Actimating

Long overdue for a post, but Term 3 has started and it's just great so far. I've switched over to a new computer as my old one was on it's last legs and this has helped endlessly. In terms of Animation Mentor, we've delved into learning about acting and pantomime. This assignment is incredibly challenging and I'm already a bit surprised the amount of time I've put towards it (technical complications with constraints not-withstanding). It's criteria involves an emotional change, leaving the playing field very open. I decided to try and go unique and, during it's evolution, it actually progressed into something that made more sense.
From the original video reference and thumbnails, all I can say is that so much has changed, and by next week, so much more will also.

I've also started reconstructing a new logo for myself and rebuilding the Julio model I was creating in Maya, well rerigging and reskinning mostly. A timely prospect, but my progress has been good and I decided to spend a little more time now to save time later. This is largely to save me from some insane compositing that I would have had to resort to in a couple weeks time. I did this screenshot as a test to see how it might unfold, the environment still needs a lot of work but it answers a lot of questions for me.

Wow, it's cold out. And other irrelevant blog titles

It's the last day of term 2, and I'm excited and sad at the same time. I've finished the last assignment and updated my progress reel, which is this:

In retrospect I think the music is a tad obnoxious, but I have changes to make to it anyways like finessing the intro and properly rendering out all my assignments; but I can do that over the break. I also feel that ol' Betsy here is dying on me, it's official, my DVD drive crapped out, and she's approaching the end of her upgradability. She shall be missed when the time comes, tho I may keep her as a render mule. I feel as if my mind has been all over the place lately and slowly lamenting into insanity... of sorts. So many side projects for one, it's hard to stay focused, especially now when I really should. For example, I started messing around with SDKs for the first time, predominantly Half Life 2 Source and my personally beloved Orbiter. The former I've made more progress with writing and creating my own addon, but so much work left to do. In my nostalgic geekiness, I'm trying to create some nuclear-esque rockets from the Buck Rogers universe; being one of the coolest retro concepts ever! This photo shows my first attempt/test of different parameters and model importing.
That pathetic shadow on the landing pad of the Brighton Beach moonbase is telltale of success, believe it or not, because at first I was skeptical if I could even get that much to work. Ideally, come soon, I should be able to have a fully functionary nuclear rocketship that would behave ideally like that of Buck Rogers' Maelstrom Rider; complete with cockpit and animated controls. As far as the Source engine goes, I'm still learning the (sometimes) frustrating inner workings of the tools it comes with, but will hopefully be able to update my progress with that. The Julio project is partially slowed down due to some technical and personal issues, but should be back up at full force come the new year; Evidentally I still have many lessons to learn in rigging.

The latest of assignment nears completion and I'm feeling somewhat comfortable with it's progress. I have learned from many of the mistakes from the last assignment and thoroughly analyzed the process on this one from a new perspective. Here's a more updated version with an incomplete first pass splining; the latter half needs much work and looks extremely floaty, whilst the first half simply needs more polish. With this term almost over, I really look forward to next term.

My other project is progressing the animation blocking phase, this is a recent shader test and roughly blocked run cycle, just to see how things deform and what still needs tweaking, animation aside. As well, here is a vfx shot that I wanted to try to see if it was possible; it wasa great learning experience and generally a lot of fun, if not challenging.

Well the final assignment has been handed in, and work has started on the new one. I still need to polish the last one up a bit more, based on my newest mentor notes, but it's getting there. The whole area with the balance on the first candy cane, I've never been super happy with, and slowly I'm beginning to figure out how to change it. It's not so much a matter of me not being able to decide what I want it to look like, but more a matter of having what I want translate properly with my keys and f-curves into the computer.

Much work has been accomplished on the next assignment as well: Video reference, thumbnails and first pass blocking have been more or less completed, tho many changes yet to come I'm sure. I Desperately need to fix the set, the lighting's been tricky, and I just decided to scrap the secondary character, as he's too misleading with the eye and distracts the audience from the focus of the animation. I may spend more time working with the actual struggle with the sticky door, as that is the crux of the assignment, however it was great fun to throw in some acting choices as well.

My Julio character for a side project progresses very nicely also. fully rigged and skinned now, I've done a lot with set design for this piece and am kind of finalizing the look of the character. Here's a little test of face shapes and facial hair; still using base textures at this point.

Why Can I never think of a Title?

Once again an overdue blog update. School keeps trucking forth and I with it. In the final stages of polishing this latest assignment after countless revisions. This is not the final version but close to it. I had a lot of fun attempting some dynamic simulation in Maya as well, not my forte. Still a fair bit of finessing to do, but it is ever closer to completion.


I've also been heavily involved in a project I took on in good ol' Softimage, so I had to refresh myself in all that joy as well. I have a character under construction and nearly animatable for this project, who has been rigged and UVs layed out for texturing. Here's a screenshot as a teaser. Weighting and base textures should be done by the weekend and proxy animatics done sometime next week. I'll try and keep updates on that as well.

Personal progression during economic depression

The assignment was finished, and countless more changes, subtle at this point, made. Yay for me; I'm quite happy with how it turned out, and only a couple minor notes from my mentor on the knees, but all in all, the TLC that went into it really paid off. Here's the final version, with the box overlap added as well:

I aso began to develop a good and new pipeline that made my production a lot more efficient, particularly when coming to splining. That's part of the interesting phase of school, it's a lot of experimenting with different methods to find ones we're comfortable with and able to excel at, some work better for others.
In other exceptionally cool news, the revered Richard Williams, Animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit and author of my personal bible "The Animator's Survival Kit" came to town on Monday and gave a small lecture and QnA session. It was amazingly unbelievable, and his humility was something to behold. It was a fantastic pleasure to meet him, have him sign my book and take a quick photo. This man was able to learn from the "Nine Old Men" (the animators from Disney who constructed the rules behind successful animation) and help pass them along to the next generation of people, because noone had done that at that point.
Video reference, thumbnailing and blocking is also underway with the next week's assignment, this one involving a pole jump (ie. jumping from pole to pole with a character with no arms). Below is a sample of my blocking underway, no timing or spacing has been done yet, simply just working on posing; I chose a xmas theme, I don't really know why, hehe.

Well it's been long overdue for me to update this, and the real challenge has been with this last assignment. Essentially 3 weeks to do one 200 frame assignment, I didn't fully understand why but now I do. The learning curve is huge! It's amazing and nearly infathomable how many times I've reworked this shot and made changes; the detriments of learning body mechanics but it's really paying off. So I totally changed the idea, and reshot my video reference at the end of the week, as with this

Keep in mind the point of the assignment is to make the character do a 180 degree turn around. This idea however was well received by my mentor so I trudged forward with this

Which was a little less well recieved by my mentor, and many changes were made. Numerous iterations later, there was this

the shot nears completion and next week I will post the ultimate finished version. In the meantime, there is this shot, which I have excluded the box, but will have overlapping movement and fall off his head when he runs away. As well preconceptions for the next assignment, video reference and thumbnails shall be ready and well thought out.