Under Electric Light

Dutch Christmas

2012-01-25T12:49:00.000-08:00

Nouveau Negre

2012-01-03T22:57:00.000-08:00

Rotating Spiked Rings and Sphere

2011-11-03T18:42:00.000-07:00

The image below was actually created for a static image I was working on, but once I got through with the majority of it the desire to make it move just seemed like the next logical step. The still image below is an earlier concept I was playing with before this one.

SELF-PORTRAIT

2011-10-13T00:58:00.001-07:00

Revisitng my Thesis: The Joke

2011-09-27T22:57:00.000-07:00

All hand drawn and hand painted.... on a Wacom Tablet... in Photoshop ;)

Music by Seni Oyewole

Digital Painting

2011-09-26T20:43:00.001-07:00

Archimedes Scene: Floating in Space

2011-09-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

These two pieces are part of a scene in a piece I'm doing that goes through a quick roll call of famous physicists/scientists. These movies will be composited together for a scene introducing Archimedes. The golden votive crown is from the anecdote of how he discovered how to measure of the volume of objects.

C4D to After Effects

2011-09-19T13:23:00.000-07:00

Recently I had the chance to help out fixing a commercial for kids toy that you get to draw on with marker and then wash it off in the washing machine.

Originally there was a crayon coloring in the logo, and the logo was animated as well, but the client did not like the crayon or the animated logo, so I had to create a marker (like the product used) and color in the logo. As you can see the marker was obviously done in 3D, specifically Cinema 4D. I brought in the client supplied logo in the Front window of C4D so I could trace a Spline to make the path the marker would follow. The rest was just modeling a marker and applying the brand color and logo and then exporting all the animation to After Effects.

Pardon the speed of the animation, but the client was happy with the original's timing and wanted to keep it the same length.

2011-07-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

SPACE SAVER BUNKBEDS

This is a bunkbed design idea for a family with 4 children living in New York. Obviously space is priced at a premium in NYC, so I immediately thought about those large sliding vertical file cabinets they have in offices to save room and am applying it here to these bunkbeds.

At this point I've only constructed the beds themselves, the next step will adding some safety rails on the top beds and trying to detail how the bed will slide open and close with the rail system. Then I will move on to color and details like the texture of the mattress and pillows.

I may also make multiple copies with some different details at the very end.

2011-07-29T23:07:00.001-07:00

2011-07-29T18:00:00.000-07:00

SLEEPY KITTY

Mousetrap: Snooze from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2011-07-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Day To Night

2011-07-19T23:50:00.001-07:00

Tea Cup Design

C4D & Photoshop

2011-07-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

C4D & Photoshop

2011-07-15T22:37:00.000-07:00

MORE MODELING IN C4D

Continuing my practice with Cinema4D, I was reminded this past week of the Phillipe Starke designed "Louis Ghost Chair". At my previous job the "uber" fancy-schmancy CEO wanted these chairs (only the clear ones) for his office and I became very well acquainted with them since I had to inventory them as well as try to figure where I could inconspicuously affix a barcode on them when we implemented out digital inventory.

But enough about memories that border on PTSD. This chair took me about 3 days to make, mainly because I was trying to get the arms to curve correctly and not bulge or bump in all the wrong places. The majority of the chair was made using the Spline tool, mainly Freehand and I used a profile picture of the chair as a guide in the RIGHT view window. For the braces on each side of the circular back portion, and the back I used both the Taper and Bend deformers. Originally I was trying to make this chair in correlation with a tutorial showing how to use DeformerLite, but I ended up just going off on my own.

2011-06-17T16:02:00.000-07:00

Movie Premiere Invite

Earlier this month I was commissioned to create a movie premiere invite for the independent, award-winning African film, "Viva Riva". The film's premiere was set at Cinema Village with a dinner immediately following the after. I was instructed to create 2 invites: One for those attending both the film and the dinner and one for those invited to only the film premiere.

Here are the final results:

2011-06-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

Here's To Another Queen

2011-05-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

QUEEN'S DAY (draft 2)

Queen's Day v2 from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2011-05-03T17:51:00.000-07:00

Queen's Day Animation

Draft One

Queen's Day (Draft 1) from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2011-04-30T10:53:00.000-07:00

Recent Work

A posh cupcake.

This recent still image I made in about 1-2 hours. This is for Dutch Queen's Day

which is today. A friend of mine lives in Holland and told me about

some of the festivities that occur on this day and I wanted to whip

up something quick to send to him. I plan to make a quicktime animation

of this later to really play up the festiveness of the day.

UPDATE 5/1/11: To give you an idea how BIG a holiday Queen's Day is, especially in Amsterdam, here's a photo that came with my friend's "thank you" email this morning:

That's not a street, its canal packed with boats!!!

Clearly my image is subdued to say the least. Fixing that ;)

2011-04-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

X-Men First Class poster 60's Painting Style

By moi!

2011-04-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

Time for Action

2011-04-14T23:32:00.000-07:00

X-Men: First Class Poster: Part 1

So if you're a web art /X-Men junkie (like me) you've seen the various pieces of media posted by creative and inspired individuals for X-Men: The First Class. From posters to an actual motion graphic opening title sequence from Joe D, the offerings have ranged from awe-inspiring to wah-wah. All this unsolicited creativity has inspired me as well.But most of the pieces created have used either actual photos and/or simple vector graphics while still homaging the 60's style. However, what I see less of is the old 60's painterly posters, like these:

Yup folks, once upon a time Casino Royale was once a comedic film. I'll let you stew on that for a moment.

But my main point is that I've yet to see any art created in this style except for the well commended efforts of Total Film magazine, who are responsible for this doozy, of one of their multiple 60's inspired covers for X-Men: First Class:

Now I, inspired by this, decided to begin work on my own poster in this style, or at least partially by this style. What I required though was a picture of the 60's era Magneto/Eric Lensherr done in the same style.... and since none exist I had to flex my digital painting skills and provide my own. I give you part 1 of my X-Men: FC poster:

Obviously more to come later.....

2011-04-14T18:18:00.000-07:00

INCEPTION

....minus the sound.

This was another tutorial I followed from CGTuts. The first time I did it the process took me about three hours. A week later I gave it a try a second time and cut my previous completion time by 30 minutes. So practice is not only making perfect but its making time. Love that.

Inception Logo from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2011-04-14T17:24:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Metaball!

Metaball Tutorial from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

This tutorial gave me some trouble when I originally tried it out. At the time I was just a month into teaching myself Cinema 4D and I really didn't know any professional Cinema 4D users, in fact the only other person I know who is using C4D right now is my friend Luis and he's starting out just like me. So I'm basically alone when a problem strikes, and when I ran into a minor snag while trying to complete this tutorial I was still too young in my training to be creative and/or fix the problem. Basically a Bevel that was needed didn't work. Flash forward a while later. After getting a few other successful tutorials under my belt, I tried the Metaball project from scratch and ran into the same problem again only in half: The bevel only occurred on the top half of my studio structure and not the bottom. This time I just took the the scope of my project into account and simply................ flipped the studio upside down ;)

This is hopefully one of the few talked about skills that I hope to improve as I continue my training: problem-solving. Because even problems can arise in something as planned and ordered as a tutorial. While I try to improve these skills on my home I hope to meet more C4D users or gain internships in the future that will help me cultivate and broaden those problem solving skills.

2011-04-10T01:46:00.000-07:00

Global Illumination:

Good Lighting Makes You Look Good... Duh!

2011-03-03T16:42:00.000-08:00

SKETCHBOOK 2/15-3/01

Here is a collection of sketches I've drawn in my Moleskin for the past 3 weeks or more. The majority of the images are inspired by X-Men comics that I re-immersed myself in back in early February.

Rogue

Study of Terry Dodson's treatment of drapery.

2011-02-01T10:36:00.000-08:00

Music Video Assist

Last Fall, in my continued effort to build my creative resume, I applied to a job posting on Motionographer for animators to help work on a music video. For about 2 months I rotoscoped video still frames in Photoshop CS4.

As of last night I was sent a link and file from the director of the music video. Here is the video in its completed state.

ENJOY!

Hyperpotamus - "De Camino (radio edit)" from WeMake on Vimeo.

Official music video for the band Hyperpotamus.
"De Camino (radio edit)"

Directed by: Lucas Borras

Illustration: Lucas Borras
Additional rotoscoping: Matthew Rankin, Marc Riviere, Sybil Cubilette :D
Animation, Composition, Cinematography: Lucas Borras
Produced by: WeMake

Special Thanks to Erik Von Frankenberg, Carlos Chavarria & Mario Chavarria.

wemake.org
myspace.com/hyperpotamus

2011-01-27T00:12:00.000-08:00

Sweet DeeDee

I don't have any pets as I am responsible enough to know I cannot afford to take care and maintain them in the way every living thing deserves to be cared for. To make up for this I get my fixes from friends and family who can take care of pets. One of those people is my aunt Najibe who for a while had 6 ferrets. These little critters are her babies and home entertainment, and in these hard times we need to get our chuckles and love at home. Its hard not to love those little freaks, and therefore its hard when they sadly pass. My aunt unfortunately has lost 2 of the original 6 ferrets:

Chitty, who died mysteriously in her sleep, and most recently DeeDee. DeeDee was such a doll, so loving and sweet. She was the one ferret that would sit by our feet and look at you when you called her name. It was just impossible not to love her with her chubby little body and adorable face. Sadly, last month DeeDee developed a tumor that hid itself well under that chubby abdomen of her's and was not discovered till she lost control of her back legs and was evaluated by a vet. DeeDee was humanely euthanized.

In honor of her memory I made this image for my aunt to remember her. Its still a work in progress as I plan to add a decorative graphic behind her and some other details, but for now this is my rendition of sweet DeeDee.

Updated Feb 1st

2010-11-10T11:51:00.000-08:00

First Cinema 4D project render

As the title says, this is my first Cinema 4D project that I've rendered out. This is just the first phase of this project. Next I'll be doing some vfx in After Effects and will post the final results here. I'm learning C4D through tutorials, this was one I picked up from CGtuts. I plan on doing more work on C4D since I really like the interface and find a lot of it pretty intuitive.

Untitled from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

As you can see in the film this is going to be the bumper ID to my updated reel.

2010-09-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Random Sketches

2010-09-20T04:40:00.000-07:00

Random Sketch in Illustrator

2010-09-11T02:42:00.000-07:00

HellBoy

This piece is from a panel in Vol. 4 HellBoy: Right Hand of Doom. Its a short story where HellBoy gets his butt whupped by a werewolf emissary of a decapitated Norse(?) god.

God I love Mignola!

King Vold from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2010-09-09T16:09:00.000-07:00

One Ring to Rule Them All

So once again I'm practicing After Effects via tutorials. This time I really was able to dig into this one. This tutorial allowed me to recreate the TNT brand logo that anyone one who watches Law & Order as much as I do knows all too well. I'll skip describing it and let the clip activate your total recall.

Anyway I noticed a while back how well the logo fit when they advertised a weekend long broadcasting of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Now thanks to the tutorial I decided to take that thought and make it as blatant as possible.

The most notable aspect of this project for me was being able to use particle plug-in and how after a certain point it would crash AE after a certain point (even though I'm running on 2.5 GB of RAM. Hey I'd get 4 gigs, but whose gonna be able to pay for it?).But I persevered over this minor inconvenience and the results I lay before you. I give you, the one true ring... and apparently cable channel.....

The Ring from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2010-09-08T14:18:00.000-07:00

ZOOM!

Recent tutorial I completed using After Effects CS3

ZOOM! from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2010-08-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

Dancing Girl After Effects Videoclip

This was a green screen After Effects project I did a while back. I added the duplicate girls with multiple hues and the pulsing rings I created in Illustrator then had "react" to the beats of the song using Expressions.

Enjoy!

Dancing Girl from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.
>

2010-06-26T09:33:00.000-07:00

"Sleep to Dream"

After Effects training continues on. Here I get to play with and create clouds.

Sleep to Dream from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2010-06-22T15:29:00.001-07:00

Mousetrap Animation 2

More animation inspired by Johane Matte's comic of the same name.

Mousetrap_Evil Idea from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2010-06-08T07:31:00.000-07:00

Doctor Who Illustration

Inspired by an online illustration challenge on how viewers believe the new season will end.

Here's a closer detail of the hands.

I'm very proud of how they turned out in terms of the shade shadow and skin tones.

2010-06-08T01:50:00.000-07:00

CHARITY WORK

This past May I spent nearly a month on the road assisting in the shooting of an AIDS charity documentary in Italy and along the French Riviera. A young woman pledged to run through Northern Italy and along the French Riviera in order to garner media attention to the continuing epidemic of AIDS in Africa. We had charity partners associated with our project whom we simultaneously worked to gain attention towards and vice versa.

The Diamond Empowerment Fund™ (D.E.F.) was founded in 2007, and is a non-profit international organization with the mission to raise money to support education initiatives that develop and empower economically disadvantaged people in African nations where diamonds are a natural resource.

The MTV Staying Alive Foundation operates under the "micro-loans" concept, by donating small sums of money to young individuals to encourage, energize, and empower young people who are involved in HIV/AIDS awareness, education and prevention campaigns.

During our run we recorded video blogs to be posted on both charities' websites sharing our progress and urging those who watched to text pledges to the above mentioned charities.

I designed a logo for our project which was posted on both websites along with instructions on texting donations and showing out other partners.

If you would like to donate to any of these charities by way of the I Love Africa Project, feel free to visit these pages:

MTV Staying Alive: http://www.staying-alive.org/en/2010/05/i-love-africa-deux/

Diamond Empowerment Fund: http://www.diamondempowerment.org/cause-activist-suzanne-africa-engo-runs-riveria-to-africa/

2010-03-21T23:23:00.000-07:00

Balls

The world of 3D is mine!

2010-03-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

CoCoshop 2.0

These were my two entries for the second CoCoshop contest back in 2010. The prize was tickets to Conan O'Brien's summer tour from last year.

This one got in the top 10 of the second CocoShop 2.0 contest

2010-02-22T12:42:00.000-08:00

Adventures in 3D
This is obviously an ongoing effort, but I thought it would be much more interesting to show the continual progress of this project bit by bit with Quicktime outputs.

2010-02-19T13:26:00.000-08:00

ROUGH ANIMATION REEL

2010-02-11T14:30:00.001-08:00

VECTOR IMAGES

Images created for Yele Haiti earthquake donations in Miami

Wyclef Jean

Made for the Haiti earthquake 2010

2010-02-10T02:08:00.000-08:00

LOOK'IT WHAT I DID!!

So in my continued effort to find gainful employment I've upgraded my software and continued in the ongoing task up upgrading my skills. First up: Flash.

Here's a little tutorial I found online that I intend to build upon further. Maybe with a some title approaching the viewer. We'll see.

But for now....

Here's the link to the tutorial if you're curious:

http://active.tutsplus.com/tutorials/effects/create-a-whimsical-animated-flash-background/

2010-02-08T04:10:00.000-08:00

Teaser

Camera, Editing, Text: Sybil Cubilette

2010-01-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

PROPOSAL WORK

Here are some selected images from a proposal book

I put together for an upcoming project of a friend. I

had to some restrictions in making the images, namely

that the only colors I could use were variations of

pink, grey and white.

I had to remove some text since the project is still ongoing.

Enjoy!

2009-11-17T08:06:00.000-08:00

And the DVD Covers Begin Again...

Once again, more free time more work to create. Thanks to my
friend Martin for suggesting the movie below for a DVD cover
makeover.

The idea behind the theme of the cover is hyper and skewed
vision with an obvious dark disintegration represented by
the Victorian wallpaper on the upper portion.

Fits, no?

2009-11-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

Fake Book Jacket

So now that I have all this freetime I'm getting back into building up my skills.
I did a search on Google for design tutorials across various media. I came across
some graphic design exercises and found one for making a book jacket.

The instructions were to makeover an older book called "My Life is a Poem" by Mark Everyman, a collection of poems written over a 30 year period of the author's life
with subjects ranging from "personal feelings about smoking pot in college, the birth of his first child in 1981, and shoveling snow to how he was affected by various world events including the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger."

So the basic idea was to create a cover that "convey something of ordinary day-to-day life during the extraordinary events of that 30 year period."

And here's my take:

2009-02-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

BLOG LOGO

Something I created for a friend's tech blog. I still have yet to draft other versions and ideas I have.

2009-02-03T19:33:00.000-08:00

Mousetrap

Inspired by the scene in the comic strip "Mousetrap" from Flight Vol 2.

This is still a work in progress.

Mousetrap_ JUMP from Sybil Cubilette on Vimeo.

2007-08-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

Let's Go To The ZOO!!!

Well your's truly took a little trip through the zoo today, and despite the rain, I got to take some cool pics and sketches just so I could have something more to post on this here modest blog o'mine.

2007-08-10T16:41:00.000-07:00

Another DVD Cover....

2007-08-07T01:51:00.000-07:00

Wonder Woman

I'm not a fan, but give me a chance to try out a style and I'll take it.

For those who aren't aware, the style I'm mimicking in this illustration is Adam Hughes', who has done many of the Wonder Woman covers. He's also, to quote a friend, one of the few artists to get her whole "broad shoulder" proportions right.

2007-08-07T01:38:00.000-07:00

The Prestige

This is a DVD cover design I made for (duh) The Prestige. I'm kind of on the fence about the final product, but the fun part was trying to imitate the Headcut illustration style found in The Wall Street Journal using Photoshop (TWSJ is all HAND done!).

I wanted to to use the style from the book's cover, with woodcut and print style type of images, and some diagrams of magician tricks. Unfortunately those weren't easy to find on Google, even after hours of scouring. I don't know, maybe I'll return back to this later for a redo.

2007-07-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Pictures of You

This is a 1 minute music video I did of The Cure's "Pictures of You". I used personal photos to create the piece as well as Adobe Illustrator to create the Robert Smith character and After Effects to composite the scenes.

2007-07-15T23:00:00.000-07:00

The Photoshop'n Continues

This is a picture I did of my friend Anneli. I completed it in a couple of hours. It originally started as something for myself (and it still is) but then I decided to give it to her. It's now her Myspace profile picture ;)

This is a new addition to the "Me Series". I completed this one a day or two before starting on the "Anneli" one.

2007-06-10T18:19:00.000-07:00

Let the Rain Come

Taken on a visit to my hometown, Philly. I find the combination of eerily tiny alleys and the unique lightning that only potential rainfall creates, produces an image that is just brimming with atmosphere.

2007-06-10T13:25:00.000-07:00

First 4 Storyboard Pages for Thesis

2007-06-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

Ducati 1098 (sketch)

2007-05-25T22:29:00.000-07:00

In Nolan We Trust

Okay so I, like many others, pretty much plotzed at the end of Batman Begins after the little mention of The Joker being in the upcoming sequel, officially titled: The Dark Knight.

For quite sometime now I've belonged to a film discussion forum, and every so often I check the upcoming movies thread for discussions about the sequel. So much like everyone else, when it was confirmed Heath Ledger was to play The Joker criticisms, praise and confusion were posted all over. But those who were so amazed with Nolan's take on Batman would always chime in citing their faith in Nolan's skill time and time again. After months of this it just seemed like the phrase "trust Nolan" was the rubber-stamped reply to all those who questioned the latest news leaked out about the film.

Now, one can only do this so long before the little gears in my head start a'turnin and my fingers get itchy for some Photoshop manipulatin'. So here is my smart-alec gift to the "Nolan faithful".

2007-05-24T08:41:00.000-07:00

Recent Sketches

2007-05-23T16:31:00.000-07:00

"Baldrick, the cocker-spaniel please!!"

Ok so I , like many other kids, grew up watching daytime children's programming on PBS. But it wasn't just kid shows, there was the suspiciously mellow Bob Ross' painting program "The Joy of Painting", various documentaries and specials, and sometimes, because of my dad I had to sit through some of Bob Villa's "This Old House".

PBS was how my parents spelled culture, however my after dark PBS programs like Benny Hill, Red Dwarf, Mr. Bean, Monty Python's Flying Circus, would have a hard time being described as cultured..... maybe Dr. Who....

However, one of my fave British sitcoms had to be Black Adder. In honor of the show I am posting this 3 step process of how the finished piece came to be.

2007-05-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

300: The Oracle

So now that I am freed from the shackles of my thesis, I have the time to illustrate and doodle work for sheer fun. What a concept!! I started browsing through drawingboard.org and found a "300 thread". The goal of this thread is for members to post up 300 works inspired by the film.

Here is my contribution. I think I'm number 218....

2007-05-13T20:21:00.000-07:00

My Completed Thesis Film

So this is my completed (award-winning) thesis film. It was originally inspired by the illustration works of Leo and Diane Dillon. Its a story I came up with on my own for my highschool Spanish class (it was also the only assignment I got a good grade for). Enjoy!

2007-04-29T16:57:00.000-07:00

COMIC INSPIRATION

2007-02-19T13:10:00.000-08:00

Animatic 27

This is a new recent update on my thesis.

2007-02-18T22:36:00.000-08:00

With Love, Frida

So in an effort to make a simple 3D Box assignment more interesting for myself, I decided to incorporate my already ongoing Frida Kahlo research into the assignment to give it a little extra life and dimension.

The result:

2007-02-18T22:29:00.000-08:00

Don't Be Messin' With The Peanuts

One of my favorite assignments from freshman year Animation. My first lipsync and group assignment. We were randomly given a piece of dialog from a film and told to do a piece of animation lipsync'd to the dialog.

Naturally, we came up with The Peanuts gang for this dialog. My partner, Gene, even put our teacher in it.

Yeah, it was lots of fun.

2007-02-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

Something for my Graduation Portrait .....

So tomorrow I have this photo shoot at my school for my Graduation photos. The photographer or whomever is organizing this whole deal asked us to "bring a sample of your artwork, or an object of personal significance with you to the portrait session."

Now I don't have a good laptop and such, so its rather hard for me to bring in animation. Instead, I've chosen to be slightly mysterious with my "object of personal significance". Only two friends of mine will understand the meaning of this, the rest of you can just think its nice looking and scratch your head ;)

2007-02-05T00:13:00.000-08:00

Recent Design Tinkering....

2007-01-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

The Most Recent Updates to My Thesis

2007-01-10T16:24:00.000-08:00

Just Walkaway....

2007-01-10T12:47:00.000-08:00

Figure Drawings (lying down, seated)

2007-01-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

The "Me" Series

Because ever since I was a kid, I've always been my most cooperative, cheap and available model ;)

2006-12-18T10:15:00.000-08:00

Cheeeeeeeeeee-tah

I was watching the movie Duma a while back and was amazed at the sheer beauty of cheetahs close-up.

2006-12-13T18:23:00.000-08:00

My Fake Criterion Cover Art

At one of the movie sites I visit someone came up with the idea of creating and posting fake Criterion Collection covers. If you don't know The Criterion Collection "collects the greatest films from around the world and publishes them in editions that offer the highest technical quality and award-winning, original supplements."

Criterion covers are extremely well-concieved and art-ful covers compared to the formulaic ones you see on mainstream DVD covers all over. So with my faithful Photoshop I set out to upgrade some covers, that I thought, were in need of some better covers:

(These images contain copyrighted work. I am making no monetary profit from them)

The first:

The second:

The rest:

2006-05-13T21:59:00.000-07:00

The Illustration Days

These are some illustrations from my days as an Illustration major at the School of Visual Arts. I'd scan all of my work, but some are a little too big and that would cost a little too much for me right now.

The top work is a watercolor of Queen Medb from Celtic mythology. She was the villain in the myth of Cuchulainn. I was inspired by the illustration by J.C. Leyendecker shown here:

The next drawing was an assignment where I took a celebrity and married their image to an object or animal that matched their persona. Guess who this is ;) :