4 Months!

Have passes since I've posted last. What things have happened since then you ask? (Ok, done rhyming) To keep things short and simple here's a list! (not in any order mind you)

• Went to GDC
• Started and finished my animation class
• Iridium is developing TCAE to work with Intels Perceptual Computing
• Because of that we got a bit of a bump in funding to help the game along
• Bought a T-Rex rig, and it's fun
• Moving in with my college friend Rob in May

Now that class is over I'll be taking what I learned and practicing it until the next class I can take which will be after the game launches. Till then I'll post what I worked in in the last couple months up here and start daily animations to put up here as well! (I may have posted this before but I think we all know how bad I am at starting a blog habit.)

Thanks for sticking with me!

Mike

Late nights!

So last night I stayed up till about 4 am, working on the two ball bounces I was talking about in yesterdays post. They look ok, but the bounce on the second one looks a bit off to me.. In any case I shall upload them here and continue working on the list of 51 animation exercises.

Practice time!

So this past week was Thanksgiving, my awesome mom came to visit from Sat-Friday and i wanted to hang with my mom so my animation practice was put on hold. I did get to bust out a few poses with Stewart (a free rig from AnimationMentor) and a toy Trex from Creative Crash. I've got a lot of practice to go with camera angles and pushing poses. I'll be honest, lately I've been feeling that "afraid to fail/practice" feeling. Which I just have to push through and keep practicing anyway. Aside from these I'm starting the 51 animation practices that are on animatorisland.com. First is the non decaying ball bounce, once the mechanics are hammered out I'll make others with specific emotions. Happy, sad, etc.

Onward!

Lemme find that aloe..

So I burnt (burned?) myself out recently, working on that animation and the schedule I was trying to keep. I think I'll build up slowly over time..

I recently found Animation Island, which seems to have a good amount of the things I need to grow. They have a list of 50 or 51 things to practice. Off to check some stuff out and start working. Sorry for the wait! And thanks for checking back in. :D

90ish PERCENT DONE!

So during this week I got some good reference, ripped it apart, understood some of it and added it to my animation. The hits are more impactful, but the whole thing seems too fast. I rendered it out with motion blur and put it up on Youtube but for some reason it downrezzed it from 1080 to 240. When I get home later on tonight I'll get it set up right and put the link up here.

Edit: Here's the link!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmrxslwf4As

For those who read the blog, constructive criticism is always appreciative. D:

Some progress!

I got a bit of work done yesterday on the animation. I also started putting them up on Youtube so I can show them properly here. I wonder if there's a way to change my blog from one email address to another so I can easily upload and post them here. Anyway! Even though I got a lot of stuff in with timing and whatnot there's still a bit to go, the landing of Beefy, maybe a better ending pose for Bony. Even possibly...an altered camera angle. The silhouette is a bit cluttered during the hits in the air, a better cam angle may fix it. Once this animation is done the next one will be a very quick dialogue piece, to start facial animation practice. Thanks for checking out my stuff!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXKDBjJDZpA

Week two on the same animation

I should probably minimize the scope of these weekly animations to simple things since I'm now on week 3 of this single animation. Granted the other reason why is that I'm not working on it nearly as much as I should. This weekend flew by with a birthday party, buying and setting up the living room tv, etc. Work has been done on the animation, and it is looking more complete than the beginning of last week. The timing is coming together but it's still in stepped. I'll get a playblast of it tonight.

Peace!