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| My Demo Reel |
Maya, MAX,
Character Studio| ~2:00 |
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A compilation
of work from 2004 through early 2005.
The full versions of each animation in the reel are available
below and in the "WIPs/Exercises" section. |
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| The Ice Cream Truck |
Maya | ~3:00 |
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I was inspired by
another 3D artist, Gustav
Embretsen, and a musical piece he made entitled "Fight!",
to create this short animation. It tells the story of
two kids and their video game. Additional influences and
inspiration include Tim and Eric, Marv Newland, and the
Zucker brothers' work.
Most of this was created on weekends over the course of
about two years, whenever I could find the time. Some
of it was storyboarded; specifically, the bookend sequences
outside of the game. The game fight itself was planned
out as it was animated to sync certain events with the
music. |
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| Bad Acid |
Maya | ~0:44 |
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| This was a quick exercise using one of my favorite Airplane II bits. This is a new rig I made myself, just to keep up to speed with rigging... even though by a pro rigger's standards, it's highly likely that this rig is terrible. |
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| RoboCop vs. ED-209 |
Maya | ~2:00 |
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I made this derivative
animation first and foremost as a tribute to Phil Tippett,
who is my idol. Besides ED-209 from RoboCop, Phil Tippett
animated the Imperial Walkers in The Empire Strikes Back,
the chess pieces in Star Wars, the dragon in Dragonslayer,
and a million other things.
I also made this piece as an exercise, and an endurance
test in preparation for my own original short films. It
took over a year's worth of weekends to make this animation,
and my goal was to maintain the same level of quality
throughout. |
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| MEH: Moderately Extreme Hero |
Maya | ~1:15 |
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| Who can forget the timeless intro to Moderately Extreme Hero. I remember when the final episode aired, an entire nation was riveted. |
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| Amazing Dream |
Maya | ~0:31 |
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| So I Married an Axe Murderer had a lot of great scenes, but the Steve Wright segments were amongst my favorites. I was therefore inspired to create a new speech exercise featuring one of said scenes. |
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| FPS Animations |
Maya | ~0:16 |
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In an effort to steer
my work more towards game development, I've aimed to create
some cyclable animations for an FPS-style game. As a setting,
I chose the original "Die Hard" movie from the
80s, so this piece features two of the more prominent
weapons from that film: the Beretta pistol and MP5 submachine
gun.
I'm still sorting out what sounds to use, so this piece
is currently presented here in complete silence. |
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| "Hi Lloyd." |
Max | ~0:13 |
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This
piece was created as a test for a game animation company.
I was told to create a lip sync animation in MAX as proof
of my abilities to do face morphs and phoneme modeling.
This is probably my best example of realistic lip-sync.
I also worked across applications, finishing the modeling
in Maya and then generating the animation with MAX. |
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| Superhero Fight |
Max, Character
Studio | ~0:20 |
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Another
test for a different company. They were looking for superhero-style
fighting and movement, so I picked sort of a generic Spider-Man-style
fight sequence using simple character models and Character
Studio's Biped skeleton.
This is my best example of my work with Character Studio
(CS). |
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| The Dynamic Sewer |
Maya | ~0:11 |
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| It's
a sewer, and it's dynamic! This piece involves cloud and
tube particles, fields, and fluids. I created it as a
quick Maya dynamics exercise for a local company. |
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| Ironclad Coronado |
Maya | ~0:40 |
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| Arriving at your local dealership, Spring 1971. |
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| Invasion: Normandy |
Maya | ~0:10 |
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I made
this at about the same time that EA came out with their
Allied Assault E3 cinematic. I was originally going to
have a 1-2 minute beach invasion animation, and this was
one of the shots I storyboarded.
I always kind of liked how this turned out, I've included
it on this page because it's my best example of coordinating
multiple characters in one scene. I used path animation
and the Trax Editor to give each soldier a unique performance
in the frame. |
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| Human Crazy Glue |
Maya | ~0:10 |
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| The sound
clip here is from "What About Bob?". This was
an entry to the Ten Second Club competition in August
2003. I didn't win, but it was a great learning experience.
I think this is probably my best example of cartoon-ish
animation, thus far. |
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| Hating the Colonel |
Maya | ~0:10 |
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| The sound
clip here is from So I Married an Axe Murderer.
I actually made this before I even knew about the Ten
Second Club. I was inspired by Onur Yeldan (http://www.onuryeldan.com/)
to come up with a simplistic character with which to make
dialogue exercises. |
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| "Joey..." |
Maya | ~0:20 |
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| Here's
another short series of acting clips using a very basic
character. The subject this time is the movie Airplane!,
and the actor is Peter Graves. |
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| The Chase |
Maya | ~0:28 |
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I made
this over the course of a couple weekends as an "inanimate
object animation" exercise.
I had quit smoking a few weeks earlier. |
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All work © 2017 Kevin
Kraeer / Kraeer Animation
All other trademarks mentioned on this website are the property
of their respective owners. |
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