Martin Padilla

In the past few months I have tried my hand at a few other creative outlets I was itching to try for some time now. Water color painting was something I occasionally did for fun and I combined that with linoleum carving to create a little map. My wife and I had just finished reading a book called The Historian where our heroes fly all across Europe in search of the Tomb of Dracula. Maps, languages, and iconography all play a part so I thought it might be fun to put it all together.

In the novel as our heroes track Dracula across generations they are gifted suspicious books, all marked with the insignia for the Order of the Dragon. Usually an ill omen, in this case I carved a stamp to send letters to other members of our reading group.

Marked with locations from eastern Europe, I mailed this out when we completed the reading and I think everyone else got a kick out of receiving their own map of Dracula's Tomb.

Gravitas Animation Showcase

At CSULA’s annual Gravitas senior animation showcase, it’s a bit of a tradition that alumni animate the introduction. For the 3rd annual showcase I was approached and had one month to create a 1 minute intro. I had the idea of show casing the feeling of having your project completed and “bringing it to life” on the big screen. Thanks go to Michelle Alvarado for the dragon animation and a huge thanks to Richie Gunzer for lighting and rendering the short. I'm responsible for all other animation with thanks to Josh Burton and his Morpheus rig.

Intro Process

I was approached to work on an introduction to the animation showcase at my alma mater, CSULA. I began working on the one minute intro at the beginning of May and had the idea of having other animators join in and create a short that showed individual animations coming to life in the 3D world. Unfortunately, I had three of the original five animators back out, so I had to make use of my 2D skills to get the introduction done. My 'creation' and contribution to the world of the introduction is a Tank that one of the characters animates, which then comes to life. I knew I wanted to create it in 3D, but I also wanted to give it a cartoonish look. I sketched out some ideas which I then modeled in Maya to bring the idea into the 3D world.