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!

Is Pokemon interrupting life or is life interrupting Pokemon?

So, I didn't finish my animation last week. I did mention that this one was a bit more intense and would need more time. I have not yet taken that time to do so. Pokemon came out...4 badges ago and it's been hard to pull myself away from it. I did get back to my file tonight and I'm organizing the timing to make it feel right. Zhen (my roommate with whom I workout with) suggested to have Beefy bounce and then get hit by the knee. It looks a lot better with the bounce, but now I'm at the tough part of filling in the bits in between the keys. I prefer to use straight forward animation so I get a bit lost once the keys poses are set.

One of my biggest hangups as an artist is not knowing how to make what I see in my head. I choke up and stop working on whatever it is I'm working on. This is the main reason I'm not as proficient at my drawing as I should be. This sometimes carries over to my animations and they get delayed, at work I have no choice and I just keep working on it till I figure it out.

So I gotta take that approach with my animations at home, quit being a little bitch when it doesn't look how I want it and figure shit out.

On a bit more of a positive note I was able to download "Stewart" one of the rigs that Animation Mentor uses. I quite like the proportions on the character, ALSO he's not segmented like Norman or Ultimate Beefy/Bony. I definitely have some plans for that rig, some with the gun that I rigged up for TCAE. Anyway, updates to come over the weekend when I plan to finish the rest of this scene and start a new one!


Thanks for reading.
Mike

Mid-animation post

Hey there! Glad you came back to check how the animation is going. The time I have to work on this during the week isn't is as much as I'd like but I'm doing stuff. Maybe my productivity would go up with Netflix off...Anyway I'm laying out the animation in stepped still, getting poses to look nice, and finding the motion that I want the characters to go through. Motion-wise it's looking ok but I haven't really messed with the timing too much, and that's obviously the biggest factor.

I need to push my poses more but can't seem to see where they should go, and the timing is really baffling me. I think for the interest of learning through mistakes I should power through it and find out what I did wrong and fix the mistakes on the next animation which will be the big characters retaliation.

So I'm posting the playblast, yes the timings off, and I need to finish the bug guys bounce to a stop. and probably put the skinny guy in a better end pose but it's getting somewhere. If you have any constructive criticism on posing or maybe a preemptive tip on timing that'd be great. Saying "X is too fast" doesn't help me now cause I didn't put in the timing yet. (It seems silly to say this but so many times have I said "I haven't touched this part yet, look at that part." gets ignored.) Anyway posting and bed. NIGHT!

P.S. Still haven't done anything with getting a better video quality. Will test over weekend. 

A new week, and a new animation!

Hey again! Before I start off on this weeks animation, I want to address the quality of video I posted on my last post. It seems that Blogger went and didn't put an HD version. I think I'll have to put these up on Youtube and link them to get the better quality video.

So this week I'm doing a more in depth animation, it'll be a couple punches/kicks, maybe to be added to later, who knows. The two characters in this scene are Ultimate Bony and Ultimate Beefy. Similar to Norman in the fact that they're segmented but not, cause they don't have faces.

Anyway, the current plan is to have the larger character checking his gun, and have the thin character drop down into the shot, sweep kick, jumping knee to the midsection followed by a back kick. If the timing doesn't allow for the knee then the sweeping kick followed by the back kick. I think I'll start storyboarding things out so I get some practice with that, and to better explain what I aim to do.

To things!

Sideroll!

Alright! In a weekend sprint while battling the urge to play the Wind Waker remake I finished a quick animation to adhere to the schedule I set for myself.

So this animation is just a quick sideroll as the title mentioned, I did a forward roll a bit ago with a rig from my past studio but since it belongs to that company I decided not to put that one up online (mainly cause I altered him a bit by giving him a different weapon.)

I hope this video works, sometimes blogger doesn't like my playblasts. (It may be the QT format..) Anyway, I also have the gun transformation for you to check out! This is the transformation from the base gun to the sniper, it has 4 other forms although I think this one is the coolest out of them (it's the most intricate of them so far.)

Also, I got my car! It's a sexy little thing, 2011 Honda CR-Z. Also it's a manual, which I'm learning. Alright that's it for this week that's ending. I'm gonna go practice driving stick, play some Zelda, and plan this coming weeks animation. I may even make another post today. (Two in one day!? Whaaaat!?)

Aight, keep it loose.

Mike

Guns, guns, and cars.

On the animation front, I just finished a crunch week and can now implement a weekly plan that I...well planned. Anyway, each week I'll make an animation and blog about it 2 or 3 times. I've got new rigs to play with, and some cool ideas to try. This week is the start, a day late but shits been busy.

So! Over at Iridium studios we've been bustin our butts to get our vertical slice done. A vertical slice is similar to a demo, but demos sometimes make extraneous things that don't get in the final game. The vert slice is a level from the game that's playable early in it's (almost) finality. Anyway we've got in 3 characters and an enemy in the fifth level of the game. The voice commands are amazingly responsive and it's cool commanding your units without using the mouse and keyboard. The title mentions guns twice, the first gun is the weapon for the game. Which by the way, is freaking sweet. You can tell I meant that cause it was italicized and underlined. Anyway it's awesome, cause only the coolest games have their guns TRANSFORM. Yeah. Shit's tight. I shall be uploading a vid of one of it's transformations when I get to my work comp tomorrow. Currently now that we've finished work on the vert slice I'll be rigging up the gun properly.

The other guns would be the ones that you'll have to buy tickets for. *flex* I just started working out with my roommate, goodness I'm stupidly sore but man that sore feeling means it's working. Now to keep this up over time till the results kick in.

This post is taking forever mainly cause I'm watching the animaniacs while trying to write it.

Cars!! I shall be getting my first new(ish) a manual 2011 Honda CR-Z, with 30,000 miles. I'll be picking it up this week and then be cruising with my new ride. Can't wait!

That's it for today, I'm gonna go start some random animation. AWWW YEAH!!