So that didn't last long....

So, I'm sorry. I really wanted to try and get this thing going, week to week. The trailers below should explain why that wasn't possible....

The thumbnail for this video is my shot, by the way. It's completely taken out of context in the trailer and has the wrong audio :)

 And Exodus is what's taking up my time now.

I'm planning on getting back to the 51 exercises when things have calmed down a bit. I have weeks 3 and 4 already done (I have for a while) but I think they need another pass to clean them up a bit. 

I'm thinking that starting this thing in the middle of a show like Guardians of the Galaxy was a bit of self sabotage. I'm hoping by the time things get crammed on the next show (after Exodus), I'll be in a good rhythm with the exercises. Still really looking forward to figuring out how to get a 3d animated character to put on a jacket.

I'm also doing a new dialogue piece that takes priority over the exercises. Really looking forward to getting that one out there, it's proving to be quite challenging.

Look to this space in the coming weeks :)

And if you haven't seen Guardians of the Galaxy yet, go do it!

Week 2: KISS

So here's week 2, a brick falling. I wanted to add a bit of character to it so I modified this rig to be a brick.

I tried to add in more to this one, more hops at the end, more expressions at the beginning, eye darts, etc. but it just wasn't working. So I simplified and I think it turned out ok. It took me back to the old addage "Keep it simple, stupid." You want all of your poses and your actions to read to the audience, and trying to put too much in will make that difficult. Give your actions room to breathe so the audience knows what's going on and what the intent of the scene is. You want reality (or a stylized version of it), but not at the expense of the shot.

Exercising those animation muscles: Week 1

A while back I came across this blogpost at Animator Island and I thought wouldn't it be fun, a bit challenging and somewhat informative to do one of these 51 animation exercises week to week? So now that I've updated everything (reel, website, resume, etc.) I've decided to start doing this. I have plans to do other animations as well (besides work obviously), such as another dialogue piece, but week to week I'm going to go through these exercises with a little write up about the experience.

So, week 1, the bouncing ball. I initially thought about skipping ahead to the more interesting ones. And then I thought, NO, no one's above doing a bouncing ball. Too many people early in their animation education try to skip or hurry past the bouncing ball. It is a good thing to try and master this before you move on to anything more difficult. If you cannot animate a convincing bouncing ball, you will not be able to animate a character or a creature. Take the time and set up a good foundation for your animation education.

So here's mine, I decided to go a bit more exaggerated than I normally would to spice it up a bit. I found a good rig over here at Bloop. It does everything you need a bouncing ball to do. I also decided to knock out the first two exercises this weekend, to get on to the more interesting ones :)

I'm really looking forward to figuring out how to get a character to zip up a jacket.

New animation reel

Here's my latest animation reel. Enjoy :)
All animation is keyframed from scratch by me unless otherwise noted in my breakdown.

“King” Progression Reel

Here's a progression reel to show a bit of my process. I've never done one of these before so it's interesting to me to see how much changes, how many little things change, but also what stays the same, the bigger ideas that stay the same beginning to end.

“King” Dialogue Piece

So here's my latest personal work. I really wanted to do some nice, subtle acting with this piece; to really get a sense that these are living, breathing, thinking characters. I look forward to doing more, but I think my next piece is going to have a bit more energy :)

I'm planning on putting out a progression reel like all the cool people do near the end of next week with a bit more on my process and the particulars of this piece.

Stay tuned!

Back with a vengeance!

It's been an absurdly long time since I've posted anything here and yet an incredible amount of stuff has happened since then. It's made me rethink why I have this blog and I've decided to do something different with it. And with that I've decided to do a bit of house cleaning in preparation; all the old posts are now archived. In the next week or two I'm planning on finishing up a personal dialogue piece, along with a new demo reel (first in over 3 years!), that I'll be posting here and from then on I'm going to try and do weekly posts (try really hard, I've told my wife this time so hopefully she'll keep nudging me). Until then stay tuned! I promise it won't be 2 and a half years til the next post.