It’s been a pretty busy couple of months here, with the holidays, post-holidays, new job, being dad to the coolest little dude in the world, trying to kick-start a personal project… among other things. Somewhere in that blur, Jen and I designed and launched a new site for my father’s insurance agency.  So, if you’re looking for car, homeowners, life, health insurance, or anything in-between, stop by frankdippelagency.com and give them a shout. They do have the handsomest insurance website in (at least) all of Maryland, after all.

We also designed a site for Jen’s brother and his wife a little while back. Round log siding – get it while it’s… round!

I just uploaded a slightly modified version of my chirpy bird design to MySoti – the redesigned, face-lifted, relaunch of Bountee.  Hop on over there and grab yourself a custom-printed birdy T in guys, girls, or kids sizes… or even a cool onesie for your littlest one.  If you happen to like it, log in and give me a vote. Thanks!  Stay tuned for more designs.

I’ve been teaching myself the ins and outs of 3D Max lately. So far, it’s been a fairly easy learning curve. Beyond getting used to the different interface and keyboard/mouse controls compared to Maya, I’ve been trying to take a stab at some different aspects of working with the software. There are a number of things about the Max approach that I think I may actually prefer already. In any event, this video is a brief clip of a double bounce walk cycle. It could still use some finessing, but I basically just wanted to get a feel for the animation process in 3D Max.

Why do you deserve to be considered one of Baltimore’s Best?

Viral spot for Baltimore Magazine’s 2008 Best of Baltimore Party. I took care of all of the animation and audio/video editing. Created in After Effects.

This video clip (click the image to view) is the result of an experiment / challenge that I put myself up to recently. I’m sure everyone has seen the “growing vines” effect that’s been so popular in motion graphics work for a while now. I was playing with one of the new options in Maya’s polygon modeling tool set, and I thought it would be fun to try out that same effect in 3D. Because of the fact that Maya’s poly extrude operation doesn’t have keyable min and max value fields, I had to figure out a few work-arounds.

A step-by-step walkthrough of my roundabout process for growing poly vines in Maya follows below:

(continue reading…)

I’m trying to get back into some ZBrush sculpting, and this was a fairly quick exercise to familiarize myself with the toolset again. Just a bit of noodling with the various brushes and settings, really. I imported a low-poly base model head from Maya, and then got down to detailing it. It’s a bit heavy handed right now, perhaps, but it’s a start. I’d really like to get into sculpting some more cartoony characters in this program, rather than the ubiquitous monster / alien. Either way… fun stuff – love the ZBrush!

click the image to view a much larger version

The dude digs rhinos, too. These are the birthday invitations that I designed for his big party. We used VistaPrint’s double-sided glossy postcard option – with all of the info on the other side – and mailed them out in matching envelopes.

We silk screened a herd of tiny elephants for my son recently. He got a cool birthday shirt for himself, and he gave some t-shirts and onesies to his buddies and cousins, too.

Jen made a couple of posts about the silk screening process. She also has some more onesie prints listed on Etsy – go pick one up for your favorite little dude, and share in the pachydermical love!

These are two motion graphics pieces that I created recently at work. Above is an introductory video that plays before every lesson in an English as a Second Language video learning series, produced for Wall Street Institute. The videos are set in the office of an aging soda company, so we wanted an intro that evoked the company’s history, while introducing the characters and the basic premise. We went with a pop art look that might mimic some of their older advertising, add a little inferred backstory…

The ad below was created for local cable broadcast, for Downtown Partnership of Baltimore. If you’re in the area next weekend, you can take a free tour of a bunch of high-end condos and apartments in the Inner Harbor, Fells Point, and Federal Hill areas.

Click either of the images to view the videos.

Wind Power at the Inner Harbor from Planit on Vimeo.

That’s right – wind turbines were recently installed at the old Power Plant building in the Inner Harbor, bringing the city of Baltimore to the forefront of the green-energy movement.

OK, they’re actually part of a viral campaign that I helped out with. I modeled the actual turbines in 3ds Max, and one of my coworkers composited them into some shaky hand-held camera footage. We posted the vid on a local tourism site and sent the link out to friends and family. We even managed to dupe a Baltimore Sun reporter. Check out her article about it here.