Internship

Not much time to animate lately, but it's for a very good reason. I've been accepted into an internship with an instructor from AAU. It's not animation related at this point, but will be in the future, and honestly, it feels great to be working with a team again. Working in a vacuum is rather difficult for me, and having other people I can bounce ideas off of really helps me.

I checked my last post, and realized that I have done much more work on my Jim Dialogue animation than what I posted. I've got Jim locked down almost 100%, and I'm currently building the models to flesh out the scene - he's not talking to no one, after all! I'm attempting to model them after the characters that Jim adventures with, but if that proves too time consuming, I may take a few shortcuts, for the sake of getting this animation out and done with.

Enough talk, here's the clip:




I'm not sure when I'll have time to animate more personal stuff, and as I'm under an NDA, I won't be able to post any internship-related animation, but I'll drop in from time to time just to keep the blog alive. Perhaps I'll turn this into a general art blog, and post sketches and other drawings. We'll see how well blogger handles that.

More Jim

Just a small update - I continue work on my Jim pieces, though the walk cycle is progressing at a much better pace than the dialogue. Here's how it looks right now. Getting close!




I already feel wanderlust for a new piece, something longer, and actual film, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea if a single line of dialogue is slowing me down. Must keep working!

Jim stands for...

Just a small update - work continues on the Jim Dialogue piece, and I've started a walk cycle with my Jim Model as well, just to keep my brain exercised. Here's a playblast of the dialogue:




and here's an in-progress of the walk:

More more more

Always working on something, as I always say. I felt like I couldn't look at the viking animation anymore and decided to shelve it for now. Of course, that's not to say that I won't revisit it in a month's time (and probably look at all my keys and just think "What was I doing?") but for now, I needed another thing to look at.

So! There is a particular little scene that's been rolling around in my brain for a long time, and I'm taking this chance to finally get it out and into Maya. If you are familiar with webcomics, you've no doubt heard of Penny Arcade. They've worked together with Wizards of the Coast to help promote the newest version of Dungeons and Dragons by playing real games and recording everything and releasing it as a podcast. Oh, the nerdity! It makes me so happy to hear them roll their d20's. Anyways, one of the player characters to spawn from this union is a REAL character, going by the awesome moniker Jim Darkmagic, of the New Hampshire Darkmagics.

A coward, a jerk, a potent wizard with a budding fan base, Jim is hilarious in any situation. There is a particular quote from one of the podcasts that I've picked out, and I'm attempting to animate the short scene. I've already done a passing job of modding Norman to create Jim, and time and patience allowing, I'll be doing two other characters as well. A bit much work for a short scene, but if this is successful, I imagine that other animations based off the scenes in the podcast will follow shortly.

Here's what I have so far:



Jim Darkmagic and all related characters are, of course, property of Penny Arcade.

Current Work

I learned this past weekend that most artists are never -really- pleased with what they've created, having always envisioned it differently or better. In the spirit of this, I'm going to post all of my current Demo Reel shots, all of which I feel need more attention and work. I'm doing this for the sake of my career - no one will know that I'm an animator if I never show anything I've done.

I'm still going to polish these pieces and put them all into a single reel, but this will have to do for now. Onto the animations!


"Not Happy" Dialogue




Schizo Dialogue




Mechwarrior 100 frame challenge




Viking Boy weight exercise




And here are the youtube links, for larger videos:
Not Happy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7UKfsNg60o
Mechwarrior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqFf-PpvU38
Scizho: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_FoGl6XBSQ&
Viking Weight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDL5Z_uoUE&

EDIT: I'm unsure why, but my viking animation has some -funky- video problems. I've tried re-playblasting, and several upload attempts, but the internet doesn't seem to like it. Very frustrating!

More Viking, and CTN

I have a curtain, now, and plenty of more keys laid down. In truth, a lot has happened since my last post: I have a new place to live, and now I have another Animator in the house. It's true she's a 2d animator, but damn, having someone with the proper knowledge just a shout down the hallway has WAY helped my productivity. We also enjoy nerding out over a particular slice of animation gold when we watch movies - a good environment to be immersed in.

So I'm heading to the CTN Animation Expo this weekend, due mostly to this wonderful new roommate, and we've both spent the past two weeks trying to finish up all our current projects to use in an impromptu Demo Reel. There will be fantastic networking opportunities at CTN, and I need to be able to just hand someone a dvd. Hopefully the viking piece will be done in time! We are taking a school bus thursday night, to arrive first thing in the morning on the first day, for maximum employment opportunities!

Wish me luck!

Viking update #2

And more progress is being made. Hit a roadblock with the poses near the end, and I'm switching to detailing and smoothing the beginning keys until I puzzle out how to finish the whole thing.

One of the biggest things I miss about being an animation student is having the luxury of students and teachers around you the whole time. It was supremely wonderful to have a useful critique every week, and now that I'm a graduate, I have to rely on my own network for outside opinions. And, really, that's the hard part for me. I have no confidence in my talents, and as such, I'm slow to show anyone my work, because they'll obviously hate it, and think me a terrible artist, etc, etc.

I understand that it's mostly silly, and that I need to get over it if I wish to be a better animator. Actually, writing this post has already helped, and upon finishing it, I'ma upload a playblast, and get some help.