First Fume FX test

So in an attempt to motivate myself I have started mucking around with fume fx. I have been interested in it for a long time.

I'm really keen on how to do fire and smoke in fume so I can render out some kickass textures to be used in UDK.

anyway I booted it up today and had my first go at making something in fume fx

It's really amazing how easy it is to make something look good :). Still could use some work on smoke colour etc though.

Also I recently bought the book elemental magic which is all about creating 2d special effects. It has a lot of concepts that still translate over to 3d and the thing i love the most is throughout the book they deconstruct each effect they do and show how everything works when compared to nature.

I'd reccomend it to any fx artist

http://www.amazon.ca/Elemental-Magic-Special-Effects-Animation/dp/0240811631/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314535214&sr=8-1

Photoshop Smoke

So I've been doing some mucking around this weekend trying to improve my Photoshop skills by making some smoke in Photoshop using a combination of various filters.

The results turned out a bit meh but still a step in right direction.Think ill stick to using photo reference stuff in future.

Im really trying to get myself motivated to be more proactive and study more.

Blue wierd smoke

 More realistic smoke

VFX stuff

So its been a while since i've made an update. Things have been pretty busy over the last month with starting a new job as junior fx artist.

Recently I been doing a lot of research on vfx and am working on improving my skills in photoshop,after effects and 3d s max when it comes to visual effects.

I have found a few websites such as

www.videocopilot.net has lots of awesome after effect tutorials

http://www.allanmckay.com/allanmckay/

Really love the fume fx stuff and would love to learn more about it.

Either way i've got a week off work before things get really busy, so im looking at using this week to hopefully work on some personal projects.
So keep an eye on the blog for more frequent updates

New FX Job

Hey Everyone, I know I havent posted in a while the last week and a half has been pretty full on. I have been doing a lot of overtime at work in QA getting age of conan ready for the free to play patch :).

Also I recently applied for and got a position as a Junior Fx artist for Funcom games studio :)
This is such an amazing opportunity and I cant even begin to say how excited I am about it. The more I've gotten into fx the more im loving it. It lets me animate and bring particles to life however in a more technical fashion.

I start in another week and I cant wait

To check out some of my fx work I've done so far check out www.brendonvince.com

A week to Recharge :)

Just thought I'd do an update to let everyone know that I haven't died or anything :P.I'm just taking a week to relax a bit and get some reading in on all the books I have bought. I am really digging the drawn to life series :)

walking into the night!

So I spent a few hrs this evenning working on a walk. Im still no where near happy with it. The wrist and a bunch of other things arent moving naturally its been a good training exercise but to get a truely good walk im thinking of starting again and keeping my rotations cleaner because I've made a bit of a mess using different rotation types

Busy Week :(

Unfortunately havent been able to post much this week :(.
done over 25 hrs overtime at work this week so havent had a lot of spare time unfortunately. However I still have managed to get a fair bit of study done. I've continued listening to the animation podcast while at work when I get the chance and am really enjoying that It's amazing what little bits of information you can pick up with all those interviews from the great animation pioneers.

I've also been reading through animators survival kit, working on my walk a little and thinking a lot about what to animate for this months 11 second club.
The clip this month is aweosme however with 2 characters reckon its gunna be really challenging. I will have to start thumbnailing it over the next week and hopefully start with blocking it next wekeend. I dont know how terrible its going to turn out but either way its a learning excercise.