Reel 2012

My current demoreel for 2012!

Lauren Neighbors- Reel 2012 from Lauren Neighbors on Vimeo.

Team Broken Robots- "Tiny Terror"

After pitching ideas for a short film in Animation Studio we decided to use an idea I had created from last quarter in Advanced Drawing for Animation. The story is simple, a girly-girl gets scared when coming across a gawking spider thought to be scary at quick glance, but when taking a closer look under the microscope with help from her adventurous brother, the spider is one of those cute fuzzy things she can have a tea party with.

Since this is for a short animated film not for games, I will be adding more geometry to make the model seamless, but for this phase I'm working on edgeflow.

Cartoon Vehicle Rig with Hydraulics!

I had a lot of fun designing rigging and animating this car. Tires follow correct wheel rotation using the distance tool in Maya 2012.


Cartoon Vehicle Rig with Hydraulics from Lauren Neighbors on Vimeo.

Heavy Lift Animation

demonstrating weight distribution, center of balance and heavy object lifting. Maya 2012.

Heavy Lift Animation from Lauren Neighbors on Vimeo.

Lip Sync Animation

Demonstrating some lip syncing from a clip from the movie "Step Brothers". Be warned that there are two curse words!!
Lip Sync from Lauren Neighbors on Vimeo.

caricatures! next step in journey

caricature of my instructor Floyd on the left, and a self-portrait on the right

Lego Brick Head Caricatures- looks simple but deceivingly hard to capture likeness

     I worked with Kaman's Art Shoppes at the Legoland location drawing caricatures this summer, it was great experience drawing quicker and under pressure ("you better draw him smiling!!") and with confident linework. Although I'm focusing on becoming a CG artist that can model, rig, and animate, I definitely want to be able to conceptualize my ideas traditionally and become a generally well-rounded artist.
     I see a lot of progression within my work but see I have a long way to go, however I feel like I'll always feel that way as an artist. However for my first summer season and only two reject drawings I'm doing pretty okay! I also stumbled upon my own caricature on Reddit front page for caricatures which was pretty cool, it was a Bionicle mech suit with a monacle. I want to push more exaggeration while still maintaining likeness but on the other hand I want to get into the niche of character design specifically for children and general audiences which isn't as extreme but simplified and iconic design.
     Overall great experience and loved the creative work environment and made a lot of connections. Now I'm focusing on my 3 senior group projects and a Mentorship with Sony Online at Ai San Diego, but maybe I'll return during the winter for some extra dough. It's all part of the journey..

Overflow..

bringing in some artwork I've been working on recently..

Left: image manipulation of all car and motorcycle components, except the human.  Right: creature design in Photoshop

These are both marker renderings in Copic Markers. The right is a self portrait and mix between marker rendering and photoshop, 6 different compiled images/photos in all. The real "me" wasn't in the photo initially, I photoshopped myself in it.

Digital Illustrations using compound objects. Gotta love compound objects!

A couple small examples of my photography. The left is taken, developed and printed by myself on Ilford HP Plus 400 and Ilford Matte multigrade IV paper. Photo was taken in Eugene, Oregon. The right one is digital taken in Disneyland, my favorite place to go for inspiration and shoot photography. I'm looking into buying some lenses for shooting specifically macrophotography.