stephen-land. I've been busy working on the new animation and other school things. My Birthday is coming up pretty soon and I'm pretty excited about that, but it also means the end of the semester is nearly here. So busy times ahead.

Remember to view my links section. If you like video games you must check out OCRemix.org . No exceptions. None.
If you'd like to see more of my art (well... still stuff) visit http://chmilar.deviantart.com then you'll see images like:
Version 1.0:


Perspective by ~Chmilar on deviantART

Now, to the real stuff, it's animation time! Critiques would be nice. The new model is on it's way, so there will be facail animation coming soon. I have yet to animate the fingers, and there's still more to do at the ending.



try not to think of "Domoarigato Mr. Robot" when viewing this animation.

Version 1.2: