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.

The last batch of finals and stuff

Hell week is finally over, here are some of the results. The first is my character animation final, will probably fix the pole vectors on the elbows and make he timing more pose based on the second half of the animation before putting it on my demo reel but I'm really happy with how this one turned out check it out! (the embedding on Facebook is a bit funny if the post is not at the top of the page, click here if the videos aren't loading correctly)


I didn't animate this second one but this is animated from a portion of an interview I did for badass, animator extraordinaire/classmate, Eugene. He did a fantastic job translating my mannerisms on to a morbidly obese rabbit. Also, on a side note, this horrifying story is partially true (exaggerated for comedic effect obviously)...but still, this terrifies me vaguely to this day.


Lastly, here's my final for audio class. It's probably the grittiest thing I've ever done, which is weird considering it was originally just a one off joke. If I were to produce this into an actual film, I'd re-record the voices with a professional microphone and make sure to keep the levels in check but I'm really pleased with how I handled the music in this, check it out.


The chords in this were modified from a certain popular Xbox Live Arcade game...can you guess which one it was?

New Video: Fear and Loathing in Willoughby

Here's round one of my onslaught of finals, this one for Lighting and Rendering, bask in the glory of an adorable 3D elephant (which has appeared on this blog a few times already)

Fear and Loathing in Willoughby from Chris Cookson on Vimeo.

My lighting and rendering final, we were supposed to composite 3D animation with HD footage...this is a video of me finding a pink elephant in my bathroom.

October Art Update

Firstly, here was my entry for Pratt's 24 hour animation competition, Bring Your Own Pixel. It's a little rough in spots but it was able to nab me second place, still unsure what prize it would actually entail but from what I heard its a pick between a WACOM Tablet, a 1 TB HDD and a 20" LCD monitor, all are really awesome prizes.

Requiem in D Cup Major from Chris Cookson on Vimeo.

The same week, I also had an assignment due for my character animation class. I'd polish a few more things, and add some titles first before officially putting it on my Vimeo or taking pieces into my future demo reel but it's a fun piece nonetheless. (blogger seems to not want the video to upload, BLECH! I'll find some way to put it up eventually)


Also here are some things that I've been doing for my lighting and rendering class as well, check 'em out, this is the rendering based on the concept sketch I had in my last post.

and while I'm at it, here's some concept art for a compositing project I'll have in that class

and here's a bit of an over saturated rendering of the 3D model I'm making based on the concept art

I've already filmed my video segment for it, but I'd rather post that up here when it's all done.

have a zombie to tide you over...

I know its been a long time between posts, but I have rigs and semi-satirical zombie movies to work on. Have this to tide you over before I get back into the full swing...

Zombie-2-Pass from Chris Cookson on Vimeo.

From the critically acclaimed producer of Dragonball Zebra Slash Brink 2 comes a coming-of-age story about a neurotic teenager who only just found out he was a zombie...one that likes scrambled eggs and walks around in clown make-up that is...

I watch too much TV

To start things out, below is my little montage assignment for Editing class featuring the vocal stylings of Vince Offer of Sham! Wow! fame and special guest appearances from Marvin's Magic, Oxyclean, Set it and Forget It and The Power Juicer.

Also, as long as we're on the topic of advertising, check out these two Japanese fast food ads if you want to see a combination is disgusting and delicious fast food products. I'll probably have that Japanese Pizza Hut "SAUSAGE ROLL" song stuck in my head for ahwhile, they should totally bring that here alongside the inevitable return of Dominos Oreo Pizza.

Yesterday marked my first college snow day, which included tons of Luigi's Pizza and three or four B-horror movies back to back (Demons, Killer Klowns from Outerspace, Bloodsucking Freaks and Ghoulies 2). I still had to return my copy of The Iron Giant to avoid an overly expensive late fee of $12 a day (you can probably buy that movie for $6 at a Costco) but otherwise it was a pretty fun day and I had enough time to finish my Editing assignment and push over my half broken rig that I'm probably going to start over anyway. I also finally got to live out my dream of watching Heroes with a live

Apart from those musings, I've currently been playing a ton of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection on the Xbox 360 alongside bouts of Castle Crashers and Braid. Its weird how 75% of all my current generation game playing has been downloadable or retro titles off of Xbox Live Arcade or the Wii Shop Channel. Despite consoles now having "teraflops" of processing power and whatever else the marketing executives are trying to throw at us, they seem to be forgetting the reason why most people play games...for fun. With a lot of retro titles there's a certain degree of depth but the titles are simple enough where a non-gamer can pick it up and do relatively well. In one sense, this was the point Nintendo was trying to make with the Wii console but after the console caught on with casual markets most of the Wii titles on store shelves are low-rent rush jobs from hack developers trying to get a quick buck. The most depressing thing about this is that now, even Nintendo is jumping on that bandwagon with titles such as Wii Music and the forthcoming ExciteBots (seriously...). I guess Super Mario Galaxy was awesome and my 180 hours of Super Smash Bros. Brawl made the console worth the price of admission alone, but I want just more simple and fun titles like what Mario Kart Wii was promising to be.

After getting used to spending $8 a pop for a Sega Genesis title on the Wii shop channel (or consequently a slightly more reasonable $5 on XBLA), thirty bucks for fifty Sega Genesis titles seemed like a no brainer to me. Apart from the lack of Sega titles like Gunstar Heroes (which I got on the Wii Shop Channel anyway and its omission is probably foreshadowing its Xbox Marketplace release) the collection is surprisingly solid and polished with enough special features that you are getting a much more refined experience than playing the titles for 10 minutes off of a ROM.

My favorite thing about Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection would be how it handles the Xbox's achievements. While I don't exactly want to say all the achievements are easy, they're all perfectly attainable by just about anyone and they encourage you to play through a lot of the obscure "non-Sonic" Sega titles. Few of the games achievements force you to spend more than 10 or 20 minutes with each Genesis title and it adds a nice little meta game to the title. Alongside each achievement that you unlock, you also get video interviews and some arcade and Master System titles. While, with the notable exception of Space Harrier, none of these arcade titles are really THAT phenomenal, its a nice touch, especially for those who don't really care too much about their GamerScore.

I'm already five or six hours into Castle Crashers which reminds me of what you'd get if you mixed together Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles and Golden Axe. Like Crystal Chronicles, this game is painfully boring alone and despite featuring a level system, each incremental stat boost is miniscule enough where a beginner could easily drop in at any stage of the game and catch up pretty quickly. Its a huge time suck and an obvious improvement over the Bahemoth's Alien Hominid, which I played quite a bit of on the Gamecube. Also I picked up Braid with it being reduced to $10 as opposed to $15 last week. Despite the critical acclaim, I could never see myself paying $15 for a game that could be essentially beaten in a day but pair the price reduction with Best Buy's 2 Free Watchmen tickets with purchase of $20 in Microsoft Points and Braid could consider itself bought. I've only just started playing it and my impressions are a lot stronger than they were with the one level demo they had of it on Xbox Live. The game is a lot more surreal than I was expecting and the puzzles are pretty mind bending. I see the real length of the game comes from trying to figure out how to get all the puzzle pieces, which I'm desperately trying to avoid reading the walkthrough to figure out.

That's it for this post, now I'm off to fill out more paperwork for Pratt and get a jump start on my next batch of work for Storyboarding.

Crown Fried

Here's that movie I made last week for my Video Editing class showing a trip to Crown Fried Chicken, the sketchiest fast food restaurant on all of Myrtle Avenue. Make sure to click the "HD" button on the video or go to the Vimeo page. This is the first thing I shot high def.

Quick Post of Animation Finals

Here's my 3D final, the lip sync is maybe like 5 frames off after it got uploaded to Facebook but its mostly there.



and here's Robo-Nader



both of these things will be up on the website pretty shortly.

Chris Cookson makes art at art school apparently

I haven't really gotten around to updating this blog as much as I'd want, but at least I've got some pretty pictures out of it.

way old high school stuff

Looking through my old high school stuff is like looking through an old photo album. There are some things I'm proud of while there are other things I just don't understand why I did. Here are the videos I find "watchable" from high school. Its like looking into a deeper portrait of my soul...or something...

Don't Do PSP
Belts Out a Facemelter
This was a rotoscope project. It was my first time rotoscoping so you can see I changed my style halfway through drawing it. I didn't really want to draw in my body so I went for a more kaleidoscope effect with it. Looked kind of cool.

Average Day in New Jersey
This was a project where I had to take a 30 second audio clip and animate over it. I had a friend of mine figure out the lips while I created a situation around it. That same friend added in more blood fountains to the project. Was probably a good idea.

Some Old Guy Pelvic Thrusting

This was for a project where we had to animate someone dancing to one of four looping audio tracks. I couldn't really come up with any dance, so I just drew this old guy pelvic thrusting instead.

Dragonball Zebra Slash Brink 2
I didn't really have a whole lot to do with this movie. I animated the Zebra's run cycle within the first 10 seconds or so of the movie, and for the few seconds on screen its pretty rockin'. I'm not sure about the rest of this project but it has that kind of 10 year olds goofing around with their parent's movie camera charm to it, so its awfully hard to rag on this. I also learned how much I hate green screens from this too.

4D Design Class

Here are some of the videos I've made in 4D design class during foundation year at Pratt, I especially like the Laundry Day one. I know the embedding looks a bit weird, but after you play it, it scales to the right size.








and here are some of the movies I starred in