Beorn's Stuff

Eat Sheep - work in progress

2012-02-03T19:59:00.001+11:00

I'm currently working on Cg Cookie's new iPad game "Eat Sheep". I'm doing the rigging and animation for it. It's lots of fun, with plenty of cuteness.

Check out the animation tests below:

For more info, check out:
http://eatsheep.com/

From the sketchpad

2012-01-20T01:18:00.001+11:00

Here are some random sketches from my sketchpad. These characters apparently inhabit some strange part of my brain...

My shots on Happy Feet 2

2012-01-16T23:37:00.000+11:00

Here's five of the thirteen or so shots I worked on for Happy Feet 2.
It doesn't seem like much (28s), but it was a big challenge and lots of fun.

My animation training series

2011-12-21T08:53:00.000+11:00

"Animation Fundamentals in Blender"

http://cgcookie.com/blender/2011/12/20/pre-order-animation-fundamentals-v1/

This was some of the hardest work I've ever done...
Trying to do something in under an hour I would normally do in a couple of days, while trying to describe what I'm doing in an understandable way. A real challenge!

Still, I think it turned out alright, I'm really excited about the possibility of getting people into the crazy world of animation!

Happy Feet 2

2011-11-01T20:55:00.001+11:00

About a month ago I finished up work on Happy Feet 2. I worked in the animation department at Dr. D studios in Sydney for the last 3 months of production (aka "crunch time"). I worked on 13 shots all up, mainly facial animation on motion captured penguin characters, but I was also lucky enough to get to animate some fully keyframed bird flying shots. It was a great experience to work on such a big production and with so many talented people. The movie is being released world wide this month.

http://happyfeettwo.warnerbros.com

Once it is released I will be able to update my showreel with the actual shots I worked on.

Split Second: 2 games, with a difference

2011-11-01T20:23:00.001+11:00

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to work on 2 games projects for "A Split Second", the games project produced by Submarine Channel for the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.
The games were designed by contemporary Dutch artists Han Hoogerbrugge and Marcel van Eeden. Each have their own very personal styles and it was quite a challenge to try to reproduce them in a realtime 3d environment.

I modelled, rigged and animated all the characters in Blender, and exported them to the Unity3d game engine, where the very talented Jorrit de Vries integrated them into the games.

For more information check out:
http://www.submarinechannel.com/transmedia/a-split-second/

Asylum of the Free: 20 years on

2011-08-13T16:02:00.006+10:00

Asylum of the Free is a concept album. It is meant to be listened to as a suite, and deals with the positives and negatives of escape through introversion. I wrote it back in 1991 at the age of 16 and originally recorded it on a four track cassette machine. This version is a re-recording completed in 2000. The only section that remains from the original is part 2, "Machine".

Yup, plenty of navel gazing teen angst here, folks!

<p>&amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href="http://sensorymotor.bandcamp.com/album/asylum-of-the-free"&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;Asylum of the Free by The Sensory Motor Project&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;lt;/p&amp;amp;amp;gt;</p>

Unfortunately the streaming web player puts gaps between the tracks. If you want to listen to it gap free, go the bandcamp page to download the tracks.

Sintel on Sintel

2011-08-06T11:55:00.003+10:00

Finally we hear from the star of the movie...

Animation is slightly dodgy, and maybe a little ambitious, but what the hell... it should be good for a laugh.

Enjoy!

An Introvert's Tour of Amsterdam

2011-05-01T21:24:00.002+10:00

see the rest here...

New Reel is Up!

2011-03-31T19:43:00.003+11:00

Here it is....
(check out the animation page for more info)

Biff - Strange Hours

2011-03-26T03:10:00.005+11:00

This is an animation test I did as part of my final class at Animation Mentor.
I used the "Biff" rig by Denny Lindberg.
My mentor for this was Sean Sexton.
All up I spent about a week on this and was quite happy with the result.
Oh yeah, the beer rig is, of course, the classic one from Jeremy Davidson.

The Stuff I did on Sintel

2010-11-12T11:23:00.006+11:00

Here is basically all of the shots I worked on for the Blender Foundation's open movie "Sintel". It was one of the greatest learning experiences of my career as a pixel monkey...

For the record, I wish I could further polish every one of those shots. Like I said, it was a BIG learning experience.

Opening titles: "Weddings: Where Are They Now?"

2010-11-12T11:04:00.006+11:00

Here's a blast from the past...
This is the opening titles to a TV show that aired on Channel Nine in Australia in mid 2009. The brief was to tell the story of ten years of marriage in ten seconds.
It was created in 2 weeks from concept to delivery. I storyboarded, modelled, rigged animated and composited it all in that time. Sheesh! I sure could've used another week to actually finish it.

DISCLAIMER: Bare in mind that I worked on this before ever studying character animation.
(If I knew then what I know now...)

BTW, All the 3D was done using Blender.

Animation Mentor progress reel: November 2010

2010-11-12T10:41:00.007+11:00

This is most of my work so far at Animation Mentor. I'm now working on dialogue shots. My first is included here.

Facial expressions - sketchbook assignments

2010-10-25T20:45:00.008+11:00

Here are some of my sketchbook assignments for animation mentor. The idea is to pick a photo that conveys a clear emotion and reproduce it with a cg character rig. The rig they supply,"Bishop", can be a little tricky to wrangle into shape, especially given the HUGE eyes, lack of the bridge of the nose and lack of forehead.
Any way, here's what I've done so far...

(This is my favourite one so far.)

Sintel is finally here!

2010-10-01T20:16:00.009+10:00

After months of work, it's finally released. It was such a big learning experience, and I'm so glad to have been involved...

Durian Timelapse

2010-07-27T21:55:00.004+10:00

Here's a time lapse I did of the Project Durian team at work at the Blender Institute:

The music is "Perambulator" by my Simon Leonard

Amsterdam Timelapse

2010-07-27T07:07:00.005+10:00

I've been experimenting with making timelapse movies with my stills camera.
This all goes a little fast, but it's cool to watch...

Animation Mentor - class 3 progress reel

2010-07-26T21:50:00.006+10:00

Here is my progress reel as of March 2010:

I took some time off after class 3 to work on the Durian project (more on that later).

Animation Mentor - class 2 - second assignment

2009-11-25T17:35:00.004+11:00

This is a little animation exercise I did in Blender for my course at animation mentor. I used Nathan Vegdahl's excellent biped rig.

The exercise was to have a character walk in the wind. Instead of doing the cliche of having the character walking into a headwind, I had him jogging with the wind coming from the side.

Class 1 Progress Reel

2009-10-01T07:33:00.006+10:00

Here's my progress reel from class 1 of Animation Mentor.

I passed, and now I'm onto "The Psychology of Body Mechanics"...

Here are some of the poses I did...

"Balance"

"Strength"

"Devastated"

"Excited"

Animation Mentor - Class 1, Week 7

2009-08-16T02:32:00.003+10:00

I was happy with this one and decided to add some lighting...

Baby Steps

2009-08-16T00:45:00.005+10:00

Bouncing balls and pendulums, these are my first few assignments for animation mentor...
So far it's all been done in Blender, but I'm slowly learning Maya too.

2009-07-16T22:22:00.004+10:00

Okay, here's my go at a blog...

First up, here's an animation I finished about a year ago.
It was basically a learning exercise I used to get up to speed with Blender (the 3d program, not the appliance). While it got a good response from people (2008 Suzanne award nominee and judges' choice finalist for iiNet's Get Animated competition), there are many problems with the animation.
As a result of spending so much time on it, and still seeing so many problems, I decided to hit the books and went and enrolled in Animation Mentor.
I'll post progress here as I, um, progress...

A Sad, Sad Song from Beorn Leonard on Vimeo.

Music

While I don't consider myself a "professional" musician, I've been playing in bands for years, most recently in a band called "Oscar". Sometimes it was an attempt to become professional, but most of the time it was to have fun and try to make music that nobody had heard before.

<a href="http://oscartheband.bandcamp.com/album/lost-in-the-mud-2">A Hot Vat of Yak Fat by Oscar the Band</a>
This was our last "album". It was recorded over the course of about five years in various studios (both home and professional) and completed in 2007.

<a href="http://oscartheband.bandcamp.com/album/oscar-fudge-303">On Any Given Day by Oscar the Band</a>
As part of our one show "Don't Stop 'till ya Flop" world tour, Oscar played an "Overblown Concept Gig" at bar 303 (in Melbourne, Australia) on Saturday the 22nd of November 2003. Fortunately someone was foolhardy enough to record the proceedings and this seventeen track album was the result.

<a href="http://oscartheband.bandcamp.com/album/the-deafening-quack">Nga Nga by Oscar the Band</a>
This actually a compilation of Oscar's early music, with music from some of its previous incarnations - "Jester" and the "Sensory Motor Project"