The Blender Institute starts presale on the Creature Factory tutorial DVD.
Download the Video here! More fun stuff on youtube.

High quality streaming version:

Andy writes:

Creature Factory has evolved in many different ways since my earliest sketches roughly eight months ago. Even though its main production period was only about two weeks - resulting in roughly 40 hours of captured material - it had to appear as if it could’ve been part of something bigger.

So I kept onadding and adding stuff, until it became too complicated and literally turned into this huge monster… And then when Project Peach started I couldn’t finish it anymore.

Most recently I had a look through the original first 40 hours and realized that by themselves, they already conveyed what I wanted to show in the first place - without all the unnecessary extra pieces I prefer to treat separately in a more elaborate way later on.

On the disc you will find everything I created for the Creature Factory teaser. The 40 hours have been sped up and commented. There are also some extra tutorials to document the techniques used more in-depth. Of course you also get all the blender files, textures and steps saved in the process.

I hope you find it useful, enjoy!

.andy

Looks pretty exciting from what I’ve seen so far. Way to go. Andy still has some DVD authoring to do, we will try to keep you updated here.

June

due to popular demand (inbox flooded) here goes:

(creature factory is the name of the blender training dvd i’m working on)

the renderings are from the final animation that will be on the dvd (duration is 55 secs). they were done in HD resolution (1920×1080).

.andy

- Blender Workshop - Staatliche Hochschule für Gestaltung Karlsruhe -

- Nov 05 / 06 / 07 / 08 / 09 2007 -

Blender is the premier open source package for modeling, shading, animation, rendering, compositing, editing and game creation. it is used by hobbyists, professionals, studios and institutions around the world for a large variety of applications ranging from architectural design, commercials, motion graphics, illustrative art up to full blown cinematic movie productions.

For students / (emerging) artists like us Blender is especially interesting because it gives them the full flexibility / power of the movie industry to realize our projects - without depending on student licenses and / or large wallets. In this workshop we explore all the things that blender can offer… and more.

- edit: workshop over, some pics-

(more…)

just thought i might share some work i did for the upcoming creature factory tutorial DVD published by the blender foundation.

blender conference visitors might be familiar with the character.

other than that, no time to play… work work work, peach peach peach…

enjoy!

.andy

a very quick image i came up with last night.

edit: wireframe and closeup added.

enjoy!

.andy

today i was moving random stuff around in the institute and discovered a rather huge pile of our old elephants dream artwork. fellow blender institutionist bassam kurdali helped me to scatter them around the table for a last photoshoot and a minute of memorial silence.

on a more related note: yes, i’m currently working at the blender institute in amsterdam. aside from helping with blender e-shop orders, cleaning stuff and preparing for peach, i’m also recording a special video tutorial DVD for the blender foundation. in a few weeks peach is going into production… and the countdown starts. exciting times!

.andy

“At last! On that beautiful summer day the Grey Toad presented him with a heart. (…)

Little did he know about the foul business of The Toads; and this one was particularly wicked. Forgotten was the contract he had signed and the oaths he had taken. But why should he care?”

- Leaving Everything Behind And More

created in blender, gimp and krita.

1:00 am: I’m sitting in the train back to Karlsruhe… and yup, that was day one.

In the morning I got up really early and went to Stuttgart to get my first taste of FMX as a speaker dude. Got my badge, ticket and goodies all nicely packed up in a 255;0;0-colored (really, amazingly, mind-bogglingly red) FMX shoulder bag.
The first talk I attended was on the making of Monster Samurai, a really funny short film/feature/tv series by the some of the people behind Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. The style is very unique: stylized characters, shapes and surfaces, but also lot of attention to detail.
Dug myself through the schedule to find out which talks to attend and courses to take this week. Saw the session about The Ugly Duckling And Me and about CG movie creation on a limited budget, something that’s going to be kinda important for me soon (hint-hint). Still have to prepare my workshops for friday!

The weather was really nice, so I went around the city for a while, too. After all, May 1 is an official german holiday (no shops open and a lot of people walking around eating ice cream) and Stuttgart is sorta nice.
In the evening I watched the re-screening of the SIGGRAPH Electronic Theater show 2006, which got me cringing once more (after having seen it at SIGGRAPH the year before): an awesome compilation of the best digital artwork in the world… argh, I need time to work on my own projects now!
Later that night I managed to meet with Nadine and a bunch of guys and gals from the German Film School. We had drinks and did some talking, but stupidly I had to leave earlier for my train. (Note to myself: get a train ticket next time that doesn’t require you to depart on the same day again).
Also briefly stumbled into Geoffrey Niquet from BUF Compagnie (whom I’ve met at the Future Film Festival and amazingly enough he recognized me). He’s going to give another talk about the marvelous CG imagery in Arthur et les Minimoys on wednesday morning, definitely not gonna miss that!
To sum it up, for the first day it wasn’t really that exciting: Couldn’t meet who I planned to, didn’t see many new things, but learned a few new tricks. Most of the fun stuff starts on wednesday anyway, bring it on!

.andy

a new incarnation of moonman is featured on the cover of the new 3DWorld Mag issue!

i created this image for this special open source issue as well as a two-page tutorial about UV mapping in blender.