Francesco Giroldini's Blog

More Figure

2011-08-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

All between 5' and 20'

Now in colors

2011-08-10T23:11:00.000-07:00

Sketchcrawl and such

2011-07-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

Lindseys

2011-07-24T21:05:00.000-07:00

Weirdies

2011-07-14T21:10:00.000-07:00

Mean Model

2011-07-13T00:23:00.001-07:00

This model was mean. We asked him to do 10 or 15 minutes poses and he refused, coming up with some outlandish excuses.
Since he refused to pose for anything longer than five minutes, I drew him with an enlarged cranium..

A tiny cranium..

An eggplant-shaped head..

A melting head..

A receding waist..

Laughable proportions..

And a third leg.

Whah happenz!?

2011-04-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

Hello friends

I just finished up some work on Kung Fu Panda 2 and a TV special based on Monsters vs Aliens and I'm now helping the development of a top-secret project in DreamWorks!

In the meantime, please enjoy some of my culinary explorations:

Animation Tag Attack - Attack of The Bearduck

2011-01-26T20:56:00.001-08:00

Hello friends

Me and Brendan were asked by a friend, Christen Bach to be part of a project
called "Animation Tag Attack" , an open ended short movie, fruit of the collaboration of 12 independent artists from all over the world.
After about 2 months of work here is our contribution:

For more information about the project, click here: "Animation Tag Attack"

Figures

2010-12-07T18:48:00.000-08:00

DingDongDoodles

2010-10-25T21:14:00.000-07:00

Dynamic Hair Tutorial

2010-09-26T15:43:00.001-07:00

Dynamic Hair Tutorial

love

2010-09-17T20:01:00.001-07:00

That is the view from my apartment in San Francisco <3

This is a painting I'm working on for Tata Gala <3

And those are some initial studies for it <3

Here are some fuzzy creatures <3

Some figure drawing work <3

and finally, some quick doodles! <3

The Monk & The Monkey on Vimeo

2010-08-31T10:59:00.000-07:00

The Monk & The Monkey - Vimeo

New Ncloth Video Tutorial

2010-08-26T21:31:00.001-07:00

Hello friends

I recorded a new tutorial about Ncloth that shows you how to easily use joints, blendshapes or any other kind of deformer to control your cloth simulation!

This is a really cool way to achieve more artistic control over the cloth simulation!

Joint-Driven Cloth Simulation

And for those who never used Ncloth before, here's a link to a previous tutorial I recorded about Ncloth that should give you a head-start!

Intro to Ncloth

Credit for this technique goes to Bohdon Sayre!

moar drawings

2010-08-13T22:34:00.000-07:00

Monk & The Monkey website

2010-07-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends
After our short movie got into Siggraph me and Brennie decided put together a website for it..
so I put together a small website: http://monkmonkey.com/
that is meant to grow over the next weeks, and incorporate some process work and some other stuff.

Here are some thingies I drew in the last few weeks I've been here in San Fran.

San Francesco

2010-06-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends, it's been about 2 months ever since I graduated from Ringling College of Art and Design:

Soon after graduating I went to Italy with my baby:

We had an exciting time!

We traveled a lot!

Went to Milan..

Venice..

and Rome.

After 3 weeks of fun we went back to the US.

And I soon after moved to San Francisco!

Where I started working at Dreamworks Animation, as Lighter!

And I'm currently working on Megamind!

The end.

Lighting Tutorial - Stevie

2010-04-22T19:51:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends

I put together a Tutorial explaining how I usually approach Lighting/Compositing of a shot, from beginning to the end.

Here

Model and Textures provided by the ever-so-talented Stevie Lewis
Hope you guys dig it!

new lighting reel

2010-03-13T13:10:00.000-08:00

Hello everybody
I just uploaded the new lighting demo reel on my website!
I hope you guys like it!

Temple Screenshots

2010-02-28T14:46:00.000-08:00

thesis progress

2010-01-27T20:03:00.000-08:00

Renderman for Maya Lighting and Compositing Video Tutorial

2010-01-18T08:25:00.000-08:00

Hello Friends, I recorded a new Lighting & Compositing tutorial using renderman for maya and after effects.

Here

I go over techniques I usually use to block a shot in and quickly get a feeling for it with as few lights as possible.
I explain how to apply the linear workflow on textures in order to get more natural lighting.
I finally show how to break down the shots into passes and composite them together in After Effects.

I hope you enjoy!

thesis wallpapers

2009-12-01T20:51:00.001-08:00

Website update

2009-10-29T23:27:00.000-07:00

Texturing Progress

2009-10-24T09:36:00.001-07:00

Simple Animation Test

2009-10-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a quick animation test me and Brendan worked on..

I was responsible for the animation on Ragu'(the kid) and the Lighting & Compositing.
Brendan animated Bobo (the monkey) and Joe.

Eye Shading and Rigging - Video Tutorial

2009-10-06T01:29:00.000-07:00

Hi guys, I made a video tutorial that describes in detail how I usually create the eye shaders for my CG characters.

The scene file includes the final rig that allows to move the specular highlights around independently from the eyes position. By scaling the main controls it's also possible to increase or decrease the intensity of the specular highlights and by scaling the secondary controls it's possible to control the blurriness of the highlights.

enjoy!

movie

scene files and textures

An outer NURBS sphere is mapped on the transparency with a ramp.
The sphere is mapped on the incandescence with a highlight texture (a white dot on a black background) mapped with 3d projection (set to either sphere or ball).
The 3d texture can be rotated to rotate the specular highlights around.
Inside the sphere I placed polygonal mesh with a custom shader assigned to it.
The shader consists in a layered texture that combines a hand painted texture with a maya ramp.
The maya ramp is mapped in the color offset with the out color of a ramp shader set to normalized brightness.
The ramp shader's purpose is to add a little bit of color variation on the brighter side of the iris.

Dynamic Joints - Video Tutorial

2009-10-04T00:07:00.000-07:00

hello guys, I recorded a demo about creating dynamic joints.. this is a cool technique that allows to create automatic overlap on any type of mesh..

bobo_test.mov

if you have antennas, hats, or whatever thing you can come up with, and you want to be able to overlap it by hand (using joints) but you also want to be able to get some automatic overlap.. you might love this.

dynamicJoints.mov

Lighting Video Tutorial

2009-09-17T23:21:00.002-07:00

Thesis Characters - Work in Progress

2009-09-10T21:57:00.001-07:00

character turnaround - movie file

Ncloth Video Tutorial

2009-09-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Covering:

Modeling tips for good simulation
Creation of a cloth
Creation of collision objects
Collision Layers
Constraints
Quality settings
Simulation settings
Setting an initial state
Caching

Ncloth Video Tutorial

Thesis progress

2009-09-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

New Boards

2009-06-18T20:39:00.001-07:00

More Figure Drawing

2009-06-17T17:17:00.001-07:00

Thesis Boards

2009-06-12T11:01:00.001-07:00

Here are some boards from our thesis Idea..
We're developing the story and the characters at the same time, trying to squeeze as much character as we can in the short amount of time we have..

Figure Drawing Fun

2009-06-10T16:58:00.001-07:00

Thesis Progress

2009-05-16T21:26:00.000-07:00

Monkey!

Building an Online Portfolio using Dreamweaver, Flash and Photoshop

2009-05-15T22:54:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody!
I put together a series of Video Tutorials about creating an online portfolio using Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Flash.. Here they are:

Building an Online Portfolio

If u can't wait to see how the final website looks like here is a link to it:
click here

And if u want the files to follow the tutorials, here they are...
click here

If anybody finds this useful, or if anybody has any suggestion or question please contact me!

Summer Break

2009-05-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

I modeled one of the 3 senior thesis characters face
Day 1:
WIP, Took approximately 5 hours

Day 2: Started modeling the body:

Monk 2nd Day Turnaround

Day 4th: Rough Model Completed
Head and hands pretty much done, the rest still work in progress.

Day 5th: I has hair!
Soon I'll apply transparency maps!

Website Update

2009-04-05T16:12:00.000-07:00

Demo Reel 2009

2009-04-03T22:21:00.001-07:00

I updated my demo reel!

Figures From Imagination

2009-02-17T16:27:00.000-08:00

Push Pull Exxaggerated

2009-02-08T20:56:00.001-08:00

I finished compositing my exaggerated push/pull a couple of weeks ago.. here it is..

Push/Pull exxaggerated
I didn't have time to add sound.. :(

And here is the model turnaround of the cutie cutie:
Cutie Turnaround

Hope you liked these!

Renderman For Maya and Mental Ray For Maya Video Tutorials

2009-01-23T22:49:00.001-08:00

Hello everybody I made some video tutorials about Renderman For Maya and Mental Ray:

I'm covering some advanced features in renderman such as sss (subsurface scattering), environmental lights, deep shadows, outputs etc

Enjoy!

More Drama

2008-12-11T14:56:00.001-08:00

Another painting from DFA.
Hope you love it!
Hi-res - here

Drama

2008-11-20T17:28:00.000-08:00

Painting Based off the Little Prince And The Mech idea..
Painted in Painter, touch-ups in Photoshop.. not exactly finished, but it's already time to move on.

Hope you like it!

One Minute Project

2008-11-17T23:54:00.000-08:00

Finished another animatic!

Hi-res
Low-res
Yep, it was me who did the voice for the little shit!

Hope you liked it!

Push/Pull natural

2008-11-07T00:58:00.000-08:00

Here's how my push/pull natural turned out..

Hi-res - 60 megs
Low-res - 20 megs

I'm working on the exaggerated one right now, it's gonna be done in a couple of weeks!
Hope you liked it!

Self Caricature

2008-10-23T02:44:00.001-07:00

Postman Joe - Episode 2 - The Suicidal Fernando

2008-09-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

DFA part 2

2008-09-20T22:29:00.000-07:00

Door Animatic

2008-09-14T23:45:00.000-07:00

Just finished working on this animatic, Had a lot of fun designing the dog and doing the sound mixing, here are some preliminary storyboards.

And here's the final animatic

Most of the animation has been done using the new puppet tool inside after effect.

Shark Model

2008-09-13T23:39:00.000-07:00

Here's the result of 2 days of hard work..
I added some detail inside zbrush, exported normal maps using zmapper and rendered using mental ray.
The teeth are done using a combination of transparency maps and bump maps.

And here's the wireframe

Character Designs

2008-09-09T07:55:00.000-07:00

Shark Concept

2008-08-20T20:01:00.000-07:00

Modeling Update

2008-08-16T01:52:00.000-07:00

Even More Figure Drawing

2008-08-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

More Figure Drawing

2008-08-12T03:21:00.000-07:00

Character Modeling Update

2008-08-06T09:46:00.001-07:00

Here's an update for this model.

Character Modeling

2008-08-03T01:17:00.001-07:00

I started modeling the creature that I have been sketching for the last month and a half. The modeling is taking less than I expected and it's looking really good, I managed to get the exact look that I was looking for in my drawings. The renders here are done using a simple lamber material and the new feature in Mental Ray: "Physical sun and sky". I applied a Catmull subdiv scheme to the model through the approximation editor so that it converts to subdi at rendertime and therefore renders smoother and faster.

Back at the MET

2008-07-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

Here are a couple of painful drawings from life from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I spent about ten minutes for the first one, and couple of hours of the other 3.
While I was working on the second one, I noticed that the lighting changed, the natural light got dimmer and the artificial lights got stronger, so it didn't turn out exactly how I wanted..
I'm also posting some more sketches of this character that I'm working on.

Hard Labour

2008-07-28T21:40:00.001-07:00

More Figure Drawings

2008-07-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

Nailing Down a Couple of Character Designs

2008-07-23T21:14:00.000-07:00

Character Ideas

2008-07-10T00:18:00.001-07:00

One day in NY

2008-06-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

Doodles

2008-06-26T09:43:00.000-07:00

Creatures

2008-06-26T09:05:00.001-07:00

Drawing Class

2008-06-26T08:23:00.000-07:00

Trip to MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art)

2008-06-25T12:56:00.000-07:00

First Post

2008-05-21T20:15:00.001-07:00

First post here on my new blog!

School just started here in New Jersey; I'm taking 4 classes here that I'm going to transfer back to Ringling at the end of the summer.

I put together the best work I have done last year at RCAD in a 3 min long showreel, I hope you enjoy it:

Giroldini Francesco - Reel 2008