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!!

My word, this half of the country is gorgeous!

     So, I'm from Long Island NY, and South Florida, which means I'm accustomed to the world being very flat. Now that I'm in California (living in the Valley) where I live is flat but I am surrounded by MOUNTAINS! Mountains to the North, mountains to the South, it's all so pretty. Today is the second Tuesday of my employment of Iridium Studios and I am having a BLAST. In n Out for lunch? Just happened, delicious. The weather is much better now that it's not humid like Florida is and Burbank is FILLED with people in my industry! It surely is what I wished for when wanting to move here.

    Currently I'm learning Unity, finding out all the small little details of importing rigs and animations to get everything working. Once that's done I just have to wait for all the finished character models, rig em up and get to animating! Once I'm completely settled in (around early September, move into the new apt on Aug. 1) I can start saving up money for my iAnimate classes! I can't wait to get some more hands on experience with an experienced animator showing me how to improve my work and workflow. Until then I'm also working on a side project for the new short by Winck Studios, gotta get that cinematic animation muscle flexing. Anywho, that's the haps. If anything new happens I'll get to posting! I'll also be posting work from TCAE, cause it'll mostly be cycle. Also here's an attempt to upload a video of a dodge roll!

GREAT NE...Oh wait..I already made that title.

Hey there! Some large large things have happened since the last post. I have left Trendy Entertainment as an animator and joined the growing ranks of  Iridium Studios. I'll be working on their new title, There Came an Echo. Unlike Dungeon Defenders this game will be in the sci fi category instead of fantasy. For those who haven't seen here's a link to the video LINK!

If you're curious of my reasoning of leaving Trendy, it's because I was offered a position with great potential and opportunities. The west coast of this continent is where most of the movies and game studios are located so I chose to place myself in the thick of it. I wish Trendy the best of luck with the rest of Dungeon Defenders PVP and Co Op and can't wait to play the finished product.

Demo Reel time! I've been working on a revision of the Demo Reel I'm posting now but can't show you since I have a character that hasn't been revealed yet, and I'm still under NDA. The current reel was put together in two days, and needed some extra lovin so I made a revision (which like I said, can't show yet..) So you'll have to deal with this one for now.

In the first week of July I'll be moving to the Burbank area, starting on There Came an Echo, and saving up money to get classes at iAnimate! Once I start taking those you'll see some real improvement! (If I showed you current work, which I'm kinda lax on sadly..) Blogging and Tweeting are hard habits for me to get into. :-/

Shit. The video won't upload, gotta do it through another site. Gimme a bit.

Great news everyone!!

In the next two weeks I will be able to post my new Demo Reel on here to show you all! I made some revisions to it since I showed it off at GDC, mainly stationary cameras in the Front, Side, and 3/4 views. As well as a piece that I worked on for fun to practice a snappier timing. So that's going up in two weeks and I also have a big announcement around that time as well!

I have to admit I hit a bit of a funk right after GDC, don't know why, but I've not been animating as much as I should or want to. Luckily, two of my friends from Full Sail, are here in Gainesville for a bit so I can get back to a really excited environment, working on stuff we have fun doing. Since that happened I'm going to be making a lot of animation assets, run cycles, dialogues, timing and weight practice, and especially acting. I need to get back into animating for cinematics because that's what I want to do. If I get stuck practicing game assets all the time I'll never get up to game cinematics and then movies. So the new project begins, I plan to have one large animation per month and smaller one per week anims. What I make I'll post here, thanks for reading!

To All the People I Met at GDC, WELCOME!!

Hey there! If you're checking out this site that means that you acquired my business card at this past GDC. I've got some updating to do of the Demo Reel page, updating with animations I've recently done, and the important post that my current demo reel cannot be posted up on the internet yet. It's all under NDA since it's all Dungeon Defenders 2 assets. I can post it on a locked Tumblr and send you the passcode, I'm not sure if I can send it through email yet, I'll ask and put the answer up here.

Since the other animator and I were both gone for a week we have a bit of catching up to do (still crunching :-/). Once I update the reel with the amazing critiques I received I'll make sure to put that up here. If you want to talk to me personally, or ask for me to email my new reel (if I can) please send me an email at MikeSmithAnim@gmail.com.

GDC and Crunch time!!

All right, so GDC is at the end of the month and it's going to be a blast. I'll be rooming with 3 friends from FS Robert Baum, Josh Gregurich, and Stephen Wong. We arrive in SF the Saturday before everything starts so that we can check out the city before the conference. There'll be some family and friend visiting, sightseeing, eating and game playing of course.

PAX East is that weekend right before GDC as well so that means here at Trendy we're on a crunch to get things ready to show to the lovely people there. What we're working on I can't say but I can say that if you like DD then you'll enjoy what we have to show you all.

Anyway I also have been keeping up on my Twitter frequently ever since the Oscars and their rudeness to the VFX industry. So if you don't have me on Twitter already, @Veloth88 is where you'll find me. I'll also link this to my followers on Twitter as well so maybe more people can see this blog! In which I have a thought to do a weekly animation and put it up on here. I made a few cool ones since my last post so i'll throw those up as well.

In terms of playing games Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate comes out in two weeks from midnight tonight and if you can't tell by that exact timing I'm super fucking excited for it. Smash and MH are the two games that I'm most obsessed about. Thousands of hours into both of them, no other series garners that dedication from me. Till it comes out I'm playing Fire Emblem Awakening, which I forgot how good it was, and am very glad that I have the GBA Sacred Stones from the Ambassador program. Bioshock Infinite comes out while I'm in SF and I want to try to get the edition with the statue but haven't thought about how to get it back if I bought it there. Maybe ship it through UPS...I mentioned in my last post about a desk and I got one, gave it to my g/f then bought a newer one for cheap, and Neville (the cat from Ted) is chillin like he's gonna work on something.

So, here's Neville getting hair on my chair.

Here's the leaping hammer strike 

I wanted to do a creature run that was bug like, and here's what i came up with.

I started watching Samurai Champloo again and really like Mugens animations so I grabbed reference from the intro of the show and bam.

That's it for me this week, I'm working on some other things I plan on showing next post which will be in a week at the longest. 

Trendy Fun

So It's been about three months since my last post, the first project I was working on has been shipped, it was the final DLC for Dungeon Defenders. Now we're on a different project in the same realm with this game coming out by the end of the year/very early next. I got my own apt, and got a new bed, tv, couch, etc. My friend Ted also got hired at Zynga in SF and he just moved out there, I decided that I'd take one of his cats that's really chill so he has a good place to be. Recently I've played LBP2, Darksiders2, Fall of Cybertron, and rebeat Castlevania LoS. I have Borderlands 2 but haven't opened it yet, soon, when I beat Darksiders 2. That's pretty much it. I've been using my Twitter more, you can follow me @Veloth88.

Until later, when I have my home desk and comp set up!