Wednesday, March 6, 2013

New Translated MEL Tutorial - Serbo-Croatian

Scriptswell reader Vera Djuraskovic was kind enough to do a great translation of my MEL Scripting Tutorial, "How to Read a Text File" into Serbo-Croatian. I've added a link to it in the Tutorials page but you can also read it by clicking the link below.

http://science.webhostinggeeks.com/mel-vodic-programiranje

If anyone else would like to to translate any of the scripts or tutorials on the site into your native language, feel free to do so and email me at jay@jaygrenier.com to have it posted. Thanks Vera!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

What a moment of inspiration can do...

There are times when we as artists, scripters, writers, breakers, fixers, builders, and anyone else who is in the business of or enjoys creating things, go through moments of what can only be described as raw and unadulterated inspiration.  When something you've experienced, seen, heard, or felt has left you wanting nothing more than to sit and create.

For me, inspiration can often be brought on from something as simple as observing nature, specifically the ocean.  When I think about the complexities of a single event like a wave breaking, the trillions of chemical and natural actions and reactions that ultimately led to that swell building up and eventually breaking somewhere, and the inevitable countless more reactions that will now occur because of it, it's nothing short of mind-blowing.  The butterfly effect in nature is a constant source of inspiration and awe.  Even with a relative understanding of physics, trying to break down and think about the infinite complexities of nature and how much there is to learn makes me feel like an excited little kid.



This week I was at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.  It's a place where you've essentially got the greatest minds in the industry all together sharing information and learning from each other.  It's an absolutely fantastic event.  I sat in on some great talks, round table discussions, and had a lot of great moments with people who's company I sincerely enjoy.  Nothing inspires me more than being around brilliant people.  Even some of our business meetings which tend to be significantly less fun than meeting with friends, left me with a feeling of motivation of what we can do with our technology this year to really push the envelope.  I can't stress enough how great it feels to be excited to go back to work and start applying some of these ideas to figure out how we can innovate and focus on the art, as opposed to simply doing a job at a studio for a paycheck.  Working with and being around creative people puts me in the best mood, I wouldn't trade it for anything!

One of our meetings earlier this week was with one of the industry's leading facial animation artists, somebody who I've always been very interested to work with.  While discussing different ideas and projects we might be able to do together, he mentioned something he does while working that I thought was really neat.  He likes to keep a comprehensive list of all of his project ideas that he can add to whenever he is inspired.  This way, when free time presents itself, he can refer to his mega-list and pick something fun to work on.  Simple concept, but brilliant execution.  Keep track of the ideas you have during those intense periods of inspiration, so that later when that feeling is maybe not so intense, you've got an idea to look at and work on that will bring it back.  I have now started a list of my own and I have to say it's got me pretty excited, even though there's already thirty plus projects on it.  But hey, go big or go home.

Something I really enjoy hearing about is what specific events have inspired you in the past?  What have you been doing that afterwards you left with that excited and "fired up" feeling.  What puts you in the zone?

Sunday, January 8, 2012

Skyrim Mod Team Looking For 3D Character Artist

MWH Games is currently looking to add an experienced 3D Character Artist to the team! This position is for the Dwarves of Karak Dok mod for Skyrim.

You will be responsible for working with the art team to create characters, weapons, armor and other items. This includes modeling, sculpting and texturing game assets from start to finish. We’re a small but growing team of game industry vets and game enthusiasts, and you will be collaborating primarily with the lead artist and the concept artist to execute the vision for DoKD. You should be comfortable managing your own time, and of course must be willing to commit to hitting deadlines set by the project manager.

For more info check out the link below.

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Skyrim Mod Team Looking For Concept Artist

If anyone knows of a concept artist who'd be interested in helping out on a Skyrim mod please let me know. Unpaid but potential for a percentage of contest winnings. Primarily fantasy weapon and armor designs with the possibility of character work.

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Webinar with ZBrush Guru Ryan Kingslien

Recently Image Metrics hosted a facial sculpting and anatomy webinar with ZBrush Workshops founder, Ryan Kingslien. Ryan is one of the industry's most sought after artists and it was a pleasure to hear his take on how to tackle learning facial anatomy.  He has even recently started a new class on his website based on the content of the webinar.  Check out the video below.

Sculpting The Face - Anatomy & Form


You can find videos of some of the other webinars we've done at Image Metrics in the right-hand side column.

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Webinars & Videos

Script Swell now has a widget with links to the webinars and tutorial videos I've been working on the last couple of months. So far they are all in the realm of facial animation and rigging, along with my Faceware demo from GDC this year. As I make more videos I'll keep the links updated. The links take you to YouTube, though you can also find them all on Vimeo if that is your preferred site.


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