Martin McDonald

Teaching kids in grade 2 through 8 in App Design, Stop Motion animation, Video game design, digital animation, robotics, and engineering. Using programs such as Scratch, Game Maker, Unity, Claymaker, Hue Animation, and App Inventor.
Also writing curriculum for classes to help expand upon the uses of the programs for classes and testing out new apps and software. Additionally working on concept art for graphic designs for learning interface being developed for the company.

My personal freelance company for animation, illustration, and film freelance work.

Responsible for creating animated gif files for use in Android app.

Creating 3D models, textures, UVing, rigging, and animating a medical animated scene in Maya. Along with compositing scenes together with video footage an creating motion graphics in After Effects.

Teaching elementary school kids Stop-Motion Animation, Digital Animation with Anime Studio, Film-making and VFX with Windows Movie Maker and Video Game Design with MultiMedia Fusion 2

I am responsible for developing concept art for game assets then modeling, texturing, and uving said assets. Once completed I would animate any parts that needed animation with in Maya. Then I would take the layers from Maya, composite them in After Effects and add Visual Effects.

Illustrating for children' books. I previously illustrated for the storybook, "The Perfect Pet."

I assist the Lead Instructor for a number of classes.
They include...

Adventures in Film-making
Teaching the children Pre-production storyboarding, production & filming, how to use a video camera; shooting and recording techniques, how to edit a movie, post-production editing with Final Cut Pro, special effects techniques, outputting your movie for web, Youtube & DVD

Game Development in Unity
Teaching the students game-development work flow using Unity, game asset preparation and the Unity interface, how to import and place game assets and integrate animation, scripting and programming with Javascript, controlling animations and characters, sound and event triggering, scripts for developing character health systems, collision detection and weapon interactions.

Digital Art & Graphic Design
Teaching students about the principles of composition & creating dynamic and interesting images, Photoshop working with layers, text & brushes, constructing colorized images from line art, colorization techniques working with selections, masks & adjustment layers, the different kinds of typography, fonts, typeface and how to create text effects, how to create art using Adobe Illustrator vector graphics and pathing, how to create animated .gifs and work with different file formats

Adventures in Science & Engineering
Teaching children basic computer programming with Scratch, how simple machines work, how to build simple machines using K’NEX, introduction to aerodynamics and aerospace engineering, how to build water rockets, introduction to solar engineering, how to build solar race cars.

3D Game Design in Maya & UDK
Teaching the students how to create and define the details of a 3D game environment and concept a project, Autodesk Maya 2012 basics for environmental models, techniques for low polygon modeling and optimizing poly count for games, creating textures using Adobe Photoshop, importing models into the UDK, using the UDK to create realistic lighting and special effects.

General office up keeping and organization.
Shadowing producers and artists to learn about visual effects in advertising. I also get tutored in the use of different visual effects programs and procedures on site.

Created facial animation and lip-sync for a 1 minute segment of an animated pilot "Magic Monkey Billionaire" using 3D Studio Max.

Developing proposals for clients in regards to the time frame for a variety of Flash and 3D Animated projects.

Developing short Flash animations for pop-up alerts on the Android.

I am tutoring a young middle school boy in 3D modeling, rigging and animation over the course of the coming year.

I helped direct my classmates from BU CDIA in developing animated shots for the Museum of Science as part of our Practicum assignment. These shots were to be used in a demonstrational video on the proper use of the Segway for the Segway of Boston Tours.
I also corresponded with the client and Production Manager on a daily basis and maintained a blog of our work in development for their review. mossegway.wordpress.com

I was a lip-sync and motion graphic animator for the flash based educational game, "Compass Learning Odyssey: Math Levels 5 & 6"

Creating hand-drawn animated sequences for the documentary "The Mulungeons."