A Week Late Culmination of my Final Projects

I'm a bit late on the posting but I've been enjoying my first week of summer break by just not thinking about school work entirely but it has been ahwhile since I last updated this and in all honesty there are only so many splatter films you can watch in theaters until they all start looking the same to you. So here are my finals below.

Lip Syncing with Python #1 -- Digital Sausage Tutorials from Chris Cookson on Vimeo.

This was my final for Programming for Animators class, we had to make a tool that we wanted to use and then make a video demonstrating the tool without it being a boring voiced walk through, I sort of did a deconstruction of that. What I did for this was make a simple character set based lip syncing interface to make the process of lip syncing in python closer to what I'd do in Flash where I'd switch out the different mouth shapes as symbols. The script worked surprisingly well for me and I was able to get the lip part of this video done in only about 15 minutes, and it looks better than my previous lip sync which took infinitely longer.

Feel free to download the code here and give me any feedback if something in it goes horribly wrong. I wrote the code primarily as a tool for myself to make the lip syncing easier for my senior project next year.

Men in Black Kinetic Typography from Chris Cookson on Vimeo.

Likewise, here is my Final for AfterEffects class. This was due a week before all my other finals because it was a Communications Design course instead of Digital Arts so luckily I didn't have to do this in the midst of my other projects but it was a lot of fun regardless. Here I took a 30 second clip from my favorite scene from Men in Black and animated the dialogue in it. Cool! Said scene below...

Chris Cookson Demo Reel (Spring '10) from Chris Cookson on Vimeo.
This is the demo reel I made for pre-production class to send around for internships, check it out in all it's one minute glory.

For film history class, on top of a traditional written final exam, we had to hand in a poster based on one of the films we watched in class. I chose the slapstick Obi-Wan Kinobe vechicle, The Horse's Mouth as the source for the poster. Why not?


...and lastly here is the final render for Character Design class, you've likely seen the concept drawings of her earlier on this blog but here it is completed and with a quasi-dark backstory to it as well.

Hey look, a blog post

Jumper Crash (Experimental Animation) from Chris Cookson on Vimeo.

My midterm for the Programming for Animators class at Pratt Institute animated using mostly Python scripting and then a bit of compositing in AfterEffects at the end. Rob O'Neill was the instructor.

Audio was the track -Jumper- (ID: 168734) from the Newgrounds Audio Portal by user Waterflame.
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/168734

and also here are some things I am working on for character design class



That was my initial sketch, she was based off of an ink blot I found on the now defunct Daily Monster blog when it was asking for user submissions. My idea is that she was a fashion model who sold her right arm to the devil to be granted eternal youth; think of it as District 9 meets The Devil Wears Prada.

and the latest revision of her design so she would look a bit better in 3D...



lastly, here is a rendering of a bust of my head I did in Character Design class; the head is toon shaded while I added in the line art in flash.



as always, be sure to check out both my Vivian blog (where about 60% of my homework time is going towards) and my Twitter for more updates on what I'm doing.

Hey! some of my Ugly Americans stuff is online now...

Here's a quick art post over here, totally getting mauled by Junior yet picking up and taking 16 credits + an internship on the side instead of my usual jobless 13 credit schedule is taking a bit of a toll on me but HERE IS A LOOK INSIDE THE MADNESS!!

some assignments from AfterEffects class too for good measure



...and here's an adorable movie I starred in, I didn't do any of the editing in or anything but I think it came out quite nicely.



...some more of the shots I did on Ugly Americans are starting to show up on ComedyCentral.com as well.


The shot at the :10 second mark in the season 1 highlight reel with the demon baby pouring whisky down the throats of women, I did the women and my good Pratt buddy and Whale Tales co-writer, April Yim did the demon baby. Also, if you saw the Beautiful World spot for Ugly Americans on Hulu, IGN, Kotaku or during practically any commercial break on Comedy Central, the chances are you got to see the 3/4 fish person walk cycles I did for that. Most of the other shots were inbetweened by the rather awesome aisle of interns...a ton of Pratt people :)


Expect more updates next week however, to see if my MEL scripting midterm and Character Design self-portrait didn't turn out in any way disasterous. If you want more frequent updates from me, follow me on Twitter OR check out the Vivian blog to see how often I can change my mind on an idea over the course of two months.

Just a couple of things

I just started a new blog for my Pre-Production class, some of the more polished stuff from there will wind up on Cold Milk Soup but most of the rudimentary conceptual pieces will likely go there. It is mostly a log of my progress for my Senior Capstone project but if you are interested in seeing some of my more sketchier work, check it out!


and while we're at it, here is a render of Greg Reaper, still haven't textured him yet (will have that up next week) but I kind of like the way he looks as is right now.