Nate Dorn - Digital Portfolio

Client Work Update

2011-05-30T13:45:00.015-05:00

I've decided to start posting some of my favorite client projects I had a chance to work on at Gasket. Here's a couple that track back from the last few years. Check the Gasket links to see more detailed info on each of them with full credits.

Best Buy Microsoft Mouse

I was the Maya animator on this one. I also did a good portion of the mouse model too. Here's a link to the full page rollout and credits on Gasket.tv.

SVGC "UFO"

This one goes back a few years. We worked hard to get this one looking good on time. My roll was in doing a good portion of the animation modeling and composting. But I wasn't the only one! Here's a link to the full page rollout and credits on Gasket.tv.

Coke Zero “Fantasy Football”

Going back even farther I believe I modeled animated and rendered most of this. Here's a link to the full page rollout and credits on Gasket.tv.

Tylenol PM

I animated a few of the shots in here. Also did some modeling. Here's a link to the full page rollout and credits on Gasket.tv.

Best Buy Recycle

Here's another one I worked really hard on. Funny how these can just go by and get forgotten so easily. I built the elements on top of the store and most of the interior factory elements with the exception of the pipes. I also animated half of it(from the "flying through the air" shot to the gate shots).Here's a link to the full page rollout and credits on Gasket.tv.

Korbel - Sparkler

Here's a beautiful one we did a few years back. I built the bottle. Here's a link to the full page rollout and credits on Gasket.tv.

Web Page Overhaul

2011-05-29T12:25:00.000-05:00

My website is now my blog!

For the last year I've been meaning to revamp my website. It seemed unnecessary to have two sites that showcased my work. I wanted it to be instantly accessible yet organized enough so people wouldn't need to dig to find anything.

I played around with WordPress for a while but never had any experience with its code. After playing around with my blog, I discovered that I could do what I wanted directly within my Blogger. It has some minor design limitations, but it can basically do what I wanted.

Over the next few weeks I'll be doing minor adjustments to my blog in attempts to make it more accessible. I hope to keep all my video links to YouTube so I can track traffic. Although because the "play screen" isn't quiet so inviting, I might change it to another player.

Hope you dig the decision, check back soon for more posts.

maya 2012 test

2011-05-01T19:31:00.001-05:00

(a quick Maya 2012 playblast test of new features)

So Maya 2012 just got released and they added some great features to the animation section of the software. You can now edit motion paths in the view port. 3D studio max has always seemed to have this and I found it very useful when I was animating in max.

It helps you manage a lot of keys very early in the blocking stages. Gives you a good overall view of what the animation will look like without needing to use playback. And in the world of animation, any tools like that are greatly useful.

There are some post production features added to there view port 2.0 section too. You can do some very bare bones previewing of what motion blur, Ambient occlusion, and depth of field will look like before rendering a final output. Once again, there are similar features that were already in max.

The last Maya updates seemed very limited in terms of upgrades, especially when it came to animation features. Although these are small updates I feel as if it's a step in the right direction.

2D - Aligning Perspectives

2011-02-13T16:18:00.000-06:00

2D - Winter Clothing

2011-02-02T14:20:00.000-06:00

Here's part 1 of 2 on this piece. My main goal for this one was to create something more "natural" while doing a biped animation. Also it's been cold out recently so I thought it would be relevent in some ways.
I might come back and finish it up some other time, but as of right now, im going to move on and do another project idea.

TOO MANY WORDS

2011-02-01T12:15:00.000-06:00

So..
I've been taking the last few days to clean up that clothing animation. I want to make a strong statement every time I post something, yet I don't want to repeat myself. I want my pieces to be unique to one another yet hold some sort of consistency and keep a high quality. I would like my work to be seen by more people too..

It's funny, when I try to explain myself, I feel like it instantly gets undermined. What I say and what it means, can seem as if it can come off as opposite of what I really do mean (or want I want it to mean). There's so many ways to look at someones explanation. Ultimately, what matters is weather it's effective and successful. Yet, I still try to explain myself.

If you haven't already noticed, I've slowed down a bit since iv started doing this 2D stuff. I'm still trying to find a rhythm where I can post work frequently and say something substantial. I cut the winter clothing piece into two parts. The first part is getting close although im going to wait for another time for the second half.

I have a few ideas on how im going to do my next one. Hopefully it will come a lot faster then the clothing piece but still, I'll try not to post it unless it's good enough to show.

Sorry bout all the internalizing but I feel like the people who actually follow my blog deserved an explanation. I'll try to keep scaling the project sizes down as to show more work. To the people who follow my work thank you. I'll be posting more soon.

Winter clothing part A

2011-01-28T00:54:00.000-06:00

I decided to split this animation up into different chunks since there was so much going on.
The front part is just about done.
I'm starting to get used to a photoshop / after effects workflow. I'll animate all my poses in photoshop then import into after effects and adjust accordingly through time remapping.

2D Winter Clothing WIP

2011-01-27T00:19:00.000-06:00

Currently working on this one. Gonna try to finish it up tomorrow.
I think i'm learning my lesson though.. Next time, more simplified character and less actions.

2D Split

2011-01-26T00:03:00.000-06:00

Works in progress

2011-01-24T23:43:00.000-06:00

It's been a slow start with this 2D work. I have many ideas but feel as if I should be doing smaller stuff before jumping into the bigger stuff. I think I need to develop a work flow and drawing style I feel comfortable with before going crazy with it all. So today I post some works in progress. The first one i blocked to this after noon. I know it's another ball exercise but I think it should turn out fun. I think it's good practice for me while i get used to photoshop animation.

The second one is my "biped" animation i started a few days ago. Here's the proof of concept.

In "celebration" of the record low of 15 below zero, I'm making a winter clothing themed animation. It's all very sketchy right now. I still need to decide on the master model drawing for the final. I might keep it sketchy though too.. well see how it turns out in the next few days.

WEEK 2 - 2D animation

2011-01-23T15:38:00.000-06:00

So.. I just started doing a biped 2D animation in photoshop and realized that I was kinda in over my head. Photoshop animation is a new world for me and its been maybe 5 years since I've done any 2D work. It was taking me longer then I expected, so I decided to take a few steps back and start with something a bit simpler.

Ball Climb

2011-01-22T20:07:00.000-06:00

Due to technical difficulties, yesterdays animation was another ball test.
The next theme I have planned is 2D animation.

Ball Teamwork

2011-01-20T22:39:00.000-06:00

Ball Reflections

2011-01-19T18:03:00.001-06:00

Ball Collisions & Surfaces

2011-01-18T13:45:00.000-06:00

Ball Heavy

2011-01-17T08:32:00.000-06:00

Ball Stuck

2011-01-16T18:55:00.000-06:00

Ball Sticky

2011-01-15T12:36:00.000-06:00

Ball Jump

2011-01-14T15:59:00.000-06:00

In an effort to sharpen my skills, I have decided to do daily animations. For 1 year, I will post something new that I have worked on. At first, they will be simple 3D animation tests. Hopefully this will be a my opportunity to try out different styles and techniques.

Ball JUMP
So I realized that when it comes to animation style, squash and stretch is a great way to RUIN an animation. People have a very sensitive pallet when it comes "amount of distortion" and how it interacts with the environment around them. They try to fix things by adjusting the "intensity of effect" that an object has on one another by increasing or decreasing the squash and stretch.

NAY! I say. This is just another form of sweeping the issues under the rug. When an object collides with another, the impact should have relevance to the rest of the scene. What is the object? How dense is the object? What is the object made of? And most importantly, what would it do if it was ACTUALLY THINKING.
A friend of mine told me a while back about a "Pixar technique". It went something like this.. When objects bounce on the ground, Pixar animators will take a single frame “squashed” for impact on the surface .. then the VERY NEXT FOLLOWING FRAME the object would be fully stretched, yet still in impact with the ground.

This sort of made sense to me. When you jump in the air, your legs technically should be fully extend before your feet finally lift off the ground. ALTHOUGH, when your dealing with inadament objects in real life, (like a ball) this would NOT be true. The object wouldn't extend itself as to reach out with the incentive of lifting off into the air because it's NOT ALIVE.

This reminds me of the Richard Williams technique for adding "impact". He would move his last key frame to touch the surface, while being at its fully "stretched" state. Looking back at this this, it can sometimes make things feel like they're being sped up un-naturally. And depending on what you are going for, this could be just what you need, but personally I feel like it's moving into the realm of cliche.

Looking back at this "Pixar technique" I feel like it has a great purpose for adding life to your animations, BUT if you over do it can distract and take attention away from what matters.. The performance. Ultimately though, you should never try to use half baked fixes for complex issues, because if you do, the same mistakes will happen over, and over again.

A years worth of sketches

2011-01-11T18:39:00.000-06:00

I realize I haven’t really posted any of my other work from the last year. I thought I should probably sort though some of it and post it. Hopefully it will help organize my thoughts to see what all came from it, and help me decide what direction to go for future endeavors.

The drawings I've thrown together here are from random situations and environments. Places like malls, zoos, friends apartments, my dads house, the light-rail ect. They’re done in a variety of my different styles ranging from very simplified, refined, loosened, abstract and everything in between.
Most of the drawings were done very fast without much attention to draftsmanship. I tried not to get hung up on one specific drawing for too long in hopes to strengthen my overall drawing ability. Some of them were almost specifically done to "document a pose" overall without worrying about capturing any real character. This is more obvious with the quick 15 sec. sketches i did with my old roommate.
I can imagine that a lot of the drawings wont really be understood because while i was drawing them, the "drawing lines suggestions" were meant to mean something specific to me that only i could understand because of my thought process at the time (especially with the abstract stuff). Regardless, I think you can get a good idea of what I was trying to do and my reasoning behind it.
-on a side note, Since there were so many, I didn't put a ton of time into cleaning em up.

ANIMALS

zoo animals

Toby (my cat)

I like this one because of how simple it is. I feel this might be one of my stronger drawings.

Seahorse

This was a preliminary sketch I did before making the seahorse for last years AICP.

Environments / objects
Flower

Originally the AICP jellyfish were suppposed to fly out of blooming flowers. Here are a few sketches I did of flowers. I actually modeled textured, rigged and animated a flower blooming for it. Ultimately it didn't end up getting used for the final. Hopefully ill fine time to post it on here.

waterfall - Sketch crawl

I feel like I needed more time with this one. Still, I ended put putting more time into it then I though I would.

People

Lightrail and mall

Downtown ect

Another one of my favorites. Its clear what it is yet there are barely any lines on the page.

Adam (my old roommate)
So in an effort to strengthen our drawing skills, my roommate and I would do these hour long drawing sessions where we would just draw each other on in random poses on off in 15 second intervals. Often times i would confuse myself not being able to understand what made one drawing better then the rest. Looking at it now though, it seems like there only so much you can do for a drawing in that short amount of time. You need to take time to digest what you have done otherwise, you'll be doomed to repeat your same mistakes.

Friends

Joe - my new roommate

Aaron

Going abstract

Joe

I little more sketchy. Less about form and more about feature here.

and further into abstract ..

Ron

This is a drawing of my good friend Ron. What? You don't see a person? He's right there.. Sitting on a office chair playing video games.

Downtown Nightsky

And this is downtown Minneapolis from Aarons window. I swear it looks exactly like this.

Emory

zebras

And here have some zebras.

HANDS
Okay back to reality now.
Some months back, there was a week where I was drawing hands again. They are probably one of my favorite subjects to draw. I should draw them more often. Forgive me if one or two of them is from a resource online somewhere. I was looking at a lot of references at the time and forgot which ones were fully original :/ I'm pretty sure there all mine though.

I liked the exaggerated perspective on this one.

So there's just a few of the drawings of 2010. There were more but these are the ones i felt like talking about. I hope to post something like this for my 3D work in the next few days.

Prison Break - Body Mechanics

2010-12-08T13:39:00.000-06:00

Hurray!

I finally "finished" this 30 second body mechanics animation.. Well I shouldnt say it's finished REALLY.. because the nature of the project kind of became its own thing.. Like a living, breathing organism. Anyway take a look!

It started as something like a weekend exercise. Then after I received some feedback from numerous peoples, I realized that there was much more potential for it. I decided to keep it going, pushing myself with the help of others.

In a very early state, I was pleased with the way it looked, yet I kept getting some great feedback. In numerous forms even like email, word to mouth, video critic, and sign language. Well, not so much sign language but more so the rest.

Anyway, the main goal of the project was to do "solid" body mechanics animation that had some acting elements within it. Also, I wanted to give my self an opportunity to do some more exaggerated body distortions (like at the end). A while ago I did an animation that was in a similar family as this one, and it turned out good but I felt it was missing some very important staging and timing elements. After I decided NOT to post it, I set out to plan a new one and this is what came of it! :)

Sometimes it seems like other people can help provide you with a clear perspective of the bigger picture, and that's something I value very much. I'm very thankful for all the feedback I have received on this project. I think its very evident that peer input is a crucial element in improving your skills as an animator. And heck, I wouldn't mind jumping back into it in the future to do more adjustments / improvements.

On a side note,
I would like to find time to post some other stuff I've be doing on the side. I hope to find time and space for it.

new - old Animations

2010-04-07T09:09:00.000-05:00

I updated my you tube channel a few days ago. I added a few older animations I did from the last few years. There's even some old animation club stuff in there too. It's amazing to see how iv improved over time. Here's a few of them.

March 13th 2010 Challenge submission

2010-03-17T22:55:00.000-05:00

The challenge topic was "Altered Reality". I took a few Owl images online and made a collage composition for a paper cutout scene. Here's what it looks like!

I'm currently making a real paper cutout composition of this scene. When im done ill take some photos and upload it here.

n'other animation!

2009-09-20T13:51:00.000-05:00

Here's my challenge submission for Sept. 16th 2009.

(Edit - updated animation)

The voice is Dwight from the office. This started out as a lip sync test for my new facial rig on my character. It was a lot of fun doing something subtle this time around. Also the " seriousness " of his acting seemed fresh to me. It was a lot of fun!

I sware i've been doing stuff... Seriously.. I have

2009-07-19T22:29:00.000-05:00

Okay! I've said a while back that i would post my drawings up on here. But the truth of the fact is, I rarely actually like my drawings enough to wanna post them.. So I decided to post them anyway! Here's a few few drawings from a couple different places.
The cat drawings are of Toby, my short haired black cat and Heather, my roommates long haired cat. The dog is my dads miniature doberman pincher. Anyway, the rest of the sketches are from the light rail.. where most people actually sit still! As you can guess, I love sketching on the light rail.
If you check back in a bit, I should have my June 11 second club animation up. SO YEAH ! NEW WORK TO POST WOOH!

Recent Figure Drawings

2008-11-20T00:04:00.000-06:00

Soooo..

I was starting to realize that I could brush up on my drawing skills, and what better way to do that then to do some figure studies? (Spent minimal time with clean up on purpose)

It's very useful to have a strong drawing ability as an animator. Took me a while to get the hang of it, but I think im starting to draw feet better.

Oh man time to geek out..

2008-11-08T11:01:00.001-06:00

So yesterday Matt Ebent showed us this video at work. I thought it was hilarious.

It's a tongue in cheek study on other peoples directing techniques. I loved the M Night Shyamalan exposition plug.

Then ... This morning I found this video.

Apparently someone modded Resident Evil 4 and switched Leons model with Links from Zelda. His coat clips through his legs a little but other then that its pretty close. I think its cool when people use there own ingenuity to modify games that they already enjoy.
Awesome.

WOO HOO! Website updates and Future Plans!

2008-11-06T22:21:00.000-06:00

I just added the traditional art section to my website and im pleased to say that my website is now officially fully functional! It's a little light on newer trad. art content but there's fresh stuff on the way. I have been spending more time doing figure studies and plan on posting some of them as I go along... until production starts on my flamingo short.

Just a heads up for future postings.. I just got the audio track for the Robofrog animation and I plan on uploading that within the next few days. Also, I'll be trying to keep everyone informed of the flamingo project progress as it goes along. SO YEAH! EXCITING TIMES!

Nathan

Professional Animator Survey

2008-10-26T21:27:00.000-05:00

I ran into this post from animation mentor a few days back. They ran a survey to get some input on the health of the animation industry. The survey consisted of over 1000 professional animators from around the world.

There was a lot of great stuff to keep in mind for people still deciding weather or not to get into the industry. It seemed very informative and interesting to read, although some of there statements are somewhat confusing and vaguely connected to "happiness". They explain some of the correlation between personal satisfaction and creative freedoms. They cover a lot of average earning details as'well. I found it interesting to hear that 51% of the animators make between 40k and 80k annually.

If you have the time, I would highly recommend checking it out!

http://www.animationmentor.com/report

Later!
Nathan

"Fear"

2008-10-19T20:56:00.001-05:00

Just finished a quick animation test. It's a 12 second shot exploring the emotion of fear. Heads up to Justin Greiner for the crazy little bobble head model.

Animaiton Inspiration

2008-10-04T18:30:00.000-05:00

A few years back a friend showed me a demo reel by someone by the name of Peter Starostin. My jaw dropped fairly fast when it started rolling. He seems to have archived a high breed 3d animation style. His style maintains a very natural feel to motion while the exaggeration with arcs and timing add a lot of humor and general appeal.

The timing of the motions remind me of the 1 frame pops you see a lot in family guy. Distortion of the mesh seems very subtle too, just enough to feel the impact. To this day, he holds one of my favorite animated style. So in return, I thought I would do a breakdown of his first animated spot he has featured on his reel. I'm not sure what the name of it is so ill just call it " Box Struggle".

I broke it down into 5 parts. The 6th part has no character movement, so I didn't take that into account. Some stylist things I notice is the amount of acceleration the teapot and boxes have on impact. Also He seems to reuse the idea of locking up joints to add exaggeration. For instance when he grabs the box in the beginning he props up the box with this elbow then locks it into place. Later he locks his knee into place to keep the box up. Then at the end, when the box falls on him, his spine, neck and face all lock up before falling.

It seems as if he uses the rule of three quite a bit in this test. He pops the teapot 3 times before failing, he struggles with three objects. When he looses balance with the front box he falls down in three beats.. He shuffles, he gets hit by the box and he falls.

Another thing I think is important to take notice to is the amount of exaggeration. The main distortions seem to happen in the eyes, legs, arms, and head. They only distort for maybe 2 frames at a time though. This is most evident when the taller box slams him on his head. And it usually happens when he's under extreme weight. Along with mesh distortion his neck and knees tremble under weight.

I think its important to understand and recognize what it means to have a good animation. I hope you all got a lot out of this breakdown. See yah next time!

-Nathan

What has Nate been up to?

2008-09-27T15:53:00.000-05:00

The last few weeks a have been pretty eventful for me. I've been trying to stay productive in the process though. I made some adjustments to my website to make it easier to update. Also, I added a few features to my blog.

A short story has been brewing in my head as of recently. I have been diving deep into the preproduction stages right now with help from Brad Jacobson and Elisa Tagaki. All I can say is that it involves flamingos attacking a poison victim..

I found some great tutorials and technical papers posted by Victor Navone. Would highly recommend any animator to read up on this. http://www.navone.org/HTML/Tutorials.htm

Nathan

Organization in Animation

2008-08-24T18:43:00.001-05:00

Organization in Animation

I'm once again realizing that organization is key to all animation. Nothing will ever get done without complete and perfect organization of keys. In fact, small amounts of early key offsetting in animation could be detrimental to your over all animation structure down the development road.

You can only start to add stylization in an animation once the simple and solid foundation animation is finished.

so yeah, i guess that's all i have to say about that.

-Nathan

Braid

2008-08-21T23:09:00.000-05:00

Video games have always been apart of my life. Years ago, I remember I would stay up playing games into the early hours of the morning. I was completely consumed by what games like Final Fantasy 7 and Resident Evil had to offer. It seemed as if they had a story to tell. A true experience to share with the masses. Along with that, it seemed like they cared about what the audience thought of there work.

As games became more about graphics, I seemed to steer away from the once promising form of storytelling that is the video game. Games seemed to evolve into mutated sub genera's that would demand more time from people to even deiced weather or not they liked it. Game companies were realizing that if they could reproduce a game that was similar to one that was a success, they could cash in with little to no effort for originality. This seemed to make a custom target market that would serve as a security blanket for game sales. But as game development becomes more expensive, I believe there marketing tactics will be forced to change drastically in the near future.

I recently stumbled upon a new indy game made by just a handful of people. Being sold solely on Xbox live network, Braid was only $15. I was very surprised to say the least.

Braid is a direct ode to the Super Mario Brothers era. With sharp controls and mind bending narrative, I believe this is one of the better games iv played in some time. It takes a very direct approach to the classic side scrolling adventure game and adds a few more tools to shake things up. You start with the ability to rewind time. This instantly gives you the option to undo instant deaths without penalty. Other abilities range from a radius based time control bubble to self controlled ghost clones to help solve puzzles.

Right from the start it’s easy to see this game doesn't demand anything from you. You can walk though the whole game without attempting the puzzles, but you will quickly realize that the game is almost entirely about your own motivation to challenge yourself. Great music and great art direction seem to compliment the game amazingly. Game play takes a very bold approach to strategy with some intense mind bending puzzles.

As video gamers start to become older, I can only wonder if the industry is truly taking note of the changing target audience. Instead of directing game play toward adults that are becoming more mature, they change almost for a more graphic nature. More blood will come out of the enemies, women’s chests will become unnaturally big, louder explosions will occur. At my core, I feel entirely misrepresented.

I believe there is hope out there though. People are beginning to realize that casual gaming has potential with a very lucrative market. Innovation has recently become more appealing as platforms like the Nintendo Wii go on the market. Online indy games have just started to gain popularity with support from home counsel networks. Pay attention to the weather people, I have a feeling games as we know it are about to change drastically in the near future.

Nathan

Useing Social Networking to its fullest potential

2008-06-24T23:57:00.000-05:00

Attention outspoken animators!

I have been working on a paper that gathers common ideas, techniques and inspiration on 3D animation as a whole. Right now it is in beta and would love to invite people who might be interested. It is called popular 3D techniques. Here is the introduction page if you are interested.
Popular 3D techniques

Popular 3D techniques is an experiment designed to gather common ideas in all forms (technical & abstract) of 3D animation in a comprehensive and organized database. It is completely open source. Personal contributions/ideas are encouraged as long as it they are understandable and your sources are cited. Depending on the ideas, it might be best to discuss it before making a drastic change. (ie: layout changes, rephrasing ect.)
Also, please add a red color to highlight to the newly added and adjusted data. As of the beta, many things in the paper are placeholders. Please feel free to add what you wish.

Send me an email if you’re interested.

Nate