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Sleepyghost

Niko Mäkelä's
online portfolio since 2004
site&content © Niko Mäkelä
 

Work in Progress | 2D | 3D | Animations
Multimedia | Documents | Author | Guestbook

24.6.2009

Site is due to redesign soon because projects I've been working on for past 5-6 months are finally nearing competion. I'll size the site down a lot and focus on video presentation. Also you'll see old works no more.

Take a (one pic) peek at my animation story under Wip'n Doodles, top-left image.

12.3.2009

Our feature movie trailer is out!
Go see And White Was The Night at Vimeo. It is a Guiding Light Flicks and Uphill Films production.
Also I'm well into production of my own short animation. There's 3 new pics in Wip'n Doodles.

21.1.2009

Again 1 new pic in in Wip'n Doodles.

9.1.2009

1 new pic in in Wip'n Doodles.

28.12.2008

2 new images in 3D-section.

8.11.2008

Absinthe and a sculpt in progress. See Wip and 3D.

1.11.2008

Ferret! See Anims.

21.10.2008

Little thing in Wip'n Doodles.

19.9.2008

Blood and pulp! See Animations. It's a visual effect for a film, sort of semi-realistic. Also updated the timelapse video, now full time counter and two formats available.

27.8.2008

Fisherman's Friend character animations are back! Now FF is together with Fear Factor. I re-made previous FF-animations for this(campaign by RNO Finland).

19.8.2008

Updated the Gmax Help-document. It is indexed too.

7.8.2008

Many things going on as usual. Something I can show is a modeling timelapse in anim-section. Watch me build a head :)

25.7.2008

Ultima 6 Project, our freeware game, has reached Milestone 5, which expands the playable world and story. Feel free to download and play. You will need Dungeon Siege(few euro in a store) to run it, though. U6P has had me for 3D models, characters, animation and more since Jan 2006.

17.7.2008

A little update: Added some links to Documents and one image to Work in progress.

1.7.2008

A bran new Sleepyghost! Website is rebuilt as a sunnier version - just like I hope this summer will turn out to be.

Added several images to galleries, go browse. Also there's a new section called Documents where you'll find little docs(currently on Gmax) I've written (and links coming soon).

Work In Progress and Doodles

Wip work or sketches

Click images to open.
Mouse-navigate with overlay buttons or use keyboard arrow-keys. Click "X" or hit ESC to close.

WIP is recent. My animation project is an exception, a very long venture - has both recent samples and others years old(from numerous storylines).

2D

Illustrations and things alike

Click images to open.
Mouse-navigate with overlay buttons or use keyboard arrow-keys. Click "X" or hit ESC to close.

I make illustrations for various uses with mixed technigues. These images go, from the top, from somewhat recent to the old.

3D

Models and scenes mostly

Click images to open.
Mouse-navigate with overlay buttons or use keyboard arrow-keys. Click "X" to close.
If animations don't run, refresh the page.

3D is my 'main thing' if I have to name one. Goes from low-polygon game work to high-poly everything else. Strongest areas are probably modeling and animation. I enjoy characters the most, colour-play comes good second.

Images presented here go (roughly) from new on the top to old at the bottom.

If Ultima 6 Project (many images present here) got your interest, check the site to see more.

Animations

Little clips

Right-click picture and "save file as"
ferret talk test, quicktime, sorenson3 Ferret - talk test
  • 6 seconds, 786x432, Quicktime7 sorenson3(6MB)
  • music/sound: Reservoir Dogs movie quote, see if you can recognise the actor.
  • This is an animation test and will end up on my demoreel to come.
movie visual effect, Quicktime or AVI AVI-video Quicktime7-video Finaali - a bloody visual effect
  • 8 seconds, 960x540, Quicktime7 sorenson3(4,5MB) / AVI Xvid(1,7MB)
  • music/sound: none
  • Finaali is a short movie(coming 2008). This effect is a spoiler and very bloody, so don't watch if either is an issue. It's my first visual effect (collaborative) and all done by 'questimating'. I had, for starters, no tracking info.
modeling timelapse, Quicktime or AVI AVI-video Quicktime7-video Character project - head modeling timelapse
  • 7 min, 800x412, Quicktime7(35MB) / AVI H.264(18MB, better quality)
  • music/sound: none
  • This is a timelapse of modeling a base head(displacement coming later). 1h 23min. compressed to 7 minutes. Recorded in several clips to keep files in editable size and combined here.
Fisherman's Friend, demo, MP4 and AVI AVI-video file MP4-video file Fisherman's Friend character & animations, 2007, made for RNO Finland.

Multimedia

Graphics for interactive projects

Click images to open.
Mouse-navigate with overlay buttons or use keyboard arrow-keys. Click "X" or hit ESC to close.

I have studied and done multimedia in many forms, two cd-rom productions being the most notable. There my role was creating all visuals. 'Maqamia'(2001) in this gallery shows some of my first steps in 3D.

Documents

Docs and links

Docs : Gmax and Ultima 6 Project
Sometimes I write little quides on creating 3D with Gmax for our game team. Lately I've collected them into 2 PDF-documents. One has general tips on making 3D for games with Gmax, the other focuses on texturing/UV-mapping characters in Gmax. Please note that these were not originally written for everybody.

Use the documents at your own risk and where you want, but if you borrow please credit me as the source, thank you.
I will update at least the general 'guide' occasionally so it gets better with time. And I will try to keep these available for some time. I hope the docs are of use to you.

3d_help_gmax.pdf
PDF, 534kb. ver. 1.9.

character_mapping_gmax.pdf
PDF, 558k. ver. 1.0.
Links : Inspiration
Anfinnsen, Arild
Baysal, Timur (Taron)
Bergkvist, Linda
Blanché, Pascal
Bouvier, Nicolas
Bruckner, Jean-Francois
Church, Ryan
Coffin, Pierre
Cortina, Francisco
Dusso, Yanick
Ferrand, Nicolas
Hyung-tae, Kim
Marquis, Xavier
Mullins, Craig
Stahlberg, Steven
Van Der Byl, Leigh

Author

Niko Mäkelä



Animator, illustrator, 3D generalist and a friendly fellow, Niko Mäkelä creates for the digital world and focuses on 3D. Has covered tasks in the fields of illustration, animation, interactive(game/multimedia) and motion pictures. Work experience in mentioned is about 5 full years now.
Skill Set
  • 3D: modeling, texturing, lighting and animation
  • 2D: illustration, print-work, web(graphics rather than code), video editing and more
  • Multimedia: Mixing all of the above. Have experience in making art for learning media and games.
Tools (currently favoured but not limited to)
  • Photoshop
  • Modo, Lightwave, Gmax
  • Flash
  • Video Vegas
Milestones
  • Barchelor of Arts (326op / 326ects, major: Cultural Anthropology), 2006, Jyväskylä University, Finland. Degree is bloated with extra like Multimedia(BA equivalent), Visual Communication, Journalistics, languages, Computer Science and Literature.
  • Animation Production diploma programme (Tampere Polytecnic)
  • Multimedia and Digital Animation (Cumbria Institute of the Arts, UK, 2002)
  • 2 Multimedia productions (all graphisc & design, 2D and 3D, animation, interface..). Productions are learning media about music and music culture.
  • 3D Generalist in Ultima 6 Project computer game since 2006
    • (3D-items, structures, characters and animation + 2D-items and interface-elements)
  • Lead 3D Artist in movies:
    Finaali(short, coming 2009) and And White Was the Night(feature, coming 2009)
Work Interests
I'm happy creating both still images and animation. Very interested in creating characters (and character animation). Something else on your mind? Just ask.