Some Old Midway stuff...

Here's some old work from Midway. I'm assuming they don't care as Mortal Kombat has shipped and the other project is canceled. Most of my fam wasn't really sure did what I did at work all day - this is a good taste of it. If anyone at Midway does care, lemme know and I'll yank em.

• Canceled project - This is a facial animation test from a canceled Midway project. They wanted a couple of quick dialogue tests, so I did em. The animation isn't the best, I didn't get to spend a lot of time on them. Just putting the rig through it's paces. I also did the facial rigging and weighting.
• Mortal Kombat Facial Rig - This is a range of motion video from the prototype facial rig for Mortal Kombat vs. DC. I created the poses for the rig to drive and did the facial weighting pass. It's a joint based rig whose architecture was set in place by my coworker and friend Scott Englert. Subsequent rigging work on characters was done by Tony Lewellen and his team.

Site updates...

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. I sure did though my belly is full of chex mix and chocolate covered pecans... Oh, and I'm a big fan of what may or may not be a trend. I got a couple of Blue Ray DVDs for presents but don't have a Blue Ray player yet. However, they both came with digital copies downloadable via iTunes with an unlock code. I'm wondering if this is the standard or just an anomaly shared by the Dark Knight and a little robot that could named Wall-E. Hoping it's a trend:) Projects pages updated:

• Garden City
• Mortal Kombat vs. DC
• Ballers: Chosen One
• The Wheelman

Progress on Garden City is coming along just dandy.

Been a while...

It's been way too long since I've made a concerted effort to draw more and actually followed through on it. Plan on changing that. This is a 20 minute photoshop pastel of our cat. Man, I need to practice. There's only so much time in life and lately I don't feel like I've been the best steward of mine. That's something else I plan on changing. That'll be my present to myself. Also, this is absolutely amazing...

For my friends...

Almost all of my friends at Midway today were let go. I'm still shell shocked about it. They are all talented animators and artists and would be asset at any studio. Any one hiring folks should look em up on Linked in or the link if I have it here:

• Scott Englert
• Mike Peterson
• Randy Stranton
• Roger Berrones
• Nick Carter
• James Gentile
• Justin Muir
• Tony Lewellen
• Matt Taylor
• Phil Kourie
• Chris Torres

This is the list as I know it so far, if I find out more were let go, I'll add em. My thoughts are with you guys.

Lessons....

Finally wrapped my first sequence on Garden City. Don't know when I'll be able to show it but it was a lot of fun to do. Also the first bit of full body animation I've done in some time so it took a bit to get back into the swing of things. When I went to start my next shot on Garden City only to find the updated set made my layout pass of Henry dance his way into the shower. Understandably, gonna have to fix that. However, while I was waiting for the updated set, I stumbled across some great info and inspirational work via the ole' Google Reader:

• Visual Comedy 101 - Carlos Baena had some edutainment gold on his blog in the form of a series of vids staring the ever humorous "Bean" on what constitutes visual comedy. Check it out here.
• More Gobelins awesome-ness - Here's my visual fav and the making off is embedded below. All of them can be seen here.
• From the Maker of "Simon's Cat" - More hillarity...