2 cycles left to go!

So I pretty much finished the Shotgun cycle which is at the bottom of this post, I got some great feedback from some of my friends on how to improve it. Once I finish that I'll be working on Sonics run and spindash cycles for BlueCore studios, and actually when I finish the run cycle I'll be able to finish shots 7 and 8 easily since it's him running through some trees. After that I'll apply some fixes to my female walk cycle, and then start the sniper cycle today. Having three days off from Sprint was absolutely amazing and seriously helped me crank out these cycles quickly. Today I also have the Skype interview with the company that's based in China, so hopefully that'll go well.

Time to knock shit out.

Deadlines and Cycles

      So I've started setting deadlines for myself to keep moving forward and not get stuck getting distracted. Todays deadline is to have the shotgun cycle finished by the time I go to bed and have started fixing the female walk cycle/adding details to the Pistol cycle. Tomorrow will be to start and hopefully finish the sniper cycle and have enough time to complete the assault rifle cycle by Thursday. Thursday is the main deadline for all the cycles I've been working on since I've gotten back to GDC. Overall the goal was to finish 5 cycles in about a week and a half.

I also need to put these cycles up on the demo reel page/my website and then start planning an adjustment to my demo reel to add these cycles in it. The Poseidon walk cycle, the female walk cycle, the robot run cycle, and one or two of the gun cycles. That should make my Demo Reel now over a minute long, woo hoo!!

This one is self explanitory, start of the cycle behind cover.

 Obviously he's out shooting now, I must say I got the spin to be nice and fluid and remembered to have his different appendages show up where they needed to be at different times so it doesn't look snapped. I do need to turn down his reflections and add a point light to give the muzzle flash off on the surrounding Geo. Should I make the muzzle flash image bigger though...

Well, back to work I've only got about 13 hours before I have to sleep so I'd better make the best of it!

Mike

I'm pretty sure that I put some blogs up on my phone but I guess they didn't make it on here...

Well since the last post in September a lot has happened, instead of droning on I'll list it.

• I'm still at Sprint but not for long. 
• I put my Demo Reel up in it's own tab with work I've recently done.
• I made my business cards that have a QR code that leads to my Demo Reel tab.
• I've been working on the Sonic fanfilm and doing quite well.
• I've completed 6 shots, and I am now on shots 7 and 8.
• I started a side project with some friends from school, it's a short about Pokemon, a fight between a Marowak and a Donphan.
• I haven't heard anything much from David and the Orlando studio.
• DD is hiring and I've put in my resume and demo reel to see if I can get a job in their new studio up in Port Saint Lucie.
• I went to GDC.
• I found 7 companies who expressed interest in hiring me.
• I've got an interview on Tuesday night with a company in China.
• 3 of the studios that needed me are freelance (hence why I won't be at Sprint for long.
• I met a lot of awesome people at the Trion Worlds party at GDC and currently making some cycles to show them what I can do.
• I've been practicing my illustration.
• I've been holding off on playing ME3 till I finish the cycles for Trion.
• I'm single again.
• I met some cute girls at GDC.

So that's what's been going on with me, right now my main goal is to finish these cycles to impress Trion and go to their open house which is soon. I still need to email A LOT of people that I met at GDC and follow up with the companies that need freelance work. Since I'm working on cycles with Goon and the Robot with guns I'll be making some wallpapers and new backgrounds for my blog. If anything interesting happens it'll be up here!

September happenings.

It's my birthday month!! From my standpoint it seems like nothing much is going on but stuff has been moving forward. I'm on my last week of training with Sprint, I've started dating this amazing girl on the second of August, she's absolutely gorgeous and loves my dorkiness. I totally forgot about the walk cycle I did for Stephen Wong on Poseidon. He's working on the dynamics for his toga and then render it.

Speaking of Mr. Wong, he has been a great friend and suggested me for an animation position in a new studio being made up in Orlando. This new studio is being made by our friend David Rennels with backing from a big entertainment company. As of right now David is currently in Otown looking at places for the studio to be located, as well as putting together the budget that includes our salaries (which are a lot more gracious than my current Sprint salary. The studio has 2 projects available to it but I won't say much since I don't know what I should and shouldn't be talking about.

In another short note, I had a friend inform me of a Sonic fan film. After Vex Studios and Halo:Helljumper both were scrapped on the same day I sent my info over to the director to see if they needed any help with the animation. I didn't get a reply back for awhile, until this morning. The director took a look at my demo reel, said that he liked what he saw and was hoping I had some free time to help contribute to the project. I'm not sure what I'm going to do, I want to make sure that I have enough time to put a great effort into the new studio being made in Orlando to get off on a good foot and have a full time studio job with a salary.

On a last note I need to make a new background image since Google deleted my last one.

So it's the middle of August.

I told you that I was bad with keeping things like this updated. Well, obviously a lot has happened. On the animation front I no longer am working with Vex Studios. Which is sad but alright cause it turned into more of fixing the rig and getting it to work in UDK instead of actually animating. I also got to work on the Halo Helljumper fan film till our VFX film got swapped for another. So while I'm swamped with dayjob hours I'll be working on a my own stuff until I have time for a proper freelance gig.

On the boring job front I work at Sprint. It's retail, it's not that bad actually. I have an awesome new phone and I pay like $18 total for everything. The only thing is that I have a buttload of hours cause the training schedule was overlayed on top of my hours that were already there.

About videogames, I'm still broke to buy any... I did get to go to E3 though!! It was amazing, the Nintendo conference was freaking sweet and I played the hell out of the 3DS games on the floor. Dragons Dogma looks sick as hell. I love Monster Hunter and Dragons Dogma looks like a medieval version of it with mystical creatures instead of crazy new monsters. I love both games, maybe I just like killin stuff. The PSP Vita is pretty crazy, I hope that it and the 3DS have strong game line-ups justifying the purchase of those expensive systems. So many other games and stuff I can't even remember it all right now.

Another wallpaper later when I get some more time. Peace!

Job prospects.

As of right now my resume and Demo Reel are being reviewed by Pendulum Studios for a Junior Producer position and Walt Disney Animation Studios for a character Animation position. I think it'd be pretty cool to learn how to be a producer and keep things organized, but I'd love to work at Disney and learn from them. Maybe even work on the next CG Disney movie to follow Tangled.

Also right now I'm working with Vex Studios on rigging and animating a character for their game pitch. If you want to check out the site it's http://www.jeklynnheights.com/  The game looks great, it's a mix between LoL, TF2, and the style of Tim Burton movies.

In personal news I completed Poseidon's walk cycle for steve about a week or so ago, he needed it to show the cloth dynamics on the skirt that Poseidon wears. I also shall be working on the new background with Poseidon in it, and just came up with a little short about it.

This year Nintendo plans to reveal their new home console and let the people at E3 play it, which is totally awesome; I hope they have some good games on it to play unlike the 3DS which has no good launch titles. I bring that up because I may be one of the people going to E3 this year, which would be AWESOME! I've had the opportunity to get into E3 since I was in HS but something always came up. This time, the only thing that would stop me from going is that I was accepted to Pendulum as the Junior Producer. So that's a win-win scenario for me. Unless the worst scenario plays out and I don't get either. Which would suck but I'm keeping my hopes up. So, here's the walk cycle I made for Steve, this is just a playblast I'll be getting the rendered/dynamic version of it when Steve finishes all that.

Current happenings.

I've been away for a while, sorry about that. Anyway, I took a flight to San Diego and I'm still here, sadly the job at Legend 3D didn't work out so I'm now looking for a basic retail job for income while still sending out my resume and demo reel to studios. With some hard work and searching for a cheap apartment I can get myself settled in California for good.

During the job search, I did get a reply back from Vex Studios to start working on Jeklynn Heights, which if I can get everything running smoothly (UDK, Maya 2011 w/plugins, and Windows) then I'll be good to go to get some experience working on a game.

I've also been asked by my friend from school Stephen Wong to do a walk cycle for his Poseidon rig to show off the sexy dynamics on Poseidon's toga thing. By the way, here's his website, http://setupwong.blogspot.com/ I almost have the walk done, the body is complete and now I'm just getting the timing right for his right arm which is holding the trident and kinda using it like a cane/staff. Also I'll be adding Poseidon to the blogs background for this coming week.