matthew/Tucker

2011 Showreel

Matthew Tucker — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 07:23:35 +0000

Updated Reel with Daffy’s Rhapsody clip

All work shown done at ReelFX.

Breakdown:Shot 01, 02 – Tweety and prop rigs
Shot 03, 04 – Big foot rig
Shot 05, 06 – Doctor tentacles rig
Shot 07, 08 – Ellie and prop rigs
Shot 09 – Ellie Rig, Peaches hair rig
Shot 10 – Ellie, Peaches, glypto, dung beetle, bird, beaver dad face, and prop rigs
Shot 11 – Prancer rig
Shot 12 to 14 – Elmer cloth rig/simulation, QC
Shot 15 – Granny cloth rig/simulation, QC
Shot 16, 17 – Vacuum simulation, QC
Shot 18 – Tweety and prop rigs

I Tawt I Taw a Puddy Tat

Matthew Tucker — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 20:13:30 +0000

Seems like announcements are just coming one after another. This one is a little more exciting for me. I had the privilege of rigging Tweety bird him/herself. It was the first time I got to rig a character as well known as Tweety. Personally I love to rig birds, so this was also a huge plus. My only gripe is that as far as birds go, Tweety’s bird like characteristics are very subdued. Either way hope everyone gets to enjoy this short premiering before Happy Feet 2.

Radio City Christmas Spectacular ft. The Rockettes

Matthew Tucker — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 19:50:45 +0000

Brand new month, brand new post. Looks like another project I worked on was announced over the weekend. I didn’t do too much on this project. I was only able to do the humbug’s bind rig, some other prop rigs, and a few cloth shots. Never the less, cool to see it finally announced.

Daffy’s Rhapsody Clip

Matthew Tucker — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 05:23:57 +0000

Hello again,

Exciting day today. I finally get to show off some more work that I had a lot of fun on. I had a lot of responsibilities on this short between all the rigging and cloth assigned to me. Unfortunately the clip is not direct feed so the colors are off, but I hope you all enjoy the show.

Looney Tunes Behind the Scenes

Matthew Tucker — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 21:52:10 +0000

Now that we’re are almost done with the sixth Looney Tunes Short I thought I would give everyone a quick insight into how we accomplish some of the crazy things we had to do to translate Looney into CG. Here’s a quick video breakdown.

I need to thank my supervisor, Josh Carey, for uploading this little reel.

Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas

Matthew Tucker — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 17:50:05 +0000

Ice Age: A Mammoth Christmas

It looks like Fox has finally announced a project that I had the pleasure of working on. I don’t think I can say much, but here is a link with a brief summary.

Take Your Medicine

Matthew Tucker — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 05:21:38 +0000

Hello everyone,

Right now I’m swimming in a sea of cloth shots and rig fixes, so I thought I would take the time to make a post about a music video RFX finished awhile back.

Here’s the full video:

The project was a passion piece spearheaded by Nader Husseini. I found the project a lot of fun and some interesting problems came up. One of which was the dynamic tentacles. The animators needed to start kicking out shots quickly so they needed the tentacles to feel like they were swimming in water without having to keyframe each tentacle. The problem for me was that this project was all done in Maya 2008 so I didn’t have access to Maya Dynamic Hair. I had not explored the older ways of doing dynamics prior to cloth/hair. I was able to get some good results with softBodies and felt pretty good about it for not having touched softBodies prior.

But that’s what everything comes down to. It doesn’t matter how simple or complicated your solution is, all that matters is the final look.

Judy Moody

Matthew Tucker — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 06:24:50 +0000

Hello Again.

Just a small update this time. It’s fun seeing my name on the big screen for the first time. I had the pleasure of rigging a few character on Judy Moody, including that hairy fellow you see above. It was my first film project here at ReelFX and hopefully many more will follow. Things are slowing down a little here at the studio for the rigging and cloth departments, so now it’s time to jump back into making the pipeline even better for our future exciting projects. Because of this, my future posts will probably be more scripting focused, and hopefully I can provide some fun tricks and tips I have learned so far. Ciao!

Before I forget, below is a few clips straight from the movie!

Big Foot Sequence

Niagara Falls Sequence

Looney Tunes!

Matthew Tucker — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 04:09:21 +0000

Hello and Welcome!

Exciting times to be had today. Cartoon Brew broke the news on the next three Looney Tunes shorts:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/shorts/warner-bros-announces-a-trio-of-new-looney-tunes-3d-theatrical-shorts.html

I can’t mention any specifics but it’s pretty cool seeing one of my cloth shots featured on the wall. Unfortunately the picture posted on the Cartoon Brew site is an early version of that sequence and is missing my cloth amongst many other things, but that is beside the point. I hope once Daffy is released you all will enjoy it as much as we did.

Now time for a few thoughts. I think the most difficult challenge (besides putting cloth on such extreme animation) was actually toning down the simulation. In order to achieve the “Looney” look, we had to try to avoid breaking the silhoutte and keeping the details contained in the outline. What the director wanted to see was areas of tension sold by the cloth (such as in the armpits and along the torso), and a little overlap in a few areas (coat flaps, hat tassels, sleeves) but nothing too noticeable. We were there to help add those important little details on top of our animator’s already amazing work.

If there are any questions you have for me, feel free to email me (tucker.setup@gmail.com) and I will try to the best of my ability to answer you promptly. Now I’m off to finish my sculpt for my next post!

Super Bowl Spots

Matthew Tucker — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 05:05:07 +0000

Hello Everyone!

While I cannot talk about the specifics of this project, I can say that I did a little rigging on it. Hope you all enjoyed it.