Senior thesis! Scoutin' for Skunkape!

 Please enjoy! Thank you!

SkunkApe Film from Scoutin' for Skunk-Ape! on Vimeo.

Post College Graduation!

Its been a month since I've graduated! I'm currently interning as a lighting/generalist at the Moving Picture Company in NYC! The studio is great and the city is amazing! So many things to do and see! Its been a long journey! Being able to come to work and create art is a very fulfilling experience.

I reflect back on my early days in art. I've always wanted a career in art ever since I was in kindergarten. Its funny how your influences from your child hood ripples inspiration to your current work. I enjoyed the beauty in cartoons, anime, and film. Now I get to be a part in making pretty pictures. My focus in CG lighting came about by pure luck back in my sophomore days. I remember being awed by the Ringling short film, Monk and the Monkey! Then when Francesco the lighting director from the film visited campus, he stopped by and showed me what I could do with lights in a CG ball bounce scene. After that day, I was hooked on learning everything about lighting!

From doing so, I've learned that story, painting, the reaction of light to camera, design, and cinematography all plays in creating visually compelling works. In my career, I hope to bring those elements to my art and be able to  move the emotions of my audience!

If I could leave a few words of advice...

1. Do your best and have no regrets!
2. Learn from failures
3. If you truly want something, fight for it with your heart and soul!
4.Emotional impact creates a greater response than logic in art. I find myself over thinking about the technicalities of a project only to find the answer from asking myself how can this create an emotional reaction from the audience.
5. Its a great idea to be a something generalist. Find your passion as well as be a renaissance man! The journey of an artist is about learning and enjoying the process. The more you know, the more knowledge you can draw upon. This will make your art unique and stand out. Something I've learned from focusing so intensely on lighting is that, I have so much more to learn about it.

This is one of my earliest works from the 8th grade that started me off in my career. Its been a long journey!
http://www.nonamecallingweek.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/11.html

Done!

Wow, it's been a long journey! So close to graduation! Thesis was handed in a couple of weeks ago. Wow, now its time to graduate. I'd like to share my new lighting reel and website!
webspace.ringling.edu/~klu1

Ringling Final Semester Begins!

I can't believe its my last semester at Ringling. So close to graduation!  Also, its lighting/texturing/rendering semester!

I'm slightly worried though, its 2 weeks in and we're just finishing up setdressing and shading our props for Linear workflow. First pass lighting is due in 2 weeks. We have 52 shots.

I feel a bit uncertain if we'll be able to finish our film to the best of our ability. I really hope we can. I've recently discovered, that Renderman for maya doesnt have the ability to contain multiple AOV in Exr Renders.  This makes compositng more stressful, because now a nuke tree might be unneccarily uncomplicated with extra read nodes that could have been contained in an EXR


Ringling is mandating Linear workflow.
Lots of animation to be worked on/revised
Brain explodes.

Senior Year's first semester is over!

The Semester is over! But I’ll be on campus for the duration of the entire break working on my thesis film along side of some fellow roommates of mine.  We had our winter critique with positive feedback! It was amazing to see my fellow classmate’s films. Now on to bringing our animation to polish as well as finishing up models, texturing, experimenting with fur grass, polishing rigging, set dressing, contacting with our composer, lighting, rendering, composite. Ahh…. Yeah there’s a lot to do.

I just spent a weekend hanging out with friends. Some lovely underclassmen friends of mine threw the team and I a congratulations party for surviving this semester. It felt so special after being bashed and abused by the faculty to have people who reacted and enjoyed your work. I also realized we all have some sort of post traumatic stress. When my friends and I were hanging out,  many of our conversations reverted back to school, thesis, and work. I was talking to some friends back home in Louisiana telling them I couldn’t come home for Christmas because of work. I explained to them that even while we were working 10-15 hours a day for 7 days a week almost every day during the entire semester, we still have a shit ton of work to do.

Its been a great learning experience and I hope to continue growing in it.

Senior year goes on...part 2.

    It’s the weekend after our First Pass Thesis Animation  critique. Last night, we celebrated and all went out to see movies. My group and I saw the newest Disney movie, “Wreck it Ralph” for the second time . Usually when I watch a movie for the first time, I don’t know what to suspect and I watch it with the eyes of a casual audience.. usually enjoying it.. The second time around, I start looking for design, lighting, and animation trying to deconstruct the genius behind the work. Even still, it was a tear jerker. I thought it was a very heartfelt movie. I loved everything from, design, animation, story, and lighting. And Skrillex.

    The seniors have about a month  left to bring animation to final pass... And that’s why traditionally most of the Ringling thesis’s animation looks like crap. There simply isn’t that much time. Single man thesis people have it the worse averaging animating 30+ shots in 2.5 months while fixing rigs for 1-2 characters and doing everything. My teammates and I have 17-18 shots each to do totaling around 52+ shots with one character each. I think I would have lost it if I did a thesis by myself.

     Maybe 40 of the 50 thesis that come out of Ringling every year don’t make it to best of Ringling and you never see them again. Now you know why. The scope and time is very challenging. Not all thesis end up well. Most end up being forgotten. Also, after each brutal Faculty critique (before a panel of 7ish teachers) we have to make changes and address notes while trying to push forward in progress. It’s important to keep a strong vision and not to please everyone or you’d destroy your thesis. Some people who try to address every note end up backtracking way too much and don’t keep up the strict schedule of daily progression.

      Maybe I sound a little intense. Well, if you can make it to your forth year as a CA student, its normal. No biggie. CA students are used to sitting 10-15 hours in front of a computer 7 days a week. No windows, no puppies, usually just the noise of humming SGI computers. We’re used to getting harshly critiqued by the 7+ faculty at the same time.

     Anyways, making a thesis film is an interesting learning experience. It definitely makes you a pretty ok generalist. By the end of it you can definitely say, I hate this and I love that. Or you might love it all! Or hate it all! Some people don’t want to be in the industry anymore… or want to never touch maya again after graduation. It’s interesting how pressure can make the diamonds…or totally destroy you.
      That’s just an honest observation. I look forward to the end of this semester. After that, we’re going to keep on polishing animation and transition into finishing models, texturing, shading, and lighting, rendering, compositing. (my favorite). I dont think most of us are going home for more than a week during christmas break. Lots of work to be done.
     In about 1 more month, we get to show our entire thesis animation to the computer animation student body. It will be a pass or fail event.
     Anyways, yep... thats senior year so far in a nutshell. Work, work, work, work, nap, work.work work.

Senior Year goes on...

Senior Year!

Its been about 20+ days back at Ringling as a senior! It feels very different from all the other years as a CA student. I wake up everyday, knowing what needs to get done. I can anticipate how long generally things can take and I work from morning till midnight without question. I feel confident that I know what needs to get done to move on. I have the will power to work nonstop. Life is kind of boring.

 We had our modeling critique of our thesis characters last week and we're working at a steady momentum to get modeling, blendshaping and rigging done so we can finish layout by mid october. My roomates and I stopped cooking last semester during the intense semester of preproduction for our short films. Now these days, we're barely ever at home.

Ringling has changed a bit since my freshman year. Now we have a clinic currently being built on campus. The freshman curriculum changed last year. Now the bullshit classes are replaced with some real classes that actually pertain to the major. Amazing teachers I keep hearing about like Keith Osborne , Ron Zeitler and Tammy Zeitler left the computer animation department.  I believe a bit over 25 people in my class have dropped out of the CA major  since freshman year. Some of them left for different reasons such as health, money, or just failed. Its always sad to see people who you have worked with for so long and shared the same dream since freshman year not be here anymore.

On the bright side of things, the people that are here in my year seem to have really grown together! A lot of people got internships in my class last year. People went to large studios as well as smaller studios. Each of them brought back really interesting stories of their experiences and/or examples of their work. I really am proud of everyone and proud to be part of such a hardworking amazing graduating CA class of 2013!

Last summer, I had the oppurtunity to be a Lighting Intern at a commercial studio called Superfad located in Seattle,WA. It was probably one of the most fun summers of my life. I was fortunate to work on 3D commercials for Nike, Shoe Carnival, Aleve, and College football. Here are links to some of the works!


Nike Women's Trainers from Kevin Lu on Vimeo.


Aleve Bowling from Kevin Lu on Vimeo.


ShoeCarnival from Kevin Lu on Vimeo.