3D Animation
Welcome, this page is where I put my work-related posts and serves as my online gallery for employers to browse. My resume can be made available by requesting it from me. My contact is richardHaw888@gmail.com in case you need my resume and demoreel.
I’m only going to show works that I have done in recent years (out of my 23-year career) and only the things that I am allowed to show. Unfortunately, majority of my clients have forbidden me to show what we did and for who because we’re subcontractors. I’m a Technical Director so my work usually don’t show up in the final movie, mostly behind-the-scenes like fixing things and making sure things work properly and on-time.
Not really animation but this is what I am working with my spare time. Did this with PySide2, a universal flow-graph framework that operates with any software that could run Python. You could create, edit and execute all of the commands which could serve as part of your pipeline.
Here’s how it works. Shown is an older version of the framework.
We are currently working on the Ghost in the Shell series for Netflix. My job focuses on helping build and maintain the pipeline. My duties involve with writing tools for the pipeline in Maya and automating things in AfterEffects and ShotGun along with Motionbuilder.
Did this with Production I.G / Sola Digital Arts Inc as a Rigger, Technical Director/Technical Generalist, it was a big honor to be working at the same floor with 2 famous names in anime: Aramaki Shinji-san and Kamiyama Kenji-san. Mr. Aramaki Shinji’s work has deeply inspired me and greatly influenced my life since he started in the early 1980s. This is a big break for me to be working with a legend.
This is a new comic-book version of Ultraman and the setting is different from the TV series where the original protagonist got old, had a kid who goes to battle with aliens in a powered-suit.
Here’s a preview of what we’re doing at work, it’s showing on Netflix. I was involved in rigging and writing tools using Python, Extendscript and other languages for Maya, Motionbuilder and 3dsMAX.
I was part of the team that worked on the 360 VR short movie Virtual Reality Diver for Ghost in the Shell. I was in charge of rigging the Kusanagi Motoko and her sidekick Bato.
This is a short film with a limited time and budget, we had to do many things just to make it work and make this on time. The facial was blend-shaped to save time so they were provided by the modelers. Even with the short time, I managed to add some gimmicks for her gun-arm. I wrote a short article here if you want to read more.
This is a fun project and I am happy to know that this is not going to be the last that I will see Major Kusanagi again. It really helps a lot when you love what you’re doing so all the hard work involved in production is well-worth it. It was short and intense but very fun.
Here are some more screen shots of how her setup works. More images and details can be found on the main writeup including the tools I wrote for the other team. I enjoyed working on this teaser for the PS VR and mobile a lot just because it’s for nerds.
I was part of the original small rigging team on the first season of Transformers: Prime. I rigged some of the vehicles, humans and props. I was tasked to work and maintain the assets when something gets changed and the old, published assets had to be updated.
This project is episodic so pre-production took some time. The more time you spend on doing pre-prod and R&D, the less time you’ll spend fixing things later so you can maintain a look that is consistent.
I also made some tools for myself so I can save time and do more things. I will never forget working for this project and for somebody who loves the series, this was a big honor. It’s something that you can tell your kids about and be proud of.
I was in charge of managing the rigging of the monsters in this short Final Fantasy XV TV spot. I rigged Leviathan and Titan while the skin weights for the monsters and the rigging for Behemoth were done by my colleagues that I had to manage and supervise. I also worked on the Final Fantasy XV video game on one shot with Leviathan as a rigger (outsourced).
I also write plugins for my own use. Here we see the overlay blending mode that we all love in Photoshop implemented in Maya as a plugin. It mimics what’s happening under the hood on Photoshop so all I had to do is copy the math make plugs for it in the code.
Here’s an image of another plugin that I made. It’s for making bold OpenGL locators for use in Maya. These are easier to select and see because they are bigger. They can also appear as solids and you can control their shape via transformations.
I worked on this short project where the deceased legendary rocker named “Hide” was resurrected in 3D. I helped with the cloth setup and simulation of some of the shots. The animation was several thousands of frames long and having an animator do it manually is not only counter-productive but impossible.
I made most of the layout and animation for the opening movie of Seventh Dragon 2020II for the PSP. The project was difficult since it only had a short schedule and manpower was scarce. I was a CG Generalist for some time so that helped me get through this one.
One of the shots on the Puppeteer video game has this huge boss jumping around on the stage in anger and the tiles were jumping around due to his weight. I was made to animate those tiles using dynamics because having an animator do it by hand would be very tedious. I remember the shot to be very long, about 800 frames or something.
I simulated the smoke explosion debris in 3dsMAX using Particle Flow and FumeFX. This was for a TV commercial for the mobile game “Avalon”.
Richard Haw's Classic Nikon Repair and Review 