Finally an update years later!

It has been a very long time since I have posted an update on my blog/site mostly because working and day to day life keeps you in a routine and you forget to do these things. So going to post up a recent demo reel I slapped together, honestly not all of my best work but I wanted to get something together since I havent....at all since I been at HiRez.

I expect to use this format of the demo reel to update overtime, once my project is finished I can update my reel with my best and newest things as well.


Demo Reel 2016 from Matt Broderick on Vimeo.

Unannouced Project Animations

Forgot I had these animations laying around. These were some test animations I did for an announced project. These were mostly me getting use to the rigs and trying to get a feel for the characters. Nothing was put into game they were just test loops and such, while the Tool hammering animation was going to be used for a game play video.

Sorry for the ugly blogger video, Vimeo was giving me issues Ill have to re upload it later.

Digipen Senior Project

I totally realized I never posted this up. This was our final project for our senior year at Digipen. It was originally designed to be a 3/5 minute short with 2d Sequences and an extra cave environment but like any production issues arose along the way and we had to sadly scrap many things. In the end we had to cut it down to a trailer of what it was suppose to be. It really hurt but it had to be finished and polished, even if it was just a trailer. 

The particular shots I animated are the dragon fire breath (FX not done by me), Kid on the ground reaching behind him, and the sword grab. I of course had many other shots but they were taken out as we pushed towards the end. 

Im going to be uploading a bunch of animatics, storyboards and art from this since I really love the pre production work we put into this.

   

Knight Helm

Figured I may as well attempt to start the 3D model and im pretty happy with it. I still have some scaling and adjustments to do but first pass im pretty happy with. Next hurdle will be to figure how I want to do the body pieces, since all the gaps are mostly done with chain mail.

Persians Launched

We just launched / are launching the new civilization for Age of Empire Online the Persians;

 So within the next few weeks I will be posting up a video showing off all the animations I have done for the persians. Just need to double check that im allowed to but I wouldn't see why not. Either way I will provide a list of things I have done for the persians for those who are interested.

Also I believe its time I update my resume since the one on here is out of date.....

Job for me hurray

Well got the job at Gas Powered Games and cant be more excited bout it. Since posting anything I do does require some permission from Microsoft even though the two new civs (Persians and Celts) were announced the the Age of Empire Online game I will post up trailers for now.

So far I have done a lot of secondary animations and building destruction using Reactor in 3D max. The game ships with two civs, the Egyptians and Greeks and I haven't done any work for either of them since I joined while they were in the middle of the Celts.

For the time being, here is our most recent trailer.

Almost there

More cleaning up

Rawr

Progressing on fire blast shot. Obviously the FX isn't in yet, our tech artists is working on the separately. Still need to rework Alex's pose before he falls back and some clean up on the dragons curves.

Alex Hair WIP

Since other team members are busy with their respective parts of the project I have taken up on completing our main characters hair.

Now the hair texture that was given to me to use is just a base rough texture that can be used on the planes to be layed out. Still work in progress as I wait to get feedback from art director so I can get this finished by the end of the week.

Dragon time

Our Dragon finally has an animatable rig. The rig isn't final and neither is the skinning but its far enough along for us to use. He is going to be blowing fire so that effect is not in obviously, and his jaw is not rigged because they are double checking the exact "hing" location so it moves right I believe.

Got feedback about giving him more attitude and I have the check his pose compared to the previous shot since I noticed some skipping between the two shots.

Now with textures

Finalized animation, now with textures! Textures done by Heather Gross from my team.

Cleaning things up

This scene has been difficult, lot of work with timing primarily. Trying to not have things tween or go to slow or to fast, its a delicate balance to get it looking right. Right now I like how it is, I just need to play up the "Reaction". And obviously clean up curves and do a pass on fingers and fine tune facial.

Moar animations

Oh hey look more animations!

This one is "done". Right now its missing our final facial rig but that is being added as I speak......or well type.

Revisiting this now that it is on my schedule to be worked. So far I took where i left off and splined it and cleaned up some timing and keys, im surprised how well it translated over from stepped keys to splined. I need to work out the first sword grab when he goes for it on his shoulder and quickly realizes it aint there and reaches over to grab it on the ground. Action isnt reading too well, its too fast so I have to work that out. I might have keep it simple and make it only one action for the amount of time I have.

New block ins

Some new Block ins for Little Knight

Walking out of Cave into Lava Field

 Falling back, reaching for sword and quickly realizes it isn't on his back and then turns to grab it on the ground.

And grabs his sword

My animation sequence from Little Knight

Blocked in animation sequence I have done from Senior Project "The Little Knight"

First Little Knight Blockins

I can finally start animating, after months and months of work its finally time!

I spent the day drawing up thumbs (plan to upload later) from vid ref of my team mate Derek and then blocking into 3D max.

Spent most of my time on the first reaction shot and got feed back in class and team mates. Then the rest of the day I nailed out the other two shots.The environment I also blocked out last week seems to be working well, I have all the camera's laid out and it Xrefed over perfectly with layers intact. Micha's rig seems to be working fine, some bugs need to be worked out but for blocking in it works great.

(I masked in the 2D dragon for this preview since he isn't rigged yet)

Fight Stage

After a full week off of classes due to snow and thanksgiving I was able to sit down and push out the final fight "stage" scene block in.

Got crits on Saturday and going to make adjustments to scenes (not shown for that reason) to match them to the drawings more.

Cave Enviroment Initial Block in

Last week put together a Blocked in environment for The Little Knight of the cave scene. This is just a basic block in with camera's so we can start animating while our ZBrush artists can start topogunning and zbrushing away.

Knight's Sword

Blocked in Sword for our Little Knight Project. Concept by my team mates.

Had to work off that one drawing, so the details about the swirl around the guard was mostly just a concept and idea. I'm really happy (and my team was too) how well it turned out.

The Little Knight Animatic

Midterm animatic for our senior project; The Little Knight. We have spent the last 2 weeks re making our original for this presentation.

I and other team mates put a lot of work into aftereffects fixing up timing, and getting effects to work.