College Highlight Reel

This is a look at all my hard work in receiving my BA in Film and Media Arts from the University of Utah. I have been educated in film history, film production, 2D and 3D animation as well as game development.

The Runt

This is a link to a game I helped make in a team of 3 other guys for a computer science class.
I worked hard on the animation side of it.

(The window to play the game in is small, but if you can hit shift and scroll your mouse wheel it will enlarge the game and be better to play.)

http://www.eng.utah.edu/~calvins/final_project.htm

Hand Drawn

Here is some hand drawn stuff I did of mostly super heroes among other things in my free time. I still have a whole box of stuff just sitting in my front room that needs to be scanned and added. Some day...

To me now, this doesn't look impressive, but this was the first still life I ever did for a drawing class, and it was free hand. So I just really like it.

Just a quick sketch of a character I like.

I combined M.C. Escher with Spider-Man

Just Jesus, nobody special or anything. (I kid of course)

These are all split into parts this is 1 below 2 and then 3

 I still have a WIP to make this into a digital drawing.

Digital Painting

I decided to dabble in making some digital paintings. I saw this style in a lot of Rockstar Games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption and decided to try it.

 This I did of my best friend as a joke in just a few hours. I just wanted to play with color and didn't worry about blending them so much.

This painting did take some considerable time. It is of my brother Sam on his Harley. I think he was more excited when I made this for him than he was when he got his actual bike. I learned some fun techniques creating this piece.

Some Flash Made Art

Here is some digital art I have done over the last few years.

I made this of my friend and he really liked it.

I just made this of my dad for fun for Father's Day. He loves cars and racing.

This is my profile pic that I just traced real fast for fun.

A Skeleton Cowboy

Gambit from the X-Men

This is a WIP of an X-Men panorama I hand drew. I would have had it done if flash didn't decide to glitch and erase a big square of it. :( I'll add the finished one when it is done soon.

3D Portrait

I had an assignment in a 3D animation class to convert a painting into 3D. I used a digital one of my own and then converted it into 3D. It was a semester long project to learn to model, texture, light and animate the whole thing. It made me really appreciate what professional animators do to make a feature length film.

This is the original portrait.

HERE IS A LINK TO THE ANIMATION ON MY YOUTUBE PAGE

Figure Modeling

I took a stab at figure modeling from a class I took and I decided to re-create the classic character: Cad Bane from the Star Wars: Clone Wars 3D cartoon series. I really liked him because his face seemed a bit simpler for a beginner. Without a nose or ears to worry about and that he is an alien you can get away with a few mistakes that you can't with a human.

In the creation process I learned a lot. I first had to learn to model in actual clay by hand to get a feel for just what I would be doing in the computer. Then I went ahead and drew up side and front and rear images of the character. I crossed them over in Maya to give it a 360 degree view and then manipulated a block of 3D "clay" to mold to his body shape in the computer. Then I had to design arms hands, head, legs and feet. I had to look at a few anatomy books to get it looking somewhat right. I would still like to make some changes to him someday to look just a little more anatomically correct, but I got an A on the assignment.

I also liked this character because he is a cowboy bounty hunter alien and I love stuff from the old west. Here are some pictures of what I ended up with for the end result from the project. He isn't in cowboy form just because the focus of this class was just to get down modeling. These are just basic textures. The next class that I wanted to take but didn't fit in with my schooling deals with texturing him with z brush, giving him clothing and posing him by learning to make a rig for his body.

His wrinkles were a fun touch.

Hands proved to be challenging.

Stuff From Rapunzel's Fight Knight

In 2010 for my EAE senior capstone project I helped work on concept art for a ton of stuff for the game: Rapunzel's Fight Knight. I also made some models for the game and wrote most of the witty dialogue the knights say in the game as taunts.


We made this game specifically for xbox live indy games. It is now on the market to purchase for like 5 bucks or something.

This is a link to the youtube video showing off the game.

It's a tower climbing/racing game where you combat against other knights to reach Rapunzel first. You can attack each other with gags and get powerups and you have to avoid environmental hazards like ice and spikes.

Here are some images of concept art and a few 3D knick knacks I made for the game.

Concept Knight

Played around with more knight ideas

Rough Concept for Power-ups and Pitfalls

Enviroment and Such

The Reward and the Loser

Cutting the Hair as a Strategy

Shield Concepts below for I believe it was: Irish, Scottish, French and some other one I don't remember. lol

Game Map Rough 1

Revision of game map

Final background map that went on menu screen

Stained Glass Window Idea for the Tower

Another Stain Glass Window Idea

Texture Idea for Tower

Pie Gag

Another view of Pie

Sword Design

Round Table Gag

Other weapon ideas