2018 didn't go without a fight. The day of my last post, I slipped on the stairs in my home while carrying my two year old son and shattered my ankle. I've been pretty limited in what I've been able to do physically and it takes its toll, mentally. Then my family came to visit for Christmas, and on Christmas Day my father had to be taken to hospital and in those next two days we were told every variation of prepare for the worst. My family and I came home that day and we prayed hard. The next day we were told they had discovered what was killing him; a strain of invasive bacteria. An answer to prayer and day by day he's gotten better and stronger, and now they're back in the States, back to their home so he can recover further in his own bed. Since then my leg has been getting better; I've been able to put more weight on it so I can be a bit more self-sufficient. This week I made a cup of tea for myself!
Though I wish I had posted something for the last two months of the year, the break has allowed me to take a step back and look at it all. I want to dig a little deeper this year and tackle harder topics. Maybe even throw in a video or two. Do something with my Patreon beyond letting it sit there, come up with some exclusive content. Keep an eye on this space!
In the meantime, for January and this new year, please enjoy my latest two showreels representing my work on Star Wars : The Last Jedi and Jurassic World : Fallen Kingdom. I was a lead animator on both of these shows (and specifically the lead animator for Snoke) and I couldn't be more proud of how they turned out and of the work that the entire team at ILM pulled off. It was a dream come true to work on these franchises, and while they were never easy, there's definitely a certain magic to working on something from my childhood, to work on the projects that got me interested in the field of visual effects in the first place. Enjoy!
Happy New Year! I hope 2017 has treated you well. You may have noticed that this blog was silent through the entirety of it.
I've been pretty busy at ILM since I joined. The past year I've had the great honour of being one of the lead animators on the latest installment of the Star Wars Saga. Star Wars has always held a special place in my heart and it's one of the reasons I got into animation in the first place, so there's something truly special seeing my name against a starry background. I hope as the weeks and months wear on and ILM releases official behind the scenes videos, I can share with you a bit of the hard work that went into this movie.
It's shaping up to be a pretty divisive film for the moment, but either way I'm proud of the work that we were able to bring to the silver screen.
And now, an animation tip. As I'm animating I'm always trying to look at my work with fresh eyes; I flip and I flop in RV or invert the colours, I zoom way out so it's tiny, I'll even rotate it. I remember running into an animator that would sit away from his machine and look at a mirror to get a new angle.
Something that's been helping me lately is flat lighting.
It breaks down a shot into it's most graphic shapes and provides a different perspective on your animation. I leave ambient occlusion on so I still get some definition and separation between shapes, but all in all, it helps me get a better handle on how poses are working and especially how they're working in motion.
I found at work that I was using it so much that I was getting annoyed with having to use a drop down menu. I started looking into making a toggle script, but couldn't immediately find the mel commands necessary to do it. Luckily, Google is my friend and I found out that some one else had already made a script, which you can find here. I've assigned this to Shift + 7 in my hotkey editor and I use it all the time.
I have a few other ways to refresh my eyes but I think I'll cover those in another post.
Keep an eye on this space for more posts. My plan for January is to post weekly on Wednesdays leading up to an announcement at the end of the month.
