Cosmic Connection

It’s not everyday that I get to show off some of the work that I get to do. I recently came across a video about a project that I’ve spent the last 3 years working on. I’ve had the pleasure of working on a joint Boeing and NASA project for the new NASA Docking System (NDS), which will enable future spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station (ISS) and allow crew members to travel safely between the the spacecraft and the ISS. My work group and I have been working on 2 different visualization applications that you get a very brief view of in this video, from 18-24 seconds. There was a ton of modeling, rigging and programing that was done to complete these applications that helped the engineering team see the big picture and visually see some of their data. Our pipeline included CAD based geometry, SAP Visual Enterprise Author (geometry translation), 3ds Max (model re-topology, materials, rigging and animation), and Unity (where everything came together).  This has been an incredible project to be a part of and at the end of it our applications were given to NASA as part of a contract deliverable. It was pretty awesome knowing that the work we were involved in will contribute to the manufacturing of the new docking system and will someday be up in space and be used by astronauts. I wish I could show off more of the work that we did… but until I’m told otherwise, these 6 seconds will have to do… Enjoy!!!
(Note: The other 3d animation that is shown in the video was not completed by my group. Not sure who was responsible for that. We were engaged with the engineering and design teams for the visualization applications that were created.)


Please go to the link below to see a larger version of the video.
http://www.boeing.com/features/2016/08/cosmic-connection-08-16.pag

Happy New Year and Best of 2015!

Wow! How quickly a year can fly by. Happy New Year to everyone! Here’s to another year of adventure, learning, creating and enjoying life.

I was hoping to be able to keep up with this blog more this year, but a busy work year and great family and social calendar left very little time to blog about work that isn’t allowed to be published.

Here are a few of the highlights…
Work

  • Presented at an internal technical conference
  • Selected to participate in an internal judged project showcase
  • Submitted work for a patent review (currently underway)
  • Finally got a PROMOTION!!!

Family/Social

  • Held monthly dinners with our friends
  • Weekend trip to Catalina with Dylan
  • Trips to LEGOLAND
  • Celebrated 10 years of marriage with my lovely wife Cheri
  • Brought in the New Year with our kids and some of our closest friends in Mammoth

I’m looking forward to what this new year has in store for me and my family. Hopefully I can be more proactive here and share some of my personal work. Maybe one of these days I’ll be able to show what I’ve been working on during my day job.
Cheers!

 

Painting and Vino – Beach Sunset

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Another Painting & Vino Session with my wife. We enjoy going out and doing these together. A very nice and fun way to spend some quality time together and unplug from technology for a few hours. I enjoy picking up … Continue reading

Gnomon: The Making of Guardians of the Galaxy

This past Thursday I had a chance to trek up to Hollywood and visit Gnomon for their “The Making of Guardians of the Galaxy” presentation. Some really awesome artists were on hand to talk about their work and process. I was fortunate to get a great seat and really take in all of the information that Josh Herman, Andy Park, Jackson Sze, Anthony Francisco, Rodney Fuentebella and Charlie Wen shared with the group. Wish I could have taken some pictures. There’s a great recap with some pictures on Gnomon’s site.

After getting home I added a drawing of Groot to my “One Sketch a Day” sketchbook.

I am Groot!

I am Groot!

Happy New Year! (2015)

Ok yea, so it’s almost February… I know I’m a little late with this post. Either way I wanted to get at least one post in for the month of January.

At the beginning of last year I wanted to get back into doing more personal art work, be more active on social media and get more visitors/views on this website. For the most part I was successful on all of those goals.

I didn’t get to do as much networking in person this past year. Being busy at work prevented that. Spent most of my year working on a really awesome project, that is continuing into this year. Wish I could share some of the that work… maybe someday.

One major milestone that I hit this past year back in January was hitting the 10 year mark at Boeing.It has been a pretty amazing ride thus far. I’ve held a few different positions. All of which have allowed me to be involved in 3d visualization. When I first graduated college I thought I would work in film, TV, commercials, video games maybe even architectural visualization. The aerospace industry wasn’t even on my radar. But when you are right out of college and a major company says they’d like to hire you to do 3d modeling, animation, graphics and video editing, you don’t say no. I never would have thought, that 10 years down the road I would still be doing visualization for Boeing.

I have learned more about engineering and manufacturing over the last 10 years, than I ever thought I would as an animation major at LMU. What is really neat to think about is, that all of the cool sci-fi stuff that people dream about being a part of in the entertainment industry, I get to be a part of the real deal. When I see other artist looking at reference for their project ideas, a lot of it is based upon current aerospace technology.

So here is another year ahead of me with many opportunities to learn and grow. This year I would like to continue work on more personal projects, learn ZBrush and bring more people to this site. Excluding this past month, one of my goals is to post here once a week. I was given a “One Sketch a Day” sketchbook as a gift, so I’ll be working on that too. Looking forward to what this next year has in store.

So I’ll wrap up with a quick sculpt that I did on my iPad using Autodesk 123D Scupt+
Fun program, easy to use and a lot of cool features for a mobile sculpting app.
Enjoy!!!

123DSculpt_AlienHead

Painting and Vino – Cityscape

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It sure has been a whirlwind of a holiday season. I hope everyone has been able to enjoy this festive time of year with family and friends. I’ve been a bit behind in being able to make updates here. Last … Continue reading

International Self Portrait Day – 2014

Yesterday was International Self Portrait Day. An event that started 7-8 years ago now. Such a fun event to take part in. My participation has been on and off over the last few years. Thankfully I was able to find some time and get one in this year.
Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my iPad iPad

You can also see it here in my conceptart.org sketchbook, or the ISPD Thread.

AphexTweak_2014-11-01_selfportrait_small

Painting and Vino – Summer Meadow

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Had a great anniversary date night with my wife the other night. We decided that we wanted to do another painting and vino session. Always a lot fun and very relaxing. Work has been keeping me very busy lately (which … Continue reading