New website, new Marshland

After rather long time I finally got a new website up. Together with the new version of Marshland. I hope to do a better job of posting news about my work on the new website/blog. If you are still interested in what I do these days, please visit:

lukaszpazera.com

I've also set up a Facebook artist page that should be kept more/less in sync with new Marshland. If you prefer Facebook you can find me there:

Facebook page

At the same time I won't be posting any more updates to this blog (not that it will make any difference seeing that the last post was almost 3 years ago). Thank you for following my work and I'll hopefully see you on the new sites :)

TechFusion

It's a bit late notice but tomorrow (27th June) I'll be giving a talk about my Auto Character Setup development at TechFusion in Szczecin, Poland. There will also be a small, accompanying exhibition of my works. Stop by, if you are around.

Dog of Zone XI

Dog of Zone IX

The horde grows... Although this dog was done more then a year ago but only now I can show it online.

Auto Character Setup released

Last year (and this year so far too) has been extremely busy for me. Probably why I haven't been posting pretty much at all during that time. The biggest project was Auto Character Setup - an auto rigging plugin for Luxology modo that I had been developing over last 18 months or so. The plugin was finally released in mid-march 2013. The last 2 weeks of work before release were probably the hardest working days I have had for a long time. But it was worth it.
I'm into digital character animation and programming A LOT, I just love to code and I want to take ACS much further. Time will tell. Meanwhile, you can read about and buy Auto Character Setup via Luxology website.

Alice: Madness Returns pitch designs

A few years ago I worked on "Alice: Madness Returns" game trailers doing colour designs and mattepaintings (see previous posts) but before that I also worked on a pitch for this project. That particualr pitch didn't win but I quite like 2 images that I did for Pete Candeland's treatment. So I thought I would show these forgotten designs. You can see that the first one is partially based on one of my personal artworks ("Forest").

Wizards vs Aliens concept designs

Some 18 months ago I was asked by London's animation studio Not To Scale to do a few early VFX designs for BBC's original drama "Wizards vs Aliens". There wasn't much time so I only did a couple of images. Still, working with Ubik directors Nick Losse and Ste Dalton was a really good exprience. "Wizards vs Aliens" were aired at least a few months go so I thought I would show some of these designs. See the drama trailer on YouTube.

 

Frame by frame - TV appereance

Kilka miesiecy temu zostalem zaproszony do wystapienia w produkowanym przez Fundacje Nowych Ujec magazynie telewizyjnym o animacji zatytulowanym "Klatka po klatce". Odcinek z moim udzialem traktowal ogolnie o technice animacji 3D. W trakcie rozmowy prezentowalem fragmenty "Psow Strefy" oraz filmu animowanego "REF". Zaprszam do obejrzenia programu.

A few months back I was invited to take part in "Frame after Frame", a local TV Magazine about animation, produced by Fundacja Nowych Ujec. My episode was about 3d animation in general. It's all in polish unfortunately but you can have a look at some "making of" materials from Dogs of Zone and my shortfilm "REF". Enjoy :)

REF

It's not exactly news, REF is my shortfilm from 2004, but only recently I got around to upload it in good quality on vimeo. REF, apart from being my graduate film at Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow in Poland, ended up being huge character animation study. I knew very little about character animation prior to starting this project and it proved to be quite a challenge. I even wrote custom software to handle animation which I then turned into commercial product and had been selling for some time.
The inspiration for the film itself was the beauty of martial arts movements ( especially Aikido ) and my desire to see B action movie scene in a bit more artistic way, without the usual revenge plot ;)

Dog of Zone animation sample

"Dogs of Zone" are moving forward and here is a first animation sample that I'm satisfied with. The sound was designed by my brother Maciej Pazera.
In the end, the project is meant to be an interactive animation installation and right now I'm working on a custom software that is going to drive animation based on the input from Microsoft Kinect (XBox 360 controller and motion sensor). Yeah, I'm coming back to my programming days ;) It's early stages but already quite exciting. The next step is to put together a prototype of the application together with a simple animation sequence, possibly based around this very sample.

I embedded Vimeo video below but I highly recommend switching it to HD and watching fullscreen straight from Vimeo website. It's got far better quality this way.

Dog of Zone walkcycle from Lukasz Pazera on Vimeo.

Real brushwork

I don't paint too often and don't really consider myself a traditional painter but I like to grab a real brush from time to time. This painting is acrylics on canvas, 120x100 cm and can be considered a part of "Postcards From The Zone" series. It isn't very new, I did it in 2009 but wasn't really convinced about it in the beginning. It's been growing on me since and it seems to reasonate well with some of my friends who have seen it on my wall too. So here it is...

A Horde

So I'm slowly working towards animating "Dogs of Zone". That is one of the elements of my PhD project. I've been trying different approaches and testing how they work with moving pictures and I believe I'm getting close to finishing this research now. "A Horde" and a couple of last dogs were created with a workflow that can be applied both to static images and to animation. You can't really appreciate it with a single image but I hope it'll make more sense once you see things moving.

Dog of Zone VIII

Here goes another one...
As usual, you can also view this image and all others from the series in a bit higher quality at  postcardsfromthezone.com (be sure to set fullscreen in options ;).
 

Alice: Madness Returns matte painting

One of the background pieces I did for the third game trailer (see previous post for more info).

Alice: Madness Returns trailer 3

The third trailer for the upcoming game "Alice: Madness Returns" has been released.
This piece, just like previous ones, was directed by Shy the Sun and produced by Passion Pictures. It was quite a big job for me - colour designs, some initial layout work on the big turnaround shot and a few matte paintings on different shots. The most fun to paint was the dark cloudscape in the last sequence with Mad Hatter's house and the tea party (as seen on the thumbnail below). Click the image to watch the trailer on YouTube.