A:M Tutorials Back Online!!

I've been getting a lot of emails lately about my Lulu.com video site.  Lulu discontinued the ability to sell digital downloads, so I have to find a new automated method.  But for now, you can go to my website and purchase them directly from there.  This is not an ideal method, but it's through PayPal, and you don't have to have a Lulu account to purchase them.  So if you are looking for my tutorials, head on over...they are available again.

Once I get payment confirmation, I'll send you an email with the links to download the videos from my server.  I'll get you the email within 24 hours, most of the time it will be a matter of minutes.  All you need to do is Right-Click and Save As, and it will download the file for you.  If you have any questions, don't hesitate to respond here, or email me. 

Thanks!

Barry

Barry's Animation:Master 2005 Tutorial Videos

Bee-Hive Update and Bee-Hive Lite now available!

Our awesome game - "Bee-Hive" has been updated to v 1.1!  Included are new tutorials, new sound effects, new music, and some new graphics.  It's available for Android, iOS, and WebOS!  There's also a new Bee-Hive Lite (Free) version (on Android, soon on iOS) for you to try before you buy!  Go give it a shot and tell me what you think!

Don't ask...I have no idea.

It was late...what can I say?

New Personal Project

Well, it's time to push myself...again.  Time to learn to do things that I can definitely improve on, so I'm starting a new personal project.  This project is going to be a 30 second short, fully written, designed, modeled, textured, rigged, animated, and rendered by yours truly.  I've already started on the first parts, where I've written the script and designed the first character (there's only two).  One of my pet projects wherever I am is to try to optimize the pipeline so that it is as fast as possible, while allowing me more time to focus on the ART of the project rather than the technical aspects of the project.  While I like the technical stuff, the further I get in my career, the more I realize that I am constantly going back to my first love - the art.  I am trying to have a timeline for this project, and hope that I can stick to it with how insanely crazy my life is.  Thankfully, this project has the full backing (and pushing forward) of my wife.  So we will see how the next 6 months goes.  I plan to post all of the progress on another blog, where you can follow along with this crazy journey.  Here is a sample of one of the designs.  Hope you like it (the face is still in design review for me :) )

Some people are just fun to draw :)

New iPad Drawing

I'm starting to get used to drawing on the iPad. However, I still feel that the stylus tip is way too fat for my liking. But maybe that's a good thing. It keeps me from noodling a drawing to death like I usually do.

Retopologizing in 3D Coat = AWESOME.

Been SUPER busy lately, but I decided to take my Arnold Sculpt into 3D coat and retopo it.  Man, 3D Coat blows away other software when it comes to retopologizing.  So easy, so intuitive, so powerful.  That's how software should be.  It took me about 30 minutes to get this far... and that's with a learning curve!  This is totally IP, but so far, there's only 4 tris.  Can you find them?

iPad sketch #1...

My first decent ipad sketch. Not bad for a guy with fat fingers...

Such a Decieving Thumbnail...or is it my brain?

It's funny how you can see the thumbnail of an image, imagine the full image to look one way, or see something in it, and then look at the full image, only to realize that you were completely wrong.  I just did this.  I was strolling through Blizzard's website, and saw an image thumbnail and saw this:

In the quick glance, my brain saw this:

But in reality, it was this:

 

I wish my brain worked like that all the time :)

40 Minute Mudbox Sketch

At work, we had a little challenge, just to get the creativity flowing. We had 40 minutes to sculpt Arnold Schwarzenegger. Here's my attempt.  I think I was headed on the right track.  I wanted it a bit more stylized, but it came out a little more realistic than I wanted. Oh well, it's a long way from done, but it was really fun to do.

 

Where the heck have I been?

Wow, it's been a while since I last posted.  And what about that "daily drawing" you may ask?  Yeah, what about that.  Ha ha. Funny how life seems to accelerate into a giant blur.

Most of that time has been spent working on other projects - one of which has finally been finished (at least for now): a new game for iOS, Android, and WebOS called Bee-Hive!  It's a combination of a puzzle with traffic control, and it's a blast to play!  Head on over to the App Store, the Android Market, or to the WebOS store and pick it up now!  Make sure to rate it and also leave a review for us!  You can also follow Bee-Hive on our Facebook Page.  Leave comments there, look for hints, and like us!

iOS
Android
WebOS (link coming soon!)

 

 

Daily Sketch - June 30, 2011

Quick 10 min facial structure study.

Daily Sketch - June 29, 2011

10 min. Not too happy with this one.

Daily Sketch - June 28, 2011

I know, I'm posting this a day late, but I got sidetracked...I'm starting to get into sketching again - loosening up those drawing skills. I'm currently using GIMP to do these - it's what I have available at work in the morning when I am doing these. It's decent, but not ideal. Here's the first post:

SCULPTRIS Alpha 6!!

So I started playing around with Sculptris Alpha 6...not sure what they did to make it better. There are some good things and some things that are not yet that good. But overall, I love not having to worry about topology. This was created from the default sphere in about 15 minutes:

I know, I know. I need to answer my post about "Why 3D Software stinks". I'll get to it, I swear. As soon as life lets me ;) For now, here's a new piece of art.

Why 3D Software Stinks - Part 1

I've been in this industry a long time. Not as long as some, but I've been using 3D software since 1998. While the technology has improved by leaps and bounds, one thing has remained the same, and perhaps regressed - the usability of the software that employs that technology.

Now, I know I'm going to get all kinds of people yelling and screaming at me "WHAT?? ZBrush is SOOO intuitive! Maya is so fast!! 3D Studio Max is the fastest modeler out there!", and a myriad of other "you're so stupid - you just don't get it" statements. I have one question for those people: How many consecutive hours of use did it take for you become "confortable" in a 3D package? By "comfortable", I don't mean that you could create a primitive, move a few verts, and tumble the view. I mean that you could actually produce work in that package, and not feel like you were blindfolded with one arm tied behind your back and hung upside down. That's what I thought.

Since I started using 3d software, I have used: Maya, Blender, Wings, Lightwave, 3DS Max, Animation:Master, XSI|Softimage, Daz3D, Silo, Mudbox, ZBrush, Sculptris, Nendo, Mirai, Messiah, Modo, Cinema 4D, Bodypaint, Marmoset, Unity3D, Strata 3D, proprietary toolsets, and a bunch of others that I can remember looking at or using and shuddering, but not remember their names. Some were better than others, but the majority, no matter how they marketed themselves, were just mind-boggling hard to use when it came down to it.

What makes software difficult? (In no particular order):

First, uniformity.

Second, vocabulary.

Third, GUI.

Fourth, tool implementation.

Fifth, complexity.

With computers growing ever faster and more powerful, it's time we take a look at why computer graphics has become so wildly popular, and yet so unfriendly. In the next few weeks, I'll be going through each point in detail. Please feel free to comment and to share your thoughts about this. Stay tuned...

New Blender Leg Rigging Tutorials

Blender Leg Rigging Tutorials

Hey everyone. Man, it's been too long. Life just seems to get too busy. Anyways, my good friend Tony Jones from Avalanche Software has been making additions to Blender's rigging tools, and so I decided to show off some of them by doing a set of tutorials. The tutorials cover the following:

1. Adding the Rig Bones and the Control Armature
2. Adding the Constraints
3. Adding the Drivers and Custom Properties for the control object

Tony's done a great job with it and you can check out his site here where you can get all the information on his new build and you can even download it to play with it.

I'd love to hear what you guys think about the tutorials!

Be back soon!

I've now got them all up on Vimeo too:

barryzundel.com goes live!

Yes, I finally came into the digital age by having my own website. It's a work in progress until I can actually get the time to make the site I REALLY want to make, but it'll work for now. So hopefully everyone can go check it out. Most of the content is what is on my blog, but in a much more organized manner.

Like I said before, I have been taking pictures for a long time, much to the chagrin of my wife and to the detriment of the multiple hard drives that I have used up. But I decided to do it a little more seriously, investing in new equipment and starting to do individual and family photography. All the information is available at my site.

I would definitely welcome any suggestions, since it's still a work in progress. Thanks!

Blender Foot Rigging Test

So, one of my good friends, Tony Jones (a programmer/artist at Disney Interactive) started getting into Blender, adding some features to the rigging tools that help a lot with creating much less complex rigs. Here's what he has been up to. So I'm testing his new tools and learning to rig in Blender at the same time. It's a rough road, but Tony is making it a lot easier with these tools.

I rigged this leg up in about a 30-40 min period, learning included:

Blender 2.5 Beta - What a difference...

I've known about Blender and "tried" to use Blender for years. I have always been impressed at it's amazing capabilities given the free nature of the software. There's just something about people writing software because they truly love it vs. wanting to make a huge profit that intrigues me. In those years of attempting to use Blender, I have never been able to really grasp it. But with 2.5, and the Maya hotkey presets, it just opened up a whole new world that I think I just might want to try out again. Not because it's "Maya", but because there's one less program that I have to learn with different key combos. I was able to jump into Blender 2.5 Beta and start playing around immediately. That being said, modeling something from scratch (a face, body, etc.) is still proving to be a challenge, but it's one that I just might consider now that I don't have to fight the urge to use the Alt-LMB combo to tumble. I would suggest everyone give it a shot if you are into 3D. It's looking like a really cool tool that is finally coming of age.

Something a little different...

As my wife can tell you, when we go on vacation, I develop a growth on my right hand that she likes to call a "ca-me-ra"". It seems to appear out of nowhere and it takes over my brain at times. I've really gotten into photography lately more for the artistry of it. I've invested in a few new lenses, and woah, do they make a difference. I'm still a total novice at this, but I love it. Here are a few pictures of my latest trip up Highway 101 through California and Oregon. There are many, many more to come....

Meeting Sketches

It's been waaaaay too long since I posted something. So here are some meeting sketches:

Sometimes I Hate Technology...and typing.

So as I was typing the title for this post, I think I hit the backspace button about 20 times. Not a good day for typing.

Anyhoo, I found out the hard way that backing up 9 years of work is a good thing to do in more than one place. Two days ago, I was working on my laptop at work, and had my backup drive attached to it. All my music, pictures, previous work materials, downloaded training materials, etc, were on it. The dumb thing had a 1.5 foot USB cord, and as I turned in my chair with my laptop on my lap, the drive careened off the desk and hit the floor. Then it started what sounded like beeping at me. I soon found out that the "beeping" was more of a mechanical problem where the disc would spin up, but couldn't be read. So I did some calling to find out how much data recover costs...you don't even want to know. For a 200 GB drive (yeah, it's been my backup for a LONG time, I know), it was going to cost me between $800 and $2700 for the data retrieval. Why don't I just give them my newborn child and call it even? So now the drive is sitting on my desk, a cold, black, dead reminder to BACKUP YOUR FLIPPIN' WORK!!

We'll see how long I can go without accessing anything on it.

Animation:Master Tutorials Price Reduction!! - up to 75% off!

All my tutorials for Hash's Animation:Master have been reduced to $5 or less! You can go download them here:

Barry's Lulu Storefront

Happy downloading!

Things they are a-changin’…

After 9 great years at Avalanche Software in Salt Lake City, I took the plunge, and made the jump to movies – something I have always wanted to do.  In those 9 years I have worked with some of the most amazing artists and people around and have learned an immense amount from them.  Like Adam Ford said, they are some of the greatest people I know and will continue to be great friends.  I am thankful for the amazing knowledge that I gleaned from so many of them, and hopefully, I can do it justice.    

But on to a new chapter of life.

Today, the dream became the reality.  I was lucky enough to be considered and then hired by Pixar as a Technical Director.  It’s quite frightening after working in the games industry for 9 years to walk into a place where you are now the rookie and you don’t know a thing about what you are about to do.  But I feel like a huge sponge that is bone dry, and I can’t wait to be thrown into the pool.  It’s going to be difficult, but I am so ready for this.