Justin 'Giggs' Woodard

Not all tech artists need to be the closet programmers who happen to know art tools… but it helps. Technical art is, and should be, both art and programming. My journey with Turbine has changed over the last few months. Since September I’ve made the transition over to FX. This doesn’t mean that I no longer consider myself a technical artist but it does allow me to flex the creative muscles and truly express my artistic side within Turbine. My new title is FX Artist but I “officially” consider myself a Technical FX Artist. I still love to learn tech art practices, new scripting languages, how to improve pipelines, push for efficiencies, solve problems, etc.. And its been great. Second only to rigging, I think I’ve found my favorite game art in FX.

Since the transition, I’ve spent many nights learning and growing as an FX artist making my ramp up time as minimal as possible. I always have multiple side projects going at any given time and now I can add learning Unreal’s cascade particle system and material editor to the ever growing list.

I’m currently putting together a professional reel to replace the old student reel I had up since ’07. Also, I have a few side projects to show off featuring a DC character, Zatanna Zatara, being brought into UDK after modeling, rigging, and animation. Lastly, I have an old auto rigger for Maya that I’ll be updating and rewriting in PyMel which I’ll post sometime after..

Now, back to work…

I will try to update this blog as much as possible but as the title suggests, life doesn’t always work with your plans. Moving on…

I originally wanted to convert some of my old MEL scripts to python and post them here. However, I’ve decided to refocus and evaluate how I use python.

I first learned python with the mindset of “how can python help me as a Maya technical artist?” As a result, I made some significant strides within art tools development for Maya but I left myself with an overall poor understanding of how python should work for a tech artist. Which brings me to my current state, fresh perspective.

I will be re-learning python from the ground up, almost as if I’ve never scripted. My goal is to take Python out of my current tech art “bag o’ tools” and make it the tool belt which carries all of my other processes.

My progress will be posted on occasion but if you feel like you need some immediate python goodness then I can suggest my friends on-going tech art blog found at http://www.3devartist.com/

Welcome to my technical art scripting repository! This will simply be a running scripts log that make my life easier as a TA. My goal is to provide a few nuggets of knowledge that may be helpful in your own TA journey.

Lastly, you may find yourself asking, “What’s a Giggs?”. In short, it’s the nickname given to me by my TA brethren at Turbine. It is the combination of Quagmire’s catchphrase “Giggity!” and giggles from an instance where I could not stop laughing during a weekly TA meeting.

Simple. A tech art scripting blog. Giggs = 1/2 parts “Giggity!” and 1/2 parts giggles. Stir. Enjoy.