Another day, another Garden City Sequence...

Been workin on my last Garden City sequence and here's the blocking for it sans audio. As I mentioned a while ago, no more audio on the GC stuff so as to keep the story mysterious. I've moved onto the the linear/spline stage but wanted to post something to kick myself into making so progress. Did my first calf sorting with some friends last night near where we live. It was an interesting and fun experience. For the uninitiated, it involves a pair or peeps on horseback sorting a number of calves in order. Something like "nine ball" on horseback. Only they have to start at whatever number the judge tells you to. I need a lot of practice. The small joys of rural life:)

Hope everyone had a nice Easter...

First things first, I have the internets at maximum warp again! Well, not maximum, but quite sufficient.

The commercial I worked on last month at Psyop finally aired and someone who worked on it posted it so I reckon it's okay to link it.

My main shots were -

• s17 - fore and mid ground Octo guys, their Squid bubbles, and the arms.
• s23 - quick shot of the fox at the Octobot controls
• s24 - foreground fox, octobot and bubble sac, and the near-midground action of the bubble sac being hit by the turtles and eaten by the sub

I'll post the playblasts when I get the project page up as there's a bit more there. I had a blast on the project and really enjoyed the team and look forward to working with them again in the future.

Had some lemons of life lately which I'm workin on making into something sweeter...maybe lemonheads...I like those. The most recent of which was discovering Poison Oak in some other vines I was clearing off of some trees. Never had it before. Don't want it again. Don't want you to have it either. Avoid this at all cost....

However, I do have a sympathetic, supportive and beautiful wife who makes the bad days not so bad.

That and the prospect of a gator hunt on a neighbor's pond sounds like a life experience that suburbia just can't offer that the rural one can:)

Also, Bokser wants to finish Garden City this decade so I best get back to that...

Me vs AT&T....

Been fighting (and losing) a long hard battle with AT&T trying to first get phone service to the new house, an internet hookup (which thankfully landed last week), and now up to a decent connection speed. Fact - large facets of the cg community's internet sites are a chore to use at sub 600kps speeds. Don't know how many hours and days I've wasted so far, but I sure hope it can be rectified before too long. The thing is my neighbors have the very same service they say is unavailable to us all.

On to better things... Things have been crazy busy because of this and more. Finished up my second stint at Psyop last week and and expect to go back next month for another. Can't wait till I can show this last spot as it's a very interestingly stylized and cartoony spot. Should air next month.

In the meantime, been doing some horse riding with the Mrs., hopping back into Garden City for a few last shots and thinking through my next short. Also, looking forward to my family coming to visit this weekend. My wife, one of my nephews and I all share birthdays within a 4 day span. Crazy.... Here's a few cool things I've come across:

• Absolutely love the look of this one. There's some elements that I'd like to try in my next short there.
• And another with awesome style:
• Behind the scenes look at a film that's been making the rounds. It's great to see how miniatures and stop motion are being played with coupled with CG.

Live from LA...

Things have been either crazy busy or crazy slow the last few months. Had a good holiday with the family and January 1st found my wife dropping me off at the airport for a month in Cali for some work at Psyop/Mass Market. A good friend of mine is letting me crash on his couch so I can repeat the get up, jog, work, sleep routine for a couple fortnight (such a cool term...shame it's not used more). Working on some very cool projects and excited to get a pinky toe in the door of the commercial houses. It's been a lot of fun wearing so many hats (animating, rigging, minor modeling), and I'm learning a lot of new tools in maya I'd never messed with before. The internets have unleashed all kinds of cool and odd in the weeks since my last but I'll do my best to gather some morsels here. So, tuck your napkin in your shirt and bon appetite.

• Margarita - A beautiful whimsical film from Spain (I think).
• Alma - This one has been making the rounds but in case you missed it I'll drop it here. Great set designs - especially liked the subtle gaping mouth of a shop front.
• Fun little viking greeting card animation.
• And another "Voila" from Spain

And for some quickies:

• Cool iphone app sketch books from some amazing artists
• Fantastic blog on the principles of drawing with a bent toward animation/boarding

Fall 2009 Reel...it's right here....

Updated the reel with polished Garden City stuff along with some Lobster shots. Lots of sprouts of opportunities shooting up, hoping to see one blossom soon:)

Another week in the world of the animation (through myopic lense)...

• This week in amazing student films courtesy of Sheridan...
• Lasseter is involved in a Christmas special that is looking mighty sweet (props to my buddy Rocky for the tip via im)...
• How to Train Your Dragon is looking sweet. Have several friends working on it and the animation is looking pretty awesome. Hadn't known Chris Sanders was involved with it till this week and I'm a fan of his so it's stock when up even more on Burton Exchange. I think you can see a bit of Sanders' look in the main dragon design and feel.

Reading for the week....

• Another great Cloudy with a Chance of Meatyinformation post...
• Nice little lighting tutorial
• Nice production post on a short that Keith Lango posted about. Here's the post.

Lobster gig is a wrap...

So here's the final Lobster work (at least for my reel stuff). As I said, the client ended up doing the animation in house so I just used the audio and shot framing (with permission) for my reel. I threw a temp texture on him and set up the shaders and lighting as well. Wasn't able to get the background plates so I made some temp ones that felt similar to the vids. You can find more info about the project on this page. Some of the shots make more sense with the vid (i.e. the empty plate is actually a live action plate of food...and the last shot has text up on the hold at the end). All told, it was a very enjoyable and rewarding project and I'm looking forward to the next! Things are going along fine here in Houston, gonna update the reel this week with Lobster here as well as a lot more polished Garden City stuff. Back to reel editing...

A Lobster, a lighthouse, and...an animated Jesus

• Lobster - I made this character last summer for a client who was doing a commercial. They liked Squirrely and wanted a "lobster-Squirrely" character - hence" Lobstery" (Yes I should probably come up with a more imaginative naming convention). The client ended up doing the animation in house for various reasons but were cool with my taking a stab at it for the old reel. The shots make more sense with the live-action plates:)
• Great stuff to watch... First up, fantastic mood in this piece. I'm a big "playing-with-light" fan so this is just a beautiful piece. Care to guess which amazing French school it came from?...guess I gave it away there Next up is a pixelated take on animation. Love some of the poses and the look is something I've not seen since the old King's Quest days and it didn't move like this:) Another fun one from across the pond... If you're offended by non-kosher* use of the image of Jesus, avert your eyes. Not sure I understand the film but whatcha gonna do? Enjoy the visuals, that's what! There's some sweet animation in this and great timing. * "non-kosher" - Yes, I'm aware that using the term with Jesus might appear to be ironical. However, He being a Jew, God incarnate and originator of a whole new faith I'd hope would both understand the complication created and appreciate the attempt at humor.

No Sound for you!

Blogs are funny things. You start to feel guilty when you don't post on them for awhile - kinda like a journal or a sketchpad. Ah well. Let's see what this belated (or timely) post brings...

• Garden City - So in keeping with not revealing the entire story of Garden City there will be no more audio with the shots I show from it.Here's the latest: Henry is none too chipper at the moment...
• I want to learn! - There are a lot of absolutely amazing resources out there now for animators wanting to hone their skills. I've been watching Jason Ryan' seminars lately and they've been great. Also, recently Keith Lango started a YouTube channel with some of his lessons on there which is also a great source of info and frankly inspiration as well.
• Inspired - Here's some great work I've my rss net has gleaned from the internets... This one is a little dark, but very good... A fun one from a buddy and his pals... Great layouts and so much done with limited animation. Check out the site for more info. Gorgeous designs as well.

Updates and tidbits...

Garden City is still chugging along. Just finished a large sequence and starting another. Here's the blocking from the first new shot. I shot some vid reference for this one (still experimenting with workflows) Personal life has been busy and been reading a tome of a book - Les Mis. What an amazing study in character development. Lots of neat stuffs on the internets:

• Pencil Test Blog - If you're an animator, you should subscribe to this the rss feed here.
• Need an idea for a doodle? - Check it out or the Worms of the Ensnaring Messiah might get you (Worms courtesy of the Dark Minion Generator on said site)
• Amazing Paper-cutout/Illustrations - Love this piece.
• Animator Tools - Some neat ones listed on a great blog for things to add to the toolbox
• Nice Post on the 180 Degree Rule of Filmaking - Interesting read.

Couple of things...

• The shot that will not end. I've been polishing on and off on this shot forever. Most recently because I got the final mop and an updated facial rig that warrented a rework so hopefully it's looking better and DONE. :)
• Nice post on character design can be found here.
• Heading to Dallas tomorrow to seem some friends at ReelFX and for my cousin's going away party. He's heading to England for a year to study some more acting/writing/improv. Hope he has a great time but I'll miss him feeding me odd asian candies whenever I crash his pad for an Austin trip.
• Beautiful short film here:

Lots of stuff and not so much...

• Animals Shmamimals - Squirrely has worked overtime on getting attention and I appreciate his efforts. Been busy the last few weeks working on a commercial project for some folks "down under". The character and rig are ready to roll, just waiting for what I need to animate. He was a fun character to design and model. Bokser helped me out with body rigging and cloth and I took care of the facial. Learned some new stuff along the way as well. Really looking forward to how that's shaping up and can't wait to show it
• Love the look of this show - Been following it's production art at the great blog they have set up.
• Jason Ryan Classes - Signed up for Jason's seminar and enjoying catching up on the classes very much.
• Great post on "dirtying" up animation - Read it. You won't regret it.

Gobelins makes me wish I was European...

...And had gone to school there. A couple of more from the champs of student films. Enjoy. Making of... And another...

Some ok work, some amazing work, and some learning...

• Another Garden City shot done: Pulled out the "school girl laugh" and added a good bit of polish.
• Please look at this if you're an animator - Some phenomenal workflow vids from animator Jeff Gabor. The first is a comparison reel and the second is an evolution reel. Do yourself a favor and check em out.
• Blender - Started a gig this week where I'm learning blender. It reminds me of a slightly more complicated Lightwave. I will say that for being free, it has a lot of features however from just an animator workflow perspective I'm not finding a lot of my perferred tools. I know some nice shorts have come out of it, I'm just trying to figure out what kind of workflow they must have used. Time shall tell...

First pass on 030_030_050

Finished up a first pass on this yesterday and got back some notes today. The giggle isn't working for Dave, so I'm reworking it. Got some gig's in in the works though I don't know when I'll be able to talk about em. Garden City updates are definitely gonna slow down a bit for awhile. Hope everyone had a great fourth! (those in the USA at least...though I reckon I hope you had a good fourth regardless of if you spent it on cookouts and fireworks or not)

New Shot, Updated Head and Austin for a day

• Garden City - Started a new shot this week and coming along on the blocking. Also, Bokser started a new fan page for the film on Facebook, so join away if you like
• Head Project - Coming along just fine. The base model is about done and I ran it through The Face Machine a couple of days ago to see what it looked like moving around. Pretty swell:)

• Austin for a Day - So word of advice - if you move make sure you tell Amazon. In a rush to make an order before heading out of town a few weeks ago, I neglected to check that and I now have a shipment of books waiting for me at my old apartment. Ah well. The main reason I'm heading there to to hang with my cousin before he heads off to school in England, have coffee with an animator pal and visit with some potential animation conspirators.
• New Gigs - Got a couple of gigs in the que so the aforementioned projects may be shifting to the side burner for a bit. However, looking forward to some new projects to gnaw on. It'll be a bit before I can talk about them. I will say that I would have be up a creek without The Setup Machine the other day. It's a great tool for the tool box.

Sally is Twirling Again...

Spent most of the week polishing on some shots for Gardern City and working on the "head project". Here's the latest shot: Have a great weekend all.

Arkansas Mountain Sketches

Some sketches from our annual trek to my wife's family reunion in Arkansas. Had a great time, experienced my first small Tornado after having lived in Oklahoma for 17 years and seen none and did a little sketching. Note to self - you suck at drawing trees. Practice.

Garden City and a Face...

• Garden City - Been waiting on some notes from Cory before continuing the 2d gig so polishing on some Garden City shots to get them past Bokser. Here's the latest on one of em.

  Speaking of, Bokser has a public Garden City production blog now!

• Face Thingy - thumbnailing up and planning for a new project that would make good use of my staring-at-faces-for-three-some-odd-years-at-midway experience. I've been playing with some other peoples rigs. The Norman Rig, Andy Rig, and Blake Rig (you can google em) in particular. Great stuff! However not super easy for folks to customize the characters further. The idea is to create a customizeable face and rig to go along with it. Initially it'll be just to throw on a character that's already setup except for a good face rig but eventually I'd like to make it more comprehensive. I'm still trying to think of a name for it if anyone has any ideas. I started a sculpt/model for the initial head. Still pretty early on but it's somethin to show, eh?!

In awe....

So rarely do you come across something so unlike anything you've seen. I have no idea what's going on but I like it. A lot. Don't know where he's been hiding, but glad he came out to play. Came across some other neat stuff lately but that's it for now. Back to deadly combat with my allergies.

Yes, I have been working...

...And man, 2d camera moves and moving characters through space is hard (especially when you haven't ever really done it or worked in a 2d production pipeline). This is where I'm at on a promo piece I'm doing with some buddies at Portland Studios. Initially I just started working in flash but I realized there was no way I was capable of doing that by hand. So, I animated the layout on a large format, and then moved my camera around it in flash. I'll clean things up as I tie down the details in the next flash pass. If anyone knows a better workflow, I'm all ears. :) We're still looking on final look but for the most part Cory wants to keep things rough.

Couple of great films I came across...

Both from students out of Cal Arts. Need to get me some of that water...

...on, and flash is hard....

Thanks to everyone who's sent emails on Squirrely. Glad you like him:)

Space Girl...

Watch out for Ruxpin.

This is my first entry into the Drawergeeks drawing club. Perhaps a little uninspired, but it works! I'm gonna try to be more proactive on drawing more.

Jack and Inar...

Who's Jack and who is Inar? Well, Jack is the boy above and you'll have to wait to see Inar down the road. I started working on my collaborative project with Cory this week. First thing was to play with seeing if I can draw in his style. This was the first attempt I felt hit it. We'll see if Cory agrees. Working through the animatic now and hopefully we'll have something to show before too long. I have a tinge of worry that this project is beyond my traditional animation muscles but that's what stetching is for, no? Oh, for an animation desk... Progress might be a little slow next week as my beautiful better half is off and wants to do stuff other than animate:) After this project it's back to Garden City unless another freelance or work opportunity sweeps me away.

Squirrely Bounces into the Wild!

Version 1.0 is out! Catch him while you can:)

Squirrely is a free rig for noncommercial use only. I wanted a "ball like" character with a tail to play with for animation tests and Squirrely came into being.

Features:

• Body Rigged with The Setup Machine 2
  • Stetchy IK Spine
  • FK/IK Switchable Arms and Legs
  • Limb mirroring
  • Auto/Manual Stretch limbs
  • Character Sets Set up for proper keying
  • Tail/Ear Controls
  • Finger/Toe FK/IK
  • LowRes Proxy Geometryy mode for faster playback
  • Character scaleable via master control
  • Hideable tail via "COG"
  • Face Camera
• Facial rig
• Limited yet functional facial rig
• FK/IK Eye Rig - set up via my good friend Scott Englert's Tutorial
• Eyelid Tracking/Blinking Control - setup via John Doublestein's Tutorial

Recommendations:

• EyeBlend Control transitions between Joystick/look at control for the eyes
• Use the character sets - one of my nit picks with the setup machine is that the FK/IK swich attributes are located on the COG control. As such, having limited keying sets via selection sets or quickselection sets is a hassle. The characters sets make sure you key all the appropriate attributes
• FK/IK Arms and Leg switching accessed via the TSM controls
• Mirroring accessed via TSM Controls

Requests:

• I'm not great at shading/texturing. If anyone wants to come up with some slicker stuff you want incorporated, lemme know.
• Tag animations you do with him as "Squirrely" on YouTube, Vimeo or the like. I'd like to see em.
• Have fun:)

Demo Reel - Spring 2009

Well, it's about time. I've finally updated my reel. It's mostly comprised of Garden City work along with the lip sync and Squirrely animations I did over the last couple of weeks. I am currently seeking temporary/contractual onsite or remote work as an animator in film, game or commercial work and am also open to full time employment opportunities in the Austin/Houston, TX areas. A higher res version of my reel can be found at the "Reel" link up top. Resume is up to date as well. Next week, I'm working on a project with Cory. Can't wait! Also, Squirrely is in prerelease. If you wanna test/play with him, gimme a shout via comment.

Squirrely in HD!

Just press the HD button on the full screen mode. This was as far as I needed to get for some anim on the demo reel, I'll swing back and get him over to the acorn when I have the time. Demo reel incoming shortly:)

Squirrely (almost) first pass...

Good progress today. I'll spend a good bit of tomorrow putting some elbow grease to it and then send it to render to get the old reel ready. He's a fun little character. Looking forward to seeing what other folks do with him after I release him:)

Blocking done...

On to linear on Monday. Have a great weekend all:)

Squirrely Obstacle Course Continued...

Been working on 3dizing the Squirrely test. Overall, pretty happy with the rig and plan on releasing version 1.0 after I'm done with the demo reel. He was designed as a 'ball type' character for tests and is serving that purpose well:) Still on stepped keys, hoping to get through the segment's "3dizing" by tomorrow so I can shift to linear early next week. We'll see how it goes. The wife and I are heading out to bowl here in a few so I'm out. I wish I could bowl as well in real life as I do on the Wii. Ah well...

Lip Sync Pause

It's close to done. Gonna give it a few days to settle and then swing back before throwing the reel together. All comments welcome. On to Squirrely!

Lip sync progress

Another day on the scene. Well, partial day. Making good progress though it's still in the "funky" phase when things don't quite look right. In the spirit of showing process if anyone cares to see. :)

Lip sync update and GREAT books...

First off, here's an update on where I was on my lip sync earlier this afternoon. It's coming along alright. I've been working on an in progress cut of my reel and am pretty happy with how that's looking. Need to do a bunch of stuff to finish it but what else is new. Plan on sending reels out in a couple of weeks. Going to be looking for short term onsite work, remote/freelance work so we'll see how that pans out. After the reel goes out I'm gonna work on a 2d project with a buddy at Portland Studios while I wait for responses. Two fantastic books came out recently and I highly recommend them both. I got one of them a couple of weeks ago and the first volume came in last week. They're amazing and worth their weight in gold to anyone not at a studio with drawing classes or in college anymore for that matter. Buy them now.

Blake Rig and Script Jobs...

note - NOT my rig creation

Came across a new rig on Highend 3d and it's a pretty good looking rig. So I decided to use it for the lip sync piece I'm fixing to start on. It makes use of script jobs which don't seem to like referencing as the creator notes in the docs on the site. So I did some noodling and figured out how to make it work. If the character is referenced (all nodes prefix option) to "Ch1:", this is how to make the rig work.

1. Fix the Expression
   • Go to the expression editor
   • Select the "CH1:blake_FKIKSpaceSwitch_scriptNode"
   • Input "CH1:" in the spot provided
2. Fix the script jobs
   • For each character, you'll need to run this is in the script editor: scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "LArmFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "RArmFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "LLegFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch.FK_IK_Match" "RLegFKIK"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch.parent" "LArmSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch.parent" "RArmSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch.parent" "LLegSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch.parent" "RLegSpace"; scriptJob -ac "CH1:blake_tie_ikFK_switch.parent" "TieSpace";
3. Notepad is your friend for additional characters - see Find and Replace
4. Ran into an issue with referencing that the rig maker was kinda enough to help out with. You'll need to create a new script set to fuction on (Open/Close) and set the name spaces: proc multipleChars() { // prefix for character1 string $character1= "CH1:"; // prefix for character2 string $character2 = "CH2:"; // prefix for character3 string $character3 = "CH3:"; // prefix for character4 string $character4 = "CH4:"; string $a[] = `ls -sl`; if (($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character1+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character1+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } else if (($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character2+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character2+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } else if (($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character3+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character3+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } else if (($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_L_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_R_arm_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_L_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_R_leg_ikFK_switch")) || ($a[0] == ($character4+"blake_tie_ikFK_switch"))) { scriptNode -executeBefore ($character4+"blake_FKIK_SpaceSwitch_scriptNode"); } } scriptJob -killWithScene -e "SelectionChanged" "multipleChars";

That outa do it. Thanks Jason for the great rig and the help trouble shooting the referencing issue!

Update on my shot and this week...

This is the first solid pass on the shot and I sent it off to Bokser to get some more eyes on it. That's the hardest part about not working in a studio - not being able to spin around in your chair and say "Hey, how can I make this better?" or more likely "How much does this blow?" This week will prolly mainly be swinging back and picking up fixes on about 4 shots I have out. I'm trying to wrap things up to send out some reels at the end of April. Gonna be doing a lip sync in the next couple of weeks to round things out. This spring has wreaked havoc with my health. I cannot seem to shake this cough/headcold. Anyone else having a harder than normal time? /off to look for some advil...

Previous Post Progress...

First day of 3dizing my 2d pass. I'll try to keep posting the updates. Hoping to have first pass done in another couple of days and locked by midweek next week. We'll see how that pans out. After this shot I'm gonna hop off Garden City for a couple of weeks to do a lip sync to round out my reel which I plan on sending out at the end of next month.

Post Something!

Alright, alright... This is a half day's work on roughing in another shot for Garden City in 2d. I've got about 4 shots in semi finish status - waiting on crits and final props. Things are coming along well. Life has been a bit busy lately. A couple of weeks ago, I was doing some freelance work for a studio in LA with Bokser which was a lot of fun. The render looks great, not sure when I'll be able to show it though. My wife and I finally closed on a little piece of land to put some horses on and I've been talking to Cory and we're finally gonna collaborate on a little bit of animation - the 2d kind and I couldn't be more excited to have a part in breathing some life into some of his characters. That's it for now. I'll try to post regular updates on this shot as it's pretty straight forward.

Patrick Smith and the Credit Crisis...

No, he didn't cause it. At least, to the best of my knowledge he didn't. He has however made some amazing films over the years that are now available on YouTube. Here's a really good one: You can find more of em here. Check em out. I met him a few years ago at a film festival and he was really nice as well. Keep up the great work, Patrick. So about that Credit Crisis, I came across the really well done motion graphics piece and just wanted to share because of what a great instructional animation it is on a very complicated concept. Why no updates lately? Cause I've been too busy:) The shot from the last post is about done, I'm waiting on the final mop and I've done a couple of more shots since then. There's another collaboration in the works that I'd love to talk about but it's just not far enough along yet. Until next time.

3d-ification...ACTIVATE

It's been an interesting process going from 2d to 3d. I'm pretty good on the initial pass at 3dizing my shot. Surprisingly, the 2d pass translated well even though he's moving through space. Haven't made as quick progress as I would like as I've been working on finalizing the shot following this one (which thankfully is done*). This should be a fun sequence once it's done. Moving on to linear. * When I say "done", I mean "artist done"

Another day, another wip...

Here's a quick update on the shot. Moving into 3dizing it and hope to have that pretty far along by Friday. Been doing some polish on the shot before and after this as well aiming for approval. It was a long weekend in Louisiana which was a nice escape. My mother-in-laws computer had a virus that took my best computer ninja skills to vanquish. Hopefully, that's all set. Back to it!

030_020_020 2d Wip

Squirrely had to take a side seat to Henry this week. I'm working through my next shot on Garden City. Had a bunch of stuff come up the last few days so I haven't got quite as far as I'd hoped to, but it's coming along. Still very rough, but that's what WIP means, no? It's been a bugger working things out with the camera doing all kinds of crazy (can't complain too much there though...I did the layout...) Dave put together an up to date in progress version of the film this week and it's great to see it starting to come together. I love this part of the film making progress - from reel to real:) We'll prolly be letting that link fly here before too long to get an early "screen test". If you're interested, check back soon:)

Squirrely Starts his Obstacle Course...

I'm trying a new workflow for animating - doing it in 2d first. Animation Mentor had a webinar last month that Jason Ryan lectured and this was his workflow and I wanted to give it a go. This is the first day of animation on Squirrely's obstacle course test. I worked on the key poses yesterday along with "3dizing" my set from my drawing. I'm still playing with how it's gonna end up. Still a lot to go, but it's coming along. If you got any idears or see things amiss, critique away. Bokser is done with his freelancing, so it'll be back to Garden City next week for the most part. I'll try to get some more progress on Squirrely during the weekend, but it's looking kinda full.

Real quick...

So this is Squirrely's next test. In the long tradition of Scrat. I'm gonna try and do some of the Animation Mentor exercises by myself and get some friend's feedback (as I can't afford AM at the moment). This will be my "Obstacle Course" one.

Tribute to an artist friend...

He only asked me to do this ages ago, bout time I made good. This is my friend Mark Evitts, an amazing master of the strings.

Squirrely Runs in Place

Did a quick test of Squirrely to test the rig. Nothing fancy. Pretty happy with the rig so far. I'll be changing some of my characters sets, cleaning up repeated and dead nodes and locking things down in general. Maya's doing some weird stuff with mental ray on the scene file. I may just pull the SSS shader and use a reg shader for the release version. Also, wow is Maya more stable on XP than OSX....such a shame:( Note - if you care to actually see the cycle better, you should be able to download it at the Vimeo site. They sure do make adding video easy...

Things I've been learning...

Waiting on the computer do do some reinstalling and had a few minutes to write...

• Maya doesn't like OSX - Well, that or OSX doesn't like Maya. Crashes. Mel Scripts not working, good times in general. Also Flipbook, my 2d animation software, crashed on me after 45 minutes of work. That coupled with all my Maya crashes brought me to looking into Bootcamp...
• Time Machine is Neat - The ease of use of apple's backup system is a thing of beauty. One, it's simple to maintain. Two, it makes reinstalling the OS a piece of cake. I had to do that to partition my Macbook Pro's drive for a windows partition (see first item from today).
• Slipstreaming - Bootcamp requires a Windows XP install cd with service pack two. I have two initial release copies, but didn't have a SP2 one. So, I made one via a process called slipstreaming. If you ever wanna bootcamp it, might be a good link to keep handy.
• Maintaining computers is a pain - Sometimes I wonder if they're worth the hassle. Justin has been having his own hassles over on his blog. I've been trying to walk my mother-in-law through some of her own issues a state away - looking like a nasty virus has taken hold but that'll prolly have to wait a few weeks for my wife and I to make a trip.
• The Jury is out on macs - The jury is still out for me on whether or not I wanna permanently get my mac on. On the one hand, the user experience is a thing of elegance and ease. On the other, my main apps crashing all the time is not. WHY does apple insist on overpricing their hardware? They could have such a bigger market share if they'd at least get competitive. On a whim I took a look at the mac pro's today...upgrading from 2g to 8g of ram = $1500....a jaunt over to crucial.com = $399. Seriously. Who on earth does that make sense to? Lower the price of your hardware or release the OS so peeps can stop hackintoshing it. For now I'll keep straddling the fence with my new 20gig partition of windows, but I can't see justifying the purchase of another mac down the road compared to what I can build or buy a comparable pc for.

Looks like the reinstall is about done, back to it....

Beautiful Docu-mercial -entary...

If you think oragami is pretty sweet and love film making you just can't go wrong watching this little gem. Happy Monday!

Squirrely's Face Wishes you a happy New Year...

And so do I for that matter. Speaking of him, he's pretty much done. I'm gonna do some animation tests with him over the next couple of weeks and then I plan on releasing him to the wild and see what others do with him. This is a range of motion test on his facial rig which isn't as robust as I'd like but will have to do in the meantime. It's been a great year. Lots of change, but change isn't a bad thing. I've got idears of what to make of the new one, but more on that some other time. For now, hope you had a good new year and set some good goals for yourselves. Blessings!

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...

On an Animbatical...

Last Thursday was my last day at Midway Games. I had a great run there over the past 3 and a half years and have made many what I expect to be lifelong friends. Looking back, I consider myself fortunate to have worked on so many shipped titles - Ballers 2, Stranglehold, Blacksite, Ballers 3, Blitz, and most recently Wheelman and MKvsDC which will be shipping before too long. I also was able to work on some other projects in a protoype/helping role. My time at the company was mainly spent working on pushing the facial animation pipeline with my friend Scott Englert and overseeing production in that facet of those projects and doing some motion capture cleanup, vehicle rigging/animation, dynamics and even some cloth in the down times. It was a difficult decision to leave as the company treated me very well and I had been able to work remotely for the past 8 months or so from Houston. However, my passion for animation lies in full body keyframe work rather than just focusing on the face and my opportunities to do that were limited. It was time for a break. A chance to seek out opportunities that would afford the exercising of those passions. What might you ask is an "Animbatical"? Well, I think I made it up to be honest but the intention was a sabatical of sorts for an animator. Over the next several months, I'm going to be working on "Garden City" - a film being directed by a very good friend David Bokser. We've been plugging along on it for a while now and it's time to get 'er done. I'm also going to be doing some animation exercises, working on some short film ideas and hopefully finishing Squirrely and Olaf and looking for some freelance or short term on site work if opportunities come along. If you hear of anything, lemme know:)

The Chestnut Tree...

I've been wanting to see this film for a while having heard about it a year ago or so. It's no wonder it's gotten so much acclaim. Take a look at a delightful little film:

"Get over here!"

No I had nothing to do with this screenshot. Yes, I'd like to be Batman.

Scorpion kept using his signature move to keep me in the brutal crucible that was the Mortal Kombat production pipeline. Weeks of very long hours and plenty of weekends work makes for crispy cogs in the game-making machine. However, it is done (at least my portion) and though I learned lots of good lessons during production I can't really talk about them yet, so.... Thankfully, I'm off on a little comp time and I plan on enjoying it and pursuing normalcy again. That begins with:

• Fitness - It's amazing how fast this remarkable thing we call the human body can go from being in shape to "yea-I-know-we-ran-4-miles-no-sweat-two-months-ago-but-I-don't-wanna-do-that-anymore". It gets worse the older you get. Yay. However, like the apostle Paul declared I shall "beat my body and make it my own" once more.
• Back to the basics - The joy of just animating faces has run it's course and I need some more exercise for those animation muscles. I'm working on my first shot for Bokser's Garden City (all done with layout!)
• Politics - This election cycle and the insipid stupidity of this whole two-faced financial crisis blame game has burned me out. The press for the most part has not been doing it's job and I'd rather animate or read a book than try to do their jobs for them. The debate last night was just painful. I've cleared out my Google reader of political readings - Animation, friends, tech and some theology is good enough for now.
• Christmas Card - I gotta get started on it. Asap. :)

Oh a very, VERY cool little tool that Bokser came across is a service called Dropbox. We're using it to keep assets up to date on Garden City and I'm using it to send files between my PC and mac easy peasy. Watch the little video. It's free and very cool.