1987

Haven't updated in awhile now. Mostly because i'm on winter break back in North Dakota and am relaxing. I have been working with flash since then, but nothing will start to roll out until I get back to the cities.

I did stumble upon something kind of interesting on Wikipedia earlier today. I searched November 21 and under notable births I found...



...a spanish football player named Jesus Navas. Just thought I'd share that.

But, it's time to go to bed (2am) and there is plenty of post-holiday shopping ahead.

Done with Finals, finally!

Haven't posted anything in a week or so. Decided to put up some work from past quarters at Ai. Finals ate up most of my time this week. In the end, my creature design turned out great and so did my 3d-modelled human head.



I could have worked harder on my last maquette, but I wanted to focus more on my creature. I didn't see much point in wasting clay on a pointless maquette. One that I would present to the class for 5 minutes and then never have a use for.

I'm glad I spent the extra time on my designs. Its definitely going in the portfolio, in its current form or some other. I've started working on a seperate maquette, that I can sculpt and not rush.



Over break I'm gonna be working on a beefing up my demo reel with flash animations. I'm also entering into a flash bumper contest with a buddy of mine. It needs to be 5-30 seconds long and the deadline is Jan. 21. Sounds easy, but the animation and design will have to be impeccable. Grand prize is $2,000 for the open category and $500 for students. Will have to see how well it turns out and decide which we'll enter. Heck, if I could do this year round...and earn money doing it, that'd be great.

I'm also working on a new portfolio design. Something in the lines of the new logo above. But, the art dump begins...



3rd Quarter, Class: Advanced Drawing for Animation, the assignment was to create 5 self portraits (10 drawings total) each in a different art style.



3rd Quarter, Class: Digital Imaging, assignment was to texture a wooden crate with a logo. (Cardboard boxes shipped in wooden crates?! HA!!! the irony!!!)


1st Quarter, Class: Drawing and Perspective, assignment was to draw a portrait of someone of our choice. Feeling lucky punk?


2nd Quarter, Class: Color and Design, part of our final project. self portrait.

Creature Design

This is part of my final project for Character and Object Design. We have to create a creature. Which includes 5 colored drawings illustrating the lifestages of the creature, 1 drawing of skeletal structure, 1 drawing of muscle composition, and 1 final colored illustration.

The creature is a fast moving desert carnivore. Using its speed, it will tackle its prey. This is it in its adult stage of life.
The design was influenced by gorillas, rhinos, and bison.

I haven't settled on which color scheme I want to go... it'll probably be one of these two.




The top illustration is the beginning of my final illustration and the bottom is one of the 5 lifestage drawings. I'll make sure to put up the rest of the designs when they are finished.

Mario 2

Mario and Luigi...real life working men.


Saved the file luckily... here's the progress so far. I added some grime to the characters. Plumbing isn't necessarily a pretty job... so I intend to dirty them up even more. Expect facial hair stubble, sweaty arm pits , and unknown stains. I also put in a temp background for now.

Ok... gotta go to bed, now.

I've busy coloring all kinds of drawings tonight. So here I am coloring my Mario picture, after spending 2-3 hours on it... I decide to piece together stages of progress. After its complete I then save over my file, eliminating all the layers I was working with... which made it incredibly clean and easy to color before. Not a good thing. :( I need to go to bed.

Zomboy!

In high school I toyed around with the idea of a zombie teenager, or at least something along those lines... out of it came Zomboy. Come four years later, I now have a working script for an animated short revolving around the idea, and I've started to flesh out the artwork and characters.



This is Adam. He, himself, is not a zombie. He is a shy kid with a small group of friends. His twin brother, Eric, is the most popular kid in school and a flesh-eating zombie.

Fanny Pack Hero!

UPDATE: For some unknown reason, our video submission was uploaded wrong (or that is the conclusion we've all come to).

We submitted the entry 3 hours prior to the deadline and followed all the contest guidelines. Right after uploading it to Ziddio (the site where the contest is held), George uploaded it to YouTube with no problems. A link exists to where the video should be, but the video doesn't load.

At first, I thought that it was just being verified for appropriate content (no spam, porn, ect.), but 2 days have gone by and its a no-show. We can't resubmit it now that the entries are closed.

Its a little upsetting b/c I think we had a chance to be in the top 3. (first would probably have gone to another video that was submitted this weekend)

Here is the link to the video.
______

The video entry is complete!
We're waiting for it to be verified through Ziddio.

YouTube compressed the sound really low. The background music is hard to hear, unless your speakers are up higher.



Credits:
Matthew Kvamme - Animation and acting
George Ganser - Filming and editing
Anthony Rooney - Writing

Attack of the 80's

G4tv's Attack of the Show had a contest for viewers to create a commercial for a fake 1980's video game in 2 weeks (1 of which we knew about). We came up with the idea of Fanny-pack Hero!

We filmed half the commercial in live-action (starring myself and George... which I'll post when its 100% finished) and filled the other half with "gameplay" animation. The video is the animation I put together.

Fanny Pack Hero animation
Uploaded by mdkvamme

Crumby internet-quality as usual. The contest deadline is tomorrow night, 11:59pm. The winner's video will premier live (I believe) Wednesday night at 6:00pm.

In comparison to the competition so far... I'd say we have a good chance of winning. The prize is Live Free or Die Hard on DVD, Rock Band for Xbox 360 (which includes all the instruments and retails for 180.00$), a guitar stand and drummer's seat.

The winner is also entered into the championship contest in February as well. We put alot of effort and time into it and hopefully it pulls through.

More Graffiti

T-rex Graffiti
Uploaded by mdkvamme

Graffiti has a feature that replays the drawing at mach speed. Problem is that it doesn't have a save feature. So I recorded a video of it.

Happy Birthday to me!!! :

This is how I spent the beginning hours of my 20th birthday...

Work in-progress: 2:21AM

Completed: 4:21AM
I'm not 100% thrilled with the outcome, but it's done on time :) Now its time for bed. Good night.

Roar!!!

...A dinosaur I sketched out on Tony's facebook profile with the Graffiti application.

This is a character for my Character and Object Design course. The assignment was to create a character with an event that changes their personality. My story: A rich art snob is arrested for fraud. His wife, with no means of financial support, is forced to work as a lunch-lady.


This is a the mouse I modeled for my Intro to 3D Modeling course. Its still rough around the edges, so I may go back and tidy it up a bit.

Happy Burf-day

This is an animation I put together for a friend. That friend's name has been removed to protect Liz's identity.

Itza-me Mario!

I apologize for the quality of this pic. I plan to fully color this sketch. Story: Jerry and I, wearing 3-D glasses, drove a friend to the hospital one night. We became self-declared Heroes.


Here are some snapshots of a clay maquette I created for a class. I based the design on an earlier assignment. While its not perfect, I think its pretty successful for a first time.


I love the I am 8-bit contests. Inspired by them, here's a little sketch I came up with inbetween classes a couple days ago. Maybe I'll get around to coloring it... if I'm really ambitious... maybe I'll paint it!

Lip Sync Test

Kvamme_LipSync
Uploaded by mdkvamme


This is my first attempt at lip syncing. I've been trying to teach myself how to do it in my free-time and I think, overall, its pretty successful.

Summer 07, Intro to 2D Demo Reel + More

I completed a lip sync test the other day, but its been a pain to try and upload... the video compression on youtube cuts it down to 4 keyframes and most others aren't any better. I'll keep trying to find something that works but for now, heres a still from the test.


This is the Demo Reel I cooked up for Intro to 2D Animation, Summer 07. I've gone ahead and fixed up parts of this since then. I'm hoping to throw up a revised reel by the end of the month.

Misc doodling...

Just some doodles from my freetime.

Lip Syncing in Flash

I'm trying to learn how to lip sync on my own, using various tutorials. This is the lucky character... I'll post more when I make some more progress.

No blogs aloud.

At the moment, I don't have any new work up besides my nifty logo (see above...) but fear not! Soon this will consume my life. I will blog away for hours on end... telling you (if anyone reads this) every little detail of my life (mostly things you won't understand).

I will forget to visit the outside world. Matthew Kvamme will become half man, half mouse, half keyboard!