Washington Auto Show

Hey guys. I decided to have a life today and went to the Washington Auto Show with a friend. I saw a bunch of awesome cars that I'd love to have but know I'll never be able to afford. I thought I'd share them with you all...

Dodge Viper


Chrysler Nassau


Audi R8


Lincoln MkR (I never thought I'd ever have a Lincoln on my list of insanely cool cars)


Chevy Volt (sorry about the missing front and interior views)


Lamborghini LP640


Chevy Camaro


Pontiac Solstice


Jaguar XJ or XK?


Lotus Exige


Out of all of these beautiful cars, my top favorites are the Audi R8, the Lotus, the Chevy Volt and the Chrysler Nassau in that order. I'm just really sorry that I don't have more pictures of the Volt, it's truly an extraordinary car.

Awesome Short

Hey guys. I found this along with other fantastic bits of student animation last night and thought I'd share it. You all have probably seen this already since I found it in the May 2006 section of the Spline Doctors blog. It's new to me though and I was blown away by it. I think Creampuff Con is one of the best student projects ever. It really looks like something that Pixar would do. I'm not surprised though since it was created in the Pixar 3 class at AAU. All of the people in the Pixar classes are so lucky! I wish I could join them somehow. I guess I'll have to settle for studying their work intensely, lol.

http://splinedoctors.com/stuff/student_work/pix3/Creampuff_Con_int.mov

Kneel

The weird background comes as the result of me not going to bed when I should have. I wish I had time to try to color it. I'd really like to learn how to do digital paintings and such. All of that will have to wait though. I need to concentrate on making my animation good enough to get a job in feature first.

Internship?

Does anyone know if Dreamworks/PDI actually offers an animation internship?????? I just finished sending personal messages to all of the AM mentors who work there asking about them. Last year I wanted to apply for an internship at Dreamworks but wasn't able to find any information on them. I spoke to a few animators who worked there and asked about it on the AM forum. It seemed like the general answer was no, so i didn't send anything in. Last week I was talking to Jason Schleifer and mentioned the fact that I wanted to intern at Dreamworks. He told me that they finished an internship session not too long ago. Does this mean that Dreamworks now offers animation internships? I checked the website and found the same information about their Outreach program, but still nothing on how to apply....

I'm working as hard as possible to make my short good enough to get me an internship at one of the major feature studios this coming summer. Dreamworks is definitely on my list of places to get into, I just wish I knew whether or not they have an animation program and how to apply for it.

Congrats!

I just wanted to take a moment to congratulate fellow AM student, Deter Brown for getting hired at Dreamworks!!!!! He definitely deserves it! Please take a moment to stop by his blog and look at his outstanding work: http://deterbrown.blogspot.com/

Really Cool

On Sunday the fantastic Jason Schleifer posted my cry for help on his blog. Yesterday I was contacted by a TD at Laika and he offered to fix my character for me. How cool is that? I just want to send a HUGE thank you to Jason and to Chris, the TD! Thanks a ton guys, you both have saved my short!

First Day of Issues

I spent all day working on the 3d blocking for the first 3rd of my short. I finished converting all of Taylor's poses and spent the evening/night working on Twitch. I didn't have any problems getting Taylor to match the poses in my drawings, Twitch on the other hand is another story. After spending way too many hours on the same shot (and I'm still not happy with it), I think I can effectively say that I really dislike my 3d version of Twitch. I should have made the model much skinner. That way it would be easier to get the nice "c" curves that his 2d version has in his spine. The current model is giving me lots of grief and refuses to make c curves that aren't broken in some way, shape or form.

I really wish I had more time and more resources. if I did I'd remodel Twitch with a skinner body and with a thinner tail. That way there wouldn't be nearly as many weighting and flexibility issues, since most of the problems are coming from his fat hip area. I also wanted to have fat arms that taper towards his hands, like the 2d version does. I tried it and failed there too. The arms now twist badly if they're rotated a certain way. His legs also break rather than simply straightening out if his feet are moved too far forward/back. I really love the "bent leg" design that Twitch's 2d version has. I saw the characters in Over the Hedge had successfully translated that design factor into 3d so I figured it would be possible for my character to have the same thing. Apparently I was wrong. I should have given him the usual skinny, straight 3d legs that a lot of characters used to have.

This really sucks since the proxy version of Twitch doesn't have these problems. Because of that and because my rigger knows what he's doing, I think all of these issues lie in the model. Plus the fact that I modeled him makes my reasoning even more logical. I'm really wishing that I could have done my short in 2d right about now.

New Stuff

Hey guys. Since its time for me to move on to 3d blocking I figured I might as well post the 2d version now...

2d Blocking

A huge thank you goes out to my classmates Freddy Burgos and Danny Southard for telling me about the AAC compressor for my soundtrack. It's taken my file from 17mb to 3mb!

I really want to redo Taylor's animation in shot nine and sixteen. It's very rough and I know it can be much better/simpler. I may not get to that for a little while now that class has started. I'll probably have to wait and fix them when I get to the third that they belong in since I have to start the 3d blocking as well. The huge pause between shot 13 and 14 is where a fade out and a fade in will be. I don't know how to add them in premiere and I don't have aftereffects. I normally add them in Windows Movie Maker, but that program has been acting up lately. I didn't want to lose time fiddling with fades so I just left them out for now.

Some shots are rougher than others. Ideally I would have all of the shots broken down to the same level of blocking before moving on to the 3d part. I'd like to spend the first few days of the week adjusting/breaking down the 2d blocking and then the rest of the week creating its 3d counterpart. I figure that will force me to really think about every frame and will push me to break the rig's more to get that "2d feel". We'll see how that goes.

The Best School Ever

I now have more evidence to prove that AnimationMentor is the best school on the planet. I just found out that my class's graduation ceremony will be held at Siggraph!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm super excited about that, especially since I've never been there before. If I'm lucky someone from HR will come up to me and say something like "congrats from graduating from AM, here's a job at Disney/Dreamworks/Pixar/BlueSky!".

In other news, the new quarter at Am has started. My new mentor is Matthew Russel, former DNA animator who now works at Valve! I'm really excited since it turns out he's an extremely tough grader. To him an A student is ready to be working right now, so I'm going to do everything I possibly can to get an A from him. Plus I've gotten A's from all of the other tough mentors that I've had, there's no reason to stop now! :D

Can't Wait!

I can not wait until Pan's Labyrinth(http://www.panslabyrinth.com/) comes out! I adore fantasy films and this movie looks extremely promising. I haven't been this excited about a movie since The Incredibles came out. Sadly, I have to wait until Jan. 12th to see the film since I don't live in New York or California. Seeing movies early will simply be another perk for when I move to LA once I get hired. I'm still afraid of my apartment being destroyed in an earthquake though...

My Absence

Sorry for my lack of posts recently. To be completely honest, I haven't worked on my short at all this week. To make a long and complicated story short, lets just say that an atomic bomb has been dropped on an extremely important aspect of my life. Half of my future plans have been wiped out and a major source of happiness for me is gone. I am still recovering from the event and hope to be able to work again very soon. I know that it will happen again with a different person, as this is the seventh time I've been put in this situation (the others weren't nearly as huge though) so I hope to be able to find a way to work successfully regardless of my emotional state. As important as this aspect of my life is, I can not let it interfere with the development of my career...

Mistake

Sorry about the previous post guys. I thought the next quarter of AM started on Jan 8th and I just found out that I was correct. I guess what I saw on the website's calendar was a mistake. I'm glad I have another week to work on my 2d blocking. Now I'll be able to go through the short and breakdown the motion in the shots even more.

Running Out of Time

AnimationMentor's class 6 starts this coming Sunday! I've blocked in about 90% of my short so far, yet I still feel like I'm behind. I have one and a half days left to do the rest...let the crunch time begin!

Happy Holidays!

Happy Holidays everyone!

A special thank you goes out to my friend Amrit, who told me a key piece of info this morning which has helped my understanding of how to use rigs with an ik spine immensely! That was an excellent spontaneous Christmas present, as it's allowed me to realize just how flexible Twitch's rig is. Thanks a ton Amrit!

I hope everyone has a very wonderful Christmas(or whatever holiday you celebrate) and New Year!

A Test

Hey everyone. I'm working on blocking out my short now that class 5 is over. I've always wanted to block things in using the grease pencil script but I've never really gotten a chance to. Because of that, I've decided to do my first pass of blocking for my short in 2d using the script. So far I really like the results. It's much easier to edit the timing since all I have to do is move the drawing up or down the time slider. It's also faster since I can quickly draw in a rough pose and move to the next one. It just sucks that my 3d Twitch isn't nearly as appealing as his 2d counterpart. I'd love to do the entire short in 2d, but I still don't have the resources for that. Anyway, here's a sneak peek at one of the shorts I'm working on:

Sneak Peek

Common Sense

Please people, can we try to use a little common sense while playing video games? None of the things on the following site should have happened...

http://www.wiihaveaproblem.com/index.php?p=1

Planning a Short Film

I've finally "finished" creating thumbnails for my short! I say "finished" because I need to shoot video reference for some parts and I'll draw thumbnails from that. I'm done for the most part though. Here's a look at what I've done, the pages aren't in any particular order. They may not even make sense, lol, I just thought I'd share my process with you guys anyway.

More Animals!

Gorilla noses are evil...

Over Already

Class 5 is over already! I can't believe it, the time has really sped by! Hopefully things wont go so quickly during class 6, lol. I may not be able to finish animating my short if they do. Since this is the last week of class 5 it's only right for me to show you guys my final layout. Twitch's body rig was completed earlier today so I'll have to go in and make sure I'm not messing up his geometry with my poses. After that, it's on to animation! I'll need to shoot some video reference to help me with Taylor getting off of his bed and a few other areas. I've already found reference and thumbnailed some of the shots. Hopefully I'll be able to do that for the whole short in a couple of weeks. I really enjoy using the grease pencil script and would like to block in my animation with that before touching the 3d characters. It's much faster than posing them out and it allows me to adjust my timing quickly. Plus it'll be great to do some 2d work, despite the fact that it wont be seen in the final. Ok, here's my layout:

Final Layout

If someone could tell me how to properly compress sound files I would really appreciate it. The soundtrack has added an additional 11MBs to the video file...

Here's a page of sketches that I did why waiting for my video to finish exporting. I experimented with creating dragons with a large lower jaw. I really like how they turned out and will have to use that technique again. I've always had problem with drawing mean looking characters since my drawings always tend to be cute. You can see how the large jaw seems to have helped with that if you look at the characters at the bottom. My favorite ones are the dragon in the middle and the one to his upper left. The dragon at the top is one of my typical white furry dragons. They're distinguished by the slip of their snouts, their dreadlocks and their longer fur. I included him so I could compare him to the dragon in the middle. I believe I'll use the large jaw as a distinguishing feature of my traditional dragons.

Shame Shame

I just finished watching a news item on the AM site in which Bobby Beck spoke about sharing AM property (rigs, syllabus, lectures etc.) and it was very disappointing. Bobby should not have had to make that news video. Everyone at AM knows not to share the school's content so it's a shame that some people aren't respecting the school's rules. That's really not cool. If I were in charge I'd expel the student(s) who were leaking AM content immediately. Hopefully action is taking place against the person/people responsible for that. AnimationMentor is an excellent school and I can't imagine why anyone would want to hurt them in any way. I am really disappointed that any of my peers would do such a thing.

Winter Student Showcase

AM's Winter Student Showcase is coming! They've posted a news item asking for submissions. I'm so excited! I'm going to submit both of my dialogue tests, my 2d shot, and my side step. Hopefully one of those will make the cut! :D

Age Change

After talking to one of my friends who knows a lot more about little kids than I do, I've decided to change Taylor's age from seven to nine. I was told that at nine Taylor would be old enough to stick to his goal of scaring his sister while still being childish enough to be seen as the mischievous little brother. I'm glad thats the case since the change is making things easier as far as planning how he will act. I've also decided to make Taylor a little silly so he can get away with broader actions.

Children

I'm planning Taylor's acting in preparation for thumbnailing and I've run into a problem. I want Taylor to be a happy and energetic child so he can contrast with how shy and reserved Twitch is. I've changed my acting choices for Taylor to support that, he'll be making faces with Twitch, he'll jump off of his bed in the beginning, etc. The problem is I'm having trouble coming up with how he'll do those things. I've never really liked little children and have avoided having to interact with them as much as possible. As a result, I don't have a library of childish actions to draw from. I'm looking online at video clips of children doing various things but I'm having a hard time deciding what to use. One reason I think I'm having trouble is it's difficult for me to gauge how old the kids in the videos are. I can tell the difference between a baby/toddler and an older child, but I don't remember what a seven year old looks like. That's bad since I've found a few clips that I like but I can't really tell if a specific action/gesture is too juvenile for a seven year old or not. I dont even know if seven is too old for Taylor. Maybe five's a better age? I just want him to be a little kid but old enough to be able to stay on track with helping Twitch/pursuing his goal of scaring his sister.

I wish I had access to a little boy around Taylor's age. Then I could just ask him to jump off my bed, watch his favorite movie, jump out of the closet, and make faces in a mirror, lol pretty much everything I need Taylor to do in my short. Then I'd be able to take note of how the child does those things and use them to make Taylor's performance more sincere. Sadly, that isn't really an option since I don't know any little children or know anyone with some. For now I'll have to settle with asking my guy friends how they would have done those things when they were that age. If I'm lucky, I might be able to get one of them to actually perform some of those actions.

Animals

Hey everyone. After watching this week's inspiring lecture on character design, I decided to do some animal gesture drawings. Sadly, it was about 9pm so going to the zoo wasn't an option. Instead I looked at videos from the BBC Motion Gallery and drew from them. The first page features two tamandua, some kind of arboreal ant eater and the other two pages are just different monkeys.

It's Coming Together

Hey guys,

I haven't posted any real content in a whole, so here's look at the layout for my short. Now that I've gotten everything in 3d, this week will be spent making the changes that my mentor has been suggesting. So far he hasn't said anything about major changes. I have come up with one though. I'm going to redo the mirror shot because of the fact that having Taylor pull at Twitch's mouth has a whole lot of potential problems. That shot would be much easier in 2d. I'm also not sure if Twitch's facial setup (it's not ready yet) would even allow for that much deformation. I've decided that it would be more fun for Taylor to make faces with Twitch. I remembered that he is a seven year old boy after all. What seven year old boy wouldn't want to make weird faces, lol? Anyway, I think that will make the shot much simpler and clearer. Other than that most of the changes I'll be making mainly consist of adjusting the position of the characters in the frame. Here's what I have so far:

Full Layout

Oh, the short still has music and sound effects. I just didn't include them since they have a huge affect on the file size.

Thumbnails

Hey everyone. Here are some thumbnails that I've drawn over the past few days. I figured it would be a good idea to get started on the thumbnailing process since that will be one less thing I'll have to do when class 6 rolls around. I've been reading posts in the forums about class 6 and it sounds like I'll need all the time I can get to animate my short. I had planned on blocking out my short over our three week winter break but I'm starting to change my mind. Since planning is of the utmost importance, I will focus on thumbnailing and shooting as much video reference as I can. That way I'll be fully prepared to start blocking once all of that is finished. Here's what I have so far:



The first two pages are thumbnails for the first scene of the short. It's not finished since they only go up to the part where Taylor wakes up and realized that Twitch is a pathetic monster. The third page is just different poses of Twitch cowering. I don't like the pose I have right now in layout where Twitch is scared by the movie he's watching.Originally he was going to hide behind a pillow/cushion but I couldn't find a 3d couch with removable cushions on it. Right now I like the very last pose the best.

The final page was how I went about trying to solve the clarity issue when Twitch has to make faces in the bathroom mirror. That layout version of that shot isn't reading properly so I've come up with a shot to put before it to show that the characters are in the bathroom and are looking in the mirror. If I go with that idea, I'll have to move Taylor to the other side of the room to avoid staging confusion. The drawings at the bottom of the page are just thumbnails for how Twitch and Taylor will jump out of the closet in the next shot.

So Far...

Hey guys. I just completed layout for the second third of my short. Here's a look at the whole thing so far:

Layout

Please ignore the weird colors on Taylor in the first scene. When I added the frame counter for my mentor his adopted the shot mask's textures for some reason. The second scene portrays him accurately though. I'm not sure about the last activity that Taylor and Twitch do. They're supposed to be making faces in the bathroom mirror and the audience is looking at their reflections. I'm not sure if it's reading like that right now. I'm having trouble getting that to look right. If anyone has any ideas on how I can get it to read, please let me know.

Kitty Cats

Hey guys. I'm in the process of teaching myself how to properly draw cats. Here are last nights sketches. I really like the one of the stretching manx.

Family Dog

Hey everyone! If you haven't seen it, by all means check out Family Dog.

Family Dog

Tomorrow's Activity

Ahhhhhhh, while everyone else is cooking, I'll be playing Twilight Princess on my grandmother's big screen tv. This will be a very happy Thanksgiving indeed. :D

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone else!

Yes!

I've got a Wii!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

First Pass

I received a copy of the new Twitch rig today and I'm super happy with it! Everything is 600x's better than my crappy old rig and it's not even done yet! I was able to start and finish a first layout pass with the new rig in just a few hours. Here's what I have so far:

Layout: First Pass

I think some of the first few shots could use a bit more time. I'll add some more key poses tomorrow and see how everything feels after that. I'm using Twitch's proxy version because the skinning isn't finished yet and of course because its faster. It sad though because I'm starting to like the proxy version better than the actual character, lol.

Oh, the reason why it's so short is because we're supposed to work on our short in thirds. This one is the first third. I've also cut out the lamp part per my mentor's suggestion. I really liked it but it made the entire short go from 56 seconds to 49 seconds. One of the upperclassmen at AM has advised us that the longer the short, the lower it's quality. After reading that I considered scrapping the entire middle of the story and going from Taylor's bedroom to him having Twitch scare his sister, lol. I decided against that since it cut out about 90% of the story's charm, not to mention most of the story itself.

Layout

OK, technically I am almost finished with this week's assignment already. Layout it supposed to be really rough as far as poses go. The point of it is to focus on staging, roughing in the main actions and shot timing. I've got the staging down and I will tweak the timing tomorrow. Since I have so much time left, I was going to include more information as far as poses go and actions go. I've already started doing that with Taylor. His poses are almost animation ready. I'd like to do that with Twitch but I cant. The rig I made for him is completely awful! The hands are extremely bad. They rotate randomly and the whole forearm area looses and gains volume. If I rotate the arm too much in any direction the hand will start flipping out. There are weighting issues all over the place too. Thankfully one of my friends has offered to fix everything and do the facial set-up also. Hopefully the body rig will be ready soon so I can spruce up Twitch's poses.

The really bad part is the rig problems are making 2d look better and better. The fact that I keep watching CalArts shorts isn't helping either, lol. I really want to do some 2d animation but I know I can't. I know I'll just get frustrated because I dont like drawing directly into the computer and know that I'd do a much better job if I could animate on paper. I hope this will go away once I get the new Twitch rig. I think all of this is because I haven't been able to animate at all during class 5 when previously a day didn't go by where I didn't animate something. Lol, I guess I'm having animation withdrawal symptoms.

Feeling Down

The more I draw him, the more I want to animate Twitch in 2d. It makes me sad since I know I'm not nearly good enough to get the Disney internship with my 2d work. When I get back to SCAD I'll have to work on that. I can't risk the quality of my short though. To compensate, I'll just animate my shots using the grease pencil before blocking with the 3d character. I did that around this time last year with one of my shots with Ballie and liked how it turned out. We'll see, it all depends on how much time I have.

Inspiration

I just found one of the most inspirational blogs of all time! That would be the blog of Matt Williams. He has at least two pencil tests in every month of his blogs archive and all of them are outstanding. Looking at his work really makes me want to do some pencil tests. I'm very tempted to stop watching this week's lecture and have a go at it. Instead, I keep telling myself to remember his blog and try to bring some of the life of 2d animation into my 3d work. When I get back to SCAD I'm definitely going to have to do some 2d animation though! I wish i had my own animation disc and capture station. Right now I have a cheap light box and a scanner that takes forever to scan things. I plan on asking for those things for Christmas. We'll see what happens.

Anyway, here's a link to Matt's blog. I hope you enjoy his work as much I have!

Hand Drawn Nomad

On to the Next Stage

Hey guys. Here's the final version of my story reel.

story reel

I'm finally ready to move on to layout. I started working on layout last night and was quite happy. I realised how close I finally am to the animation stage and i can't wait to get started. I really wanted to do some animation tests during class 5 but I didn't have time. There were days when I wanted to stop working on the 3d Twitch and do a "short" physical animation piece. I never gave in though, I kept telling myself I was getting everything done now so I wouldn't have to worry about that stuff when it's finally time to animate. I'm glad I that I did that because I now have Taylor's bedroom and the hallway for the end of the short finished. I've also customised Bishop to resemble Taylor. The Twitch model is finished and is being rigged by one of my friends. I turned in my story reel early and was told I could start working on layout even though we don't officially start that until 3pm today. So far everything is moving along nicely and I'm finishing things early. Hopefully this will enable me to spend more time focusing on animating when the time comes for that.

Another One

A HUGE congrats goes out to Mike Stern! This recent AM graduate recently accepted a character animator position at Dreamworks! Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

More Room Renders

I've decided to keep the lighting that I created yesterday morning and simply hide them. It seemed like a waste to delete them only to relight the scene later. I did some renders to see how the rest of the room looked with that lighting and am happy with the results.


Lol, Taylor is the world's neatest 7-10 year old! There isn't a single toy or piece of clothing on the floor, lol. Thats probably because his closet is completely empty. It doesn't even have the pole to hang things from. I might add some things inside of the closet later. It all depends on how it looks when both characters jump out. Anyway, every wall in his room is a different height, lol. I need to adjust that and I need to add a night sky to the outside of his window. I wanted Taylor to have horror posters on his wall. I guess I'll have to draw those, since real ones didn't match the style of his room.

Should Have Gone to Bed

I really should have gone to bed two hours ago. Instead I stayed up messing around in Maya. This is Taylor's room so far. On the other side he has two dressers, a door, and a tv. Across from him is a chair and where the closet will be. The layout is the same as the room in my storyboards, minus the fact that there's now a tv in his room. There's still quite a bit of work to do though. I need to fix his window so you see an image of the moon, I need to make some rough bed covers, and I need to make his closet. The only things I made in this scene are Taylor's hair, his lamp, his window and his pillows. I can model props fairly quickly and created those and a mirror in less than 30 minutes. Once you see the rest of his room, you'll notice that his dressers are a different style than his night stands. That's because I got the other models from turbo squid and liked that particular dresser, lol. If it looks too bad, I'll fix it.

Anyway, it's 1am and I know Taylor's pose is complete garbage. The lighting probably sucks too since I dont know how to light properly. This is basically me fooling around instead of going to bed.

Oh, I wanted Taylor's pajamas to have silly little ghosts on them but I kept getting an error whenever I hit update psd network.

New Stuff

Hey everyone. I've got three new items to share with you guys. The first thing is my up-dated story reel. I've adjusted the timing on some of the shots in the first half and have added quite a new new shots as well. I also have music to go with my drawings! The song is called Chansons sans paroles and its from Gerard Stamian's album Dry Fig Trees. I got it from www.magnatune.com, that website is loaded with tons of cool music. They have a wide variety of genres and they let you listen to all of the music for free!

New Story Reel

The second thing I have to post is a render of my 3d versions of Twitch. The purple one is the original and the white one is the revised version. So far everyone likes the revised version better. A tremendous thank you goes out to my friend Kris for the revised version of Twitch!!!!!!!!!! Everyone also likes Twitch's new coat. My only issue is that the white tends to take on the color of the lighting in the scene. I know that happens with all of the characters but it's not nearly as obvious. I'll ask around and see if there's a way to fix this.



Last but not least, is a drawing I did a couple of days ago. I was testing the black and white color scheme and decided to apply it to the 3d model. Sorry about the image quality. My scanner butchered it.