The Ball Bounce: The Cornerstone to all Animation

Practice, Practice, Practice. Here is a ball bounce using a Squash Deformer.

Figure Drawing for a Month: Part 1

So i decided to do daily figure drawings this month. I have been terrible about doing daily sketching in the past and need to develop the habit of doing it. So here are the first eleven days of my daily sketches in the following ten images. They are not all perfect by any means, but they all had something to teach me.

Making of the "Journey to the West" Poster

As an assignment for a class I was to design a poster for a theater. The subject was up to me, so I picked Journey to the West since it is one of my favorite stories.

So the first thing I did was thumb out some ideas and then pick one to go with for the final Poster.
Sketches:

So i picked the one with the Monkey Kings Arm coming down into the scene holding the scrolls. this kept most of the story a mystery, but intrigue the audience enough to want to know more. So i blow this thumbnail up and then traced it onto a new piece of paper. Then i went in and strengthen the composition. Once that was done I painted a Value study of it to get it to the right look. If it worked as a black and white then it would work in color.

Then from there i painted it.

I wanted the whole feel to be Chinese inspired, have a vague Chinese brush paint feel to it. I had to make sure that the scrolls read as rolled up sheet of paper and Instead of just painting the lines in I got a photograph of rolled up paper and Image Manipulated it to work in the illustration. This turned out fairly well.

Animated Slip and Fall

I have been working off and on on this animation for the pass 4 weeks and here is the final playblast. Enjoy.

Working on a Slip and Fall Animation

One of the several animations I am working on currently is a slip and fall. The following video shows how far I have gotten in this Animation. So far, I have just finished up with the blocking and I am now looking it over to see what I can improve, remove, and add.



Already, there is a section here at the beginning that I plan to remove, It looks like unnecessary animation that takes away from the rest of the animation.

Animating Weight in Maya

Recently I have been working to improve my CG animation skills in Maya.

The following is a video that shows what I decided to animate. If you watch there is much left to be desired in this animation.





So once i have looked this over and received some critique from my class, I went back through and cleaned up my Graph editor, changed some of my silhouette choices, changed some of the timing, and added a bit more to it overall. here is what it looks like now.



Now i will go back through this again and play with the timing in sections until I feel its right. This is more of "feel for it" type of thing.

Animating Dialog and a take in Maya Part: 1

For Class I am suppose to pick a piece of 11 second long dialog and animate it with take happening at some point during the scene. The take does not have to be Tex Avery in style, but can be something much more smaller.
The Dialog I picked is from the Movie "The man who knew too little", which is a spy spoof movie staring Bill Murray.

As the first part of the process I have begun to block out the action that will be taking place in the scene. I decided to place two character at a bar having never meet each other before this moment when the first character begins to act emotionally towards the other.



There are a few parts right away that stick out in my mind that need changed. One being that the right hand character's left hand Sticks to the top of the counter through out most of the scene. I plan to break this up with some movement; to balance this movement I will not have the right hand moving during this time.