Digital Storytelling [Final]

The following was the final assignment for Digital Storytelling, a class I took in the Fall at Drexel.
For the assignment my group and I created a movie trailer spoof of the Super Mario Brothers games.
The short was created  in about 6 hours using Photoshop CS5, After Effects CS5, ZSNES, and Final Cut Pro.
My group members included Jenna Dundas and Darielle Brown-Davis.
Voices were provided by Myself and Darielle Brown-Davis.

Multimedia Timeline Design [Final]

Our final in the aforementioned Multimedia Timeline Design was to emulate the preproduction process for a provided script or music video for the song of our choosing. In other words, we created treatments shot lists, story outlines, visual storyboards, and ultimately an animatic of our story/video.
 For my project I chose to create a music video for the Dead Man's Bones song "My Body's a Zombie for You".
 The final output (the animatic) was created using Photoshop CS5 & After Effects CS5.

Many thanks to Dead Man's Bones for music and inspiration.

Multimedia Timeline Design [Weekly]

These works were created in DIGM252: Multimedia Timeline Design, during the Fall Quarter of 2010. The class serves as an introduction to timeline based media (e.g. animation) creation as well as the pre-production process.

The pieces featured here are a sampling of the weekly assignments put forth by the always eccentric Prof. Ted Artz (which makes the explanation and breakdown of each clip somewhat....difficult). Suffice to say that Adobe After Effects CS5 was used for each. Please Enjoy.  

Organic Modelling Audit

 While on break last summer I was able to sit in on the brand new Organic Modelling class at Drexel. During that time I began using Luxology's Modo. I found Modo to be a smoother, less clunky modelling environment which allows for a more rhythmic and efficient workflow. The sceencaps below are examples of early models I created in Modo.

circa July/August 2010

Pardon the Delay.

Many apologies for neglecting to post over the past several months. During that time I have been quite busy working on many school and personal projects and have been overly lax in my blogging practices. That said, I intend to bring Ctrl+Alt+Z up to date with the current growth of my personal portfolio. In an effort to maintain continuity, I will upload these posts in order of creation, oldest pieces first. Said posts will be tagged with the "Welcome Back" label. Once we are back up to speed with the things I am working on, I will retire the Welcome Back label, so that it is clear what is new and what is not. Thanks for playing along, and Welcome Back!

Now in Stunning HD...

These are re-renders of my CGI Final. I was careful to match each shot against the original renders. The original image was 640 x 480 at 72dpi. The new images were rendered at 1280 x 720 with 300dpi. Compare them to these, and see why it was worth the extra render time to get the new shots.

Choose your own adventure.

Spring quarter is ending as we speak. Since I failed to update this blog very much in that time, I have just feebly attempted to make up for it with a bevy of new posts chronicling my exploits over the course of the finals season. As an added bonus, I am including this "choose your own adventure" style post, in case your attention span is too short for 3 whole posts, or in the event that you are interested in my blog, but only mildly and therefore do not care to read all 3.

Let the Adventure begin.

"You have just arrived at a hackney website which chronicles the efforts of a student digital artist (meager as said efforts may be). Before you is a plethora of newly minted posts, each one more shiny and inviting than the last. What will you do??

If you choose to venture into the depths of a mad scientist's lair and discover the abhorrent abomination which has just escaped captivity, Click Here.

If you choose to venture into space on a quest to find your missing family and encounter an alien rodent, Click Here.

If you choose to experience an epic saga of romance, jealousy, and violence as you have never seen it before, Click Here.

If you have chosen not to choose one of the above adventures, Congratulations! You can read all three by scrolling down. Or you can create your own adventure in the comments just below.

Rats, Space, and Senior Projects.

I am not a senior. At least not yet. Which is why I was honored to be involved in one of this year's stand out senior projects in the Digital Media program at Drexel, entitled "Treble in Space". In the animation, I provided the voice for the Rat character.

The project, headed by talented graduating senior Jessie Amadio, is a computer animation that serves as part of an "entertainment system" that dynamically inserts user created videos into the animation. It is meant to increase communication and entertainment value for girls with (but not limited to) Rett Syndrome. -[Desda Vimeo Page]

The final animation (seen below) debuted this past weekend at the 2010 Digital Media Senior Show. Again, it was an honor to be involved.

DESDA's "Treble in Space" from DESDA on Vimeo.

Congratulate Team Desda on graduating with an impressive senior project (and wish them luck in the real world) in the comments below.

In a world....

In addition to my coursework in the Digital Media program this spring, I took a course in Basic Editing; as is requisite for my Minor in Video Production. The class is intended to teach the basics of Final Cut Pro. I say 'intended' because instead of editing we did a lot of casual talking about movies and reading out loud, with a light amount of editing practice peppered in. Nonetheless, below is my final project for the class.

For this assignment, we were to take a footage from an extant film and edit a trailer that portrays said film as a different story or genre. For example, taking a romantic comedy and making it look like a horror movie. For another example: taking Star Wars and making it look like a love triangle with a murderous twist. See below.

Feel free to ridicule my lack of polished editing skills in the comments below.

Basic Editing Final from Jason Kirk on Vimeo.

CGI: Its ALIVE!!!!

Click here to view the scene in HD (with bonus shots)!

Spring quarter at Drexel has been a maelstrom of projects and deadlines, ending this week with three separate production finals. The beast of the bunch was most certainly my Computer Graphic Imagery class; where I learned to create 3d graphical images (with computers). The final project was to model, texture, light, and render an environment of our choosing. I chose Frankenstein's laboratory. Below are the images which were submitted as my final renders.

In the coming weeks I intend to add more volume to the scene in the way of additional objects, as well as address some issues involving lighting and textures.

As always, critiques are welcome in the comments.

DIGM Annual Review Update

A while back I posted about submitting work to the 2010 Digital Media Annual Review at Drexel. The show was held over a month ago, and I was included among the 4 projects representing DIGM 100: Digital Design Tools. I mention it now because there is finally a link online that I can direct you to. Feel free to peruse the entire show below.

2010 Digital Media Annual Review

I'm with Adobe.

I just slapped this together really quickly to demonstrate solidarity with the facebook group entitled I'm with Adobe.

In Space, Nobody Can Hear Your V.O.

Last week I provided the voice over for a character in one of this year's senior project animations; Trebel in Space by Team Desda. The animation is due to premier at the Drexel Digital Media Senior Show in a couple of months. Stay tuned. Below is an early render of the character I voiced, "The Rat King".

DSV Final

Roll-Bot.

Monkeys are in Bloom

Tonight I couldn't sleep, so instead I painted this in Photoshop.

He is based on a doodle I did in class earlier in the week. I am trying to get better at painting from scratch in Pshop, so this was a basic study in doing just that. Now I'm going to take another stab at the sleeping thing.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Especially to my wife, Meghan (sorry ladies). I made the below image for her as a sort of Valentines card. I even printed it on extra nice photo paper, so it's legit. For those of you who dont know us both, Meg's head is composited onto the pin up girl and my head is composited onto cupid. We are not a Barbie-doll and naked winged dwarf couple (not that there would be anything wrong with that, we just arent). I digress:

Plain is the new Fancy...

Enjoy the new look of Ctrl+Shift+Z. I can really only take credit for the header, which I made in Pshop tonight. Getting better all the time, cant get much worse!

For the kids...

Over the Christmas break I had the chance to go and visit my family in Atlanta, Georgia. This usually happens about once a year (if im lucky). Before I went I took photographs of my nieces and nephew in their Halloween costumes and composited them into the settings of their respective characters. See Below:

Darth Asher

An American Rachel

Repunzel Rosie

Mudbox Speed Model

This is what can be considered my first work in 3D. It was done during a SIGGRAPH Student Chapter speed-modeling competition. We were taught how to use Mudbox in 15 minutes and were given an hour to model a basic head shape into something halfway respectable. I think my chimpanzee face turned out halfway respectable, considering I had zero experience with the tools.

Movie Poster Project

The images below are a part of an assignment I completed for my Design for Media I class, where we were to recreate movie posters using only square shapes. All projects in the class are done in grayscale, so pardon the lack of color (Color theory is Design for Media II). Click image title for link to comparison.

Seven Samurai (1954) Metropolis (1927)

2010 DIGM Annual Review Submissions.

Each year students in the DIGM (Digital Media) program at Drexel University have the chance to have their finest work from production classes shown at the end of year Annual Review. Because there are alot of students taking alot of production classes in the program, only the best work is chosen for the show.

This year I was lucky enough to be one of the handful of students from my Digital Design Tools class who was asked to submit work for consideration in the show. As of yet I do not know whether any of the following pieces will be chosen, but my fingers are crossed. Take a look below at the works I have submitted.

Mock Game Title Screen

Mock Game Screenshot

Juxtaposition Image Composite

Digital Self Portrait