I love to utilize everything Blender has to offer, often using it in tandem with other apps, and at times working entirely in Blender, depending on what works best.
Short Film
Fully modeled, animated, and edited within Blender
Environment
Cut scene for Agents of Influence, a point and click light novel game. This animation can transition to playable levels using image backgrounds like the one shown at the end.
Alternate exploration for this scene, as the server room was very dense and expansive.
Cityscape was given the painterly effect through Blender’s compositor
I’m very excited at the chance to work with you. Here are samples of my art that are on the comics side of things. I’ve worked on comics, illustration, and animation, so I can adapt my style to work best for the project!
Hi! I’m very interested in working on the upcoming Lore Olympus show as a background designer. The look of the webtoon is very unique and I’m excited to see how it translates to animation. I love working in different styles and would love to be a part of the team!
I’ve done my own exploration of backgrounds that could fit the style from the comic, using a more full color palette and ways to show depth:
Background Design & Paint
I work in 2D and 3D, and love finding ways to enhance the story through environmental storytelling, and am always looking to plus our work however I can.
Hi! I’m very excited about this upcoming show, as I love dystopian sci-fi. I’d love to join the team as a background and prop designer.
Background Design & Paint
I work in 2D and 3D, and love finding ways to enhance the story through environmental storytelling, and am always looking to plus our work however I can.
Promotional video I created in Blender and After Effects to raise investor funding for the product.
Screen Animations
I created the Navigator character, as well as these screen UI animations that work with the device’s features, change modes and settings, and bring a sense of personality and brand to the device.
Puff Sequence
Preheat
Find My Device
Passcode Login
Sketches
Device Screen Flow
The main items to focus on when designing the UI were:
Creating a fun way to change modes, which alter how the device’s hardware functions.
Continuing the branding and character animations into other settings, so the device has personality throughout all of its screens.
Displaying the usage data in a way that’s relevant to the device, to give users different levels of insight into their usage.
Coordination with Engineering
Because this device does not have an OS, all functions and graphics were hard-coded into the screen itself.
The lack of an OS actually offered more freedom to be creative with functionality that normally would be restricted to the OS-level, when designing an app.
I needed to be very specific when handing off designs and assets to engineering, to ensure the UI was built to spec, and the animations and interactions were implemented in the MVC as intended.
Modeling, Layout, Animation & EXT Paints by me / INT Paints by Nancy Nguyen
Agents of Influence is a light novel game that teaches media literacy to students through the story of a spy organization.
Alterea Games
Art Director: Sean Celestial
While the game is 2D, many of the backgrounds were created in a mix of 3D layout in Blender, Grease Pencil lines, and hand drawing the final lines.
For interactive environments, I set up motion guides for the developers to follow in Unity, as well as provide moving elements as overlays for backgrounds.
I was brought on to design several backgrounds and moving elements for Coheed and Cambria’s latest music video, directed by Anthony Schepperd.
I modeled the gates in 3D and for some shots, rendered them as 2D with details drawn over them, while in other shots I drew directly onto the model, so it would match the hand drawn look from the 2D elements even when turning in space. I also created a shader that matched the painting style of the rest of the video in 3D.
This was part of a Warrior Art Camp mentorship to design a themed cafe for 2D and 3D production.
Warrior Art Camp
Mentors/Art Directors: Linda Chung & Nikita Chan
Style Exploration
This cafe is a large, popular spot for teens to hangout after school, that could be in the recent past, or near future.
Scenes that fit the happy but dramatic teen vibe of the overall theme were sketched out to test how the interior could work with that kind of cinematography, as well as give the camera flexibility for different angles and types of moods.
I’d like to share samples of new and updated work I’ve done since the last time we talked back in November. Here is a mix of props, 3D design, and background layouts. — Click on any image to expand.
3D Design
Modeled and painted in 3D based on this original by Angela Sung
Props
I’m familiar with working between Blender and Maya if adjacent teams need files delivered a certain way.
I love exploring interesting stories and I find comics to be the fastest way to visualize my ideas quickly. I’ve written, drawn, colored, lettered, and published books myself to get unique stories out into the world.
My work is available directly from me at comic conventions, and also through Emerald Comics Distro at comic shops around the Pacific Northwest.
I love exploring interesting stories and I find comics to be the fastest way to visualize my ideas quickly. I’ve written, drawn, colored, lettered, and published books myself to get unique stories out into the world.
My work is available directly from me at comic conventions, and also through Emerald Comics Distro at comic shops around the Pacific Northwest.
Boké Expressway
Vol. 1: Chasing a Song
Chasing a Song is a trippy techno fairy tale.
Mikey is fed up with the club scene and misses the old days of raves and the music that came with it. One night he hears a mysterious song that reminds him of the good old days and he becomes obsessed with finding it, but his obsessions could take him beyond the limits of reality.
One-shot, fully contained story, about a group of college kids on spring break, who go too far exploring an abandoned building and find something disturbing that can consume everything around it.
Modifaction is a concept I’ve been dreaming up for a while, about the yearning to break free of high tech society, and the repercussions of disconnecting from a world that requires us to stay plugged in.
In this world, detaching from the innerconnected net is equivalent to revoking ones’ citizenship.
I’m a huge fan of sci-fi and cyberpunk, and I want to create a comic that gives you the same reasons to fall in love with it as the great stories that made me fall in love with the genre years ago.
This is a private link for just the manga work, so feel free to have a look at my portfolio for more samples of background design work.
Commissions:
Personal work
These were experiments from a daily challenge (“Kaijune”) where I used 3D buildings converted to line and tone as a base for the backgrounds, and then drew over parts of them to give the background more of a hand drawn touch.
That allowed me to complete these fairly quickly, and there is a lot more that can be done with this method!
Moving Tones
This is a quick experiment I put together to test using layered screen tones in motion without leading to any moire patterns.
Note: The moire I mentioned happens when using halftone dots on a digital screen, and shows up more or less depending on the different sizes of the screen (as in your phone or TV screen), or it is noticeable when resizing an image with a tone.
I believe it’s because they’re meant for printing at a specific resolution, and not for digital output where they can be viewed at different sizes or zoomed into, SO I used several ways in these illustrations to avoid that and make it more convincingly analog.
I’d love to help you with the style you’re going for along with designing the backgrounds themselves! Please send me an email to chat: jacobhalton@gmail.com — Looking forward to hearing from you!
I had the pleasure of being the background design lead for this amazing indie short, and worked with a team of great BG designers to create over 50 shots for the film, as well as design the background layouts, props, and guides shown here.
Insert Media Studios
Director: Eva Magaña
Art Director: Alice Jin Zhang
Mermaid design by Eunchae LeeLayout: Yaxaira McNear-Echeverria // Hallway + Props: Mel Mo
Layout: Erin O’Connor
With a large team, creating maps and guides were extremely helpful for BG design, as well as storyboarding and BG paint for continuity.
The visual style was different for a specific scene that used many shots, so it was critical to maintain consistency amongst all BG designers about which style they were working in for each of their shots, which was a great exercise in clear communication and teamwork.
