Evolution of a simple animation test .... and spaaaaceships.

Been working on a short animation test the past 3 weeks where a character that we developed from scratch simply puts on a coat/jacket.

All told, 3 weeks later, several work sessions where I saw the sun set and then rise (shouldn't it be the other way around?) and almost 1000 drawings later... I have 26 seconds of animation to show for it. Worth it?  Most definitely.  This was probably my most complex animation to date with lots of movement and technical mumbo jumbo such as overlapping action, easing in and outs, timing, texture, etc. etc.

First off, we had to develop our character.  We had two parameters.  It had to be our dachshund's owner (from our dachshund animation) and it had to be an adult.  Some of my classmates had already done this for the "waving" animation, but for that past animation, my character was a child based on my son.

So instead of starting at square one, I decided to age him 20 years.  This was a pretty fun little process.  It's not like I don't imagine the man that my son will grow up to be every single day. ^_^

Once we had a character down, we shot some reference (reference is king!) and from that we built out our key poses.

Then it was animation time!  324 drawings later... whalah!

Wish I had pushed the poses more in the beginning, but I learned a great deal from this project.  Ready for the final! =)

And some spaceships I doodled, inspired by Scott Robertson.

Another mid-semester update...

It's been all animation this semester!  I honestly thought the combination of 113B and 114 last semester would be the killer workload but ANI 115 singularly has caused me a great deal of pain. =)  It's a good pain though.  Like being thrown in a fire only to emerge forged into something stronger and better.

129B however has been nothing but pure fun.  I definitely have found my niche I think.  Maya as a whole is joy.  I enjoy modeling and I absolutely adore animating in 3d.  The graph editor is my playground!



Our most recent project in 2d animation I enjoyed a great deal.  The theme was "waving".  I had this whole convoluted story concocted with a lot of subtle acting which I did not go with because it simply was too complicated.  A week before it was due, my family and I went to Happy Hollow and my son was on the fire truck/police car carousel.  I had the camera rolling and we tried everything to get his attention and like the little bugger he is, he would not look at the camera. =)  An idea spawned and I rolled with it.  No pun intended.

I really wanted to use the carousel, but how to animate it in 2d?  Simple feat in 3d, but moving an object in perspective through space on paper is no easy task.  So I decided to follow in the steps of Futurama and loads of other animations and modeled it in 3d and then rotoscoped it into 2d.

The finished pencil test is below:

Our next project over spring break was laundry hanging on a clothesline and to be perfectly honest, I was uninspired.  But I had an excellent, restful break with family and friends so looking forward to the next project with renewed vigor.  

And last but not least, my work in 3d animation!  I have my midterm reel with my work up until now and the next scene we're working on which is a simple object pick up which demonstrates spine reversals.  

Midterm Reel:

Object Pick Up - Blocking Stage:

I plan on adding more antic to the beginning (him scratching his chin and shifting his weight from one foot to the other), changing the actual pickup to make him do it a little more gingerly, and then adding story to the end.  

And then more emotion poses:

This was a collaboration with Jessica Tong and myself.  Hers is the top and mine is the bottom. ^_^

Fear Pose: Switched to a new rig for the rest of the semester, the Malcolm rig.