These Pretzels Are Making Me Thirsty

Soo I've decided to tackle a new dialogue piece and over the past week and a bit it's coming along quite nicely. I chose a clip from Best in Show that I became obsessed with and decided to use Kyle Balda's rigs from 3D World for a change of pace. All in all, I quite like them, tho no rig is perfect, but it will add some nice variety to my reel as well.

Blocking:


Splining:


The shot still requires a fair bit of finesse, that's where I'm at now and will be a fair bit of fun to add. At present, it's my plan to finish this, my werewolf shot, polish my other dialogue and short film pieces and create a new reel lickety split, as even though my old reel isnt that old, my quality is improving beyond what I think it accurately depicts. A fair bit of work left to get this done, but I'm motivated and working hard at it so indeed it shall!

Updates, Updates

Where to start. I worked on the Kools for about 3 weeks and did my best to bang out 5 shots. Unfortunately Lightwave did not like running in particular on my computer and I was suffering from many graphical errors. I made good progress on those shots, but I wasn't able to polish anything as it was literally impossible to add that kind of finesse. I know Lightwave is a frustrating piece of software to begin with, but Newtek could only offer upgrading to a better graphics card as a viable solution and I wasn't prepared to do that. Nonetheless, it was much fun and Mr. Bazley was an excellent director to work for.

I moved on to another NDA project which helped get me my XSI legs back. Unfortunately, scheduling problems may call for them needing me in the future as to right away, but I'm rather stoked about that project, it's very neat. On top of that, this gives me the opportunity to go back to completing my short film. With those other two projects, I got distracted and neglected to finish my submission for the spline doctors contest, I did spline it, but I didn't give it that level of polish I wanted and thus, did not enter it. I will wait for the next one. Sooo thusly is my plan to really finish my short film now. With a few months hiyatis from it, I've come back with a set of very fresh eyes and am able to apply the new things i've learned from the new shots I've accomplished. Progress so far is promising.




This is my immediate plan: finish short film, accomplish new dialogue piece and polish a new reel for Siggraph at the end of July, not necessarily in that order. I feel rejuvenated and, although the job market is less than ideal at the moment, I just have to keep pushing forward and something will come my way. Every week I can feel my eye and skills improving just a little bit, so at least I know I'm moving in the right direction.

In terms of the new dialogue clip; I wanted to do something Fred Willard at first, but in my search, I came across this awesome piece from Best In Show:

Since I have legit copies of the Kyle Balda rigs from that issue of 3D World Magazine, it would be so rich to use them for this piece and offer a lil extra diversity to my reel. A nice little bit of more subtle acting, I can't do the whole thing obviously, but I am in the process of narrowing it down. I will let you know what I choose.

Platitudes and Shenanigans

A super busy couple weeks as I keep pushing forward and honing my skills. So far, I've done 3 weeks of alumni tutoring, and results have been much better than expected. Far more students in attendance and classes go far in overtime, it's been a great experience. As well, the Werewolf shot evolves and somehow gets somewhat closer to completion but so much more work to do on it. I changed the ending since I didn't like him jumping down a cliff so now it's over a crevice. Since the whole thing is a quadraped body mechanics exercise, it's a little more suited, but I can't explain enough how much I've learned from doing this shot. More polish yet to comes, I stress THIS IS NOT FINAL:


As well I started working on a new shot for the Spline Doctors competition, and I have 6 days to whip that off. It's far more achievable so I'm sure I can do it, but still quite challenging. Basically it's a stylized walk, and there were many different themes to approach it with, I chose the 1970s theme and decided to go with a pimp strut. Lot of fun pimping up bishop and managed to get a pass done on the blocking, I'll see what I can do to finish it lickety-split.



More importantly though, I'm on a project!! Yea that's right, I am working for Bazley Films in the UK on a Kool project (The Kools) for the next little while. It involved learning Lightwave and so far so good. It's been and interesting experience, but I don't have too too much to report yet, and doubt I should release any WiPs from that so I won't. Progress! :D

Also super recently I was able to attend GDC Canada with an awesome press pass courtesy of VancouverAnimation and the work I do on the webcomic for that site. I guess I have somewhat of a fanbase but GDC was an amazing experience. I'd like to think I did a lot of good networking, but only time will tell, hehe.

Hello My Nugglets

So started P9oX last week, sticking with it and feeling great, exhausted but great. This is exactly what my sedentary lifestyle needed at the moment, I could literally feel my legs atrophying. If anything, it's entirely possible it's helped my focus a little more too, but maybe that's cuz i'm also eating healthier or seeing some things animationwise I hadnt seen before. Either way, it's progress baby! And that's all I can do at the moment, is really hone my skill.

With that said, I've decided to start working on my creature shot finally; now that I've managed to become solid on an idea. At best this is really a body mechanics test, but nothing beats a nice wolfie run through the forest. Some mild humanoid elements but I think they shall be minor as I learn some of the limitations of the rig. So in the blocking phase and really trying to understand the mechanics of quadrapeds, it's simply a fantastic exercise for that, if not daunting and occasionally mind bending, but I have good hope on my success with this.



Progress continues on the development of my new super live action/CG short film; I forgot how much the conceptual phase could be; and sooo thankful I actually decided to read McKee's "Story" book. I did my second proof of concept test simply to have a better understanding of the technical challenges I'll be needing to overcome, as I've never really done any live plate animation before. I can't thank my wonderful girlfriend enough for allowing me to shoot her and use her as the subject matter for this test. 3D matchmoving, marker removal and animating to a live camera... mostly successful.



And in other slightly related news, I had my first alumni tutor session last week... that's right, as a tutor! Yes, the powers that be deemed that I am mature enough to aid the students once a week via webcam with my own hour of awesome QnA, and all I can say is that it was a blast. It went on for 3 hours and there were 15-20 people that stayed for the whole length of time... who knew. Maybe the current students are just really really bored but I'm glad the alumni sessions are growing in popularity and it's definitely a nice way to give back to the community that helped me out so much. :D

The Cherry Blossoms Are Out!

Just a quick update; it's been a month of computer problems, sprained wrists, emergency family trips, apartment relocations and new girlfriend so I guess I got caught up with life. With that said, I did manage to enter my animation in the 11second club for March, though not quite as polished as I would ideally have hoped, but here it is;
Made the 22nd percentile, woowoo! Had I put a little more TLC into it who knows how much better it might have done. I've decided though, not to do the 11 second club this month and instead spend my time testing out new shorter acting pieces I've been wanting to try. First up is a Sammy Davis Jr. piece that's still in blocking.

Also, considerable work and development has begun on a new short film (I know, what about my old short film) but this will be a live action/CG hybrid in conjunction with an actor friend of mine. The nice part also is that I'll get to try a bunch of things I've never really done before like animating to a live plate, etc. Without going into detail, I've had some good fun doing some rudimentary concept sketches, here are but a few.

The Days Are Longer Again!

What an interesting couple weeks of ups and downs and not as much progress as I would like to have hoped for, but oh well, these things happen. I wiped out on my bicycle in some morning snow and sprained my wrist, not a serious sprain, but enough to hinder my animation progress to be sure. As well as suffering from a few computer related issues which will lead to a backup and reinstall as soon as this blog entry is done. So in terms of animation, I guess my greatest accomplishment was really hashing out, modelling and blocking my shot for the March 11 Second Club competition. I was able to give it a few passes and get a nice block-plus going and will begin splining early next week. If you're curious, feel free to check out the video below:



Other than that, I was able to experiment with the new werewolf creature rig and test it out to see it's limitations and how the controls really work. Basically just a run cycle but it was pretty eye-opening as to how to approach the real shot I want to do. So this is a gallop run done with the werewolf, admittedly it's meant for a lighter dog, but as I mentioned, it taught me an awful lot about the particulars of the rig and quadraped mechanics in general. I've been archiving footage from Twilight, Underworld, National Geographic etc to help narrow down a solid shot I want to do with this and I'm getting ever so close to finding the perfect one, will keep you updated.

This is the close to gallop test, and I stress it was primarily a test.

Game modding work has slowly picked up again, with the transition over to Unreal, I've finally gotten my hands on the rebuilt rigs and have been testing out their limitations as well. Also, due to my apartment being put up for sale by my landlords, I am moving into a quainter place across the bridge at the end of the month. As long as I can get my 11secondclub entry done, then I will be more than satisfied.

February Schmebuary

Wow, pure insanity with the Olympics in Vancouver; it's been a very distracting couple of weeks. I haven't really done much Olympic persay except observe from a distance, I didn't feel like standing in really really long lines, but it was still pretty amazingly cool. I also just finished and submitted my 11second club entry, so I'll be interested in seeing how I do on it. I don't expect to win but it's not really about that anyways. I tried to go heavy on body mechanics with this one and learned alot from doing it. Not really sure if the idea makes sense, but hey, my gut told me to go with it. Here is what I submitted, if you vote, please still vote fairly and accordingly, I have the utmost respect for this competition.



I also chose a werewolf rig from Arconyx as part of my prize from Kenny Roy, I'm bouncing through a few different ideas for that at the moment, but that's my next project, as well as getting back to work on my short film. My Hiatus from it was perfect to give me the fresh eyes I need. Age of Chivalry has decided to switch over to Unreal from Source, in the big picture I suppose it's worth it, but it also means the animations I did for them are useless. Ah well, new models have to be rigged so I get some time off from that. It's all about the best end product and this seems to be leading towards that.