More Animation!

So here's the shot I'm working on for Assignment 3. It's super tough! I'm having the hardest time manipulating the characters and making sure their interactions feel real. That, and of course getting the feeling of weight in the white ninja. I want him heavy, but I don't want him to feel like a boulder! No risk there at least, he's far closer to weightlessness than he is a boulder.


Comments and criticism are more than welcome!

Assignment 1

So here is my first (somewhat) finished assignment for iAnimate.
There's still a lot I want to fix, but I'll have to do that later, right now the current assignments are keeping me occupied.

More Attempts at Digital Painting

It's me by the way.

Update

It's tough to find time to blog with iAnimate, highschool and friends, but I'm trying!

Here's something I'm currently working on. I'll only upload iAnimate assignments if I don't use one of their rigs, and I also won't be giving any detail on the assignment.



Though I will say that I have Ted Ty as my first instructor!!

How Animation is Made

Guilty

Found this online.





















Guilty of 4 of the above.
1, 3, 4, 5.

Because I Need To Post

So iAnimate's going to start quite soon, and as much as I'd like to post pictures of characters and and eventually animation - I won't.

Jason Ryan has expressed his opinion on displaying any of the iAnimate resources online, it's not totally negative, but he would prefer if they stayed private longer. So I respect that and I'll listen to him.

I will post some iAnimate things eventually I'm sure, but for now I won't.

So I'm going to start doing more tests and drawings so I have something to put up.
Here are two tests I did really quick for practice.

Rando-sketch

Posted via Blogaway for android.

Man vs Machine Update

So far this has been my most ambitious piece of animation, and probably the toughest, that I've done. It's been a lot of fun and a lot of stress.
The shot looks fine (to me) blocked out, but It seems like SUCH a mess when I put it to linear/spline/clamped. I know it's something that needs to be done and it's supposed to be tough, but that doesn't mean it's not discouraging.

I'm at a point where I'm not sure if my time would be better spent working on this and trying to finish it or something new.
I REALLY want to finish this one though! I feel if I really get into it it could be my best work yet.
Also considering Steve Meyer was beyond gracious in helping me out with it. I can't describe how great he's been to me.

Anyway, here it is.


I think my main problem is how much information I put without any idea of what the computer would do with it. I think I'm going to try some new workflow idea's.
Either way I'll probably finish it, I'm strangely dying to get back into my shot.


"The best animators I've known start digging in at the point when most animators think they're done."
- Clay Kaytis

Ninja Fun

Here's a quick test of a Ninja landing ever so gracefully.


Note the equipment only appearing at the end. I plan on doing a straight ahead pass at it soon.

Rock On

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Peace and Love

Jason Schleifer Advice On Stepped to Spline

Here's an email I sent to Jason Schleifer, Dreamworks supervising animator and great guy.

That definitely is a reoccurring critique. I guess I need to think about my character more.
Also, I was wondering if you would be able to answer a question I have - although it might be a little to substantial for an email.
Why is switching to spline/linear so odd? I usually like my blocking, but when I make the transition it's almost like I'm working on something completely different! Maybe it's just me though.

Anyway, thanks again!

And his response.

Heya!

The main problem people seem to have when switching from stepped to spline is that they didn't define their breakdowns enough before the switch to really define what's going to happen. Usually people will put in their stepped poses at say 1, 10, 20, etc.. and those are their extremes. Then they'll put in breakdowns at 5, 15, etc as the inbetweens. When they watch it in stepped mode, it makes sense.. but that's because they're not seeing that interpolation between 1 and 5.. they're just seing 1---5. Know what I mean?

So what I like to do is put a stepped key on 1, then another on 4 which is just slighly different than 1.. about 5% towards my breakdown. Then I'll put my breakdown on 6, then another pose at 8 that's about 5% of the way to 10.

does that make sense? The more breakdowns you do that really definte the action, the overlapping action, the contrasting motion, etc.. the closer your blocking will look to your splined animation.

hope that helps!

Followed by another question of mine.

OK, I kinda think I get what your saying,
my only thing with that is this:
if you keep favoring the previous key/bd like that, wouldn't that cause a start stop thing?
I just don't see how that would work if you keep favoring the previous..

And his response.

You just favor what you need to get cleanly between the poses.. the whole thing is to keep it clean and simple. Add breakdowns where you need them, make sure you have keys that help define how you get into and out of your poses, and don't let the computer do it for you. Does that make sense?

Keith Lango Advice

A while back I sent out an email to Keith Lango, now an animator at Valve.
He was kind enough to get back to me with this advice.

For a younger student I would always suggest they work on their mechanics- getting the motion to look right. You can work on acting along the way, but at this point I'd put it second. Animation, like any form of artistic expression, is a two sided coin. There's the art side- what do you want to say and how do you want to say it? Then there's the craft side- the technical skill needed to express the art in a manner that is clear and understandable. Acting is the art side, mechanics are the craft side. You can have the greatest idea in the world but if your mechanics and craft are not well developed you will have a difficult time finding success in expressing that great idea in a way that the audience can connect with. I hope that made sense. :>
Any collge or university you go to will usually have a much broader program of instruction than just character animation. Sheridan is a fine school and has some really good teachers and faculty. You will be exposed to more than just animation. You'll get color, design, composition, lighting, 2d animation, life drawing skills- all stuff that I think is important to learn. I never went to college for animation, so those are all things I have had to learn on my own over the years. If I had a chance to go back and do it all over again I'd try and get into an animation/art/film school first. There's so much to be learned there. AM is just animation, so if you're absolutely certain that's all you want to do then AM makes sense financially. But I actually think Andrew makes a lot of sense when he suggests a traditional art school and then AM. In the end I am always a believer that the broader your range of understanding and experience the better you'll be as an animator. Too tight a focus leads to a shallow view of film and art. There are so many things I've been able to experience in my career that were beyond just animating and each one was cool in it's own.

As for getting to the big studios, just keep practicing and making animation. Eventually if that's your goal you will get there.

I have a few emails like this which I'll definitely start to post.

Some Awesome News

So thanks to my awesome parents, I'll be starting at ianimate in September.

For those who care enough to think, "but wait, you're still in highschool in Sepember" I thank you. Even though I'll be in highschool I've decided that I can handle the workload.
The tough part will be when this program carries into my first year at Sheridan. But hopefully it'll all work out.

The school is run by Jason Ryan, a long time animator currently working on Dreamworks 'Megamind' as a supervising animator.

“I’ve been an animator at Disney and DreamWorks for over 15 years and the Instructors that I have hand picked for you are the best in the industry. Animation is a major passion of mine, there is no better feeling than seeing our characters come to life on the big screen and audiences of all ages being entertained by your hard work. While doing my Tutorials and JRAWebinars, I’ve met many students that have been studying animation in Colleges and Universities around the world and paying through the nose. The worse part is that the teachers don’t have a clue about feature quality animation. I want to help students everywhere learn the techniques that have made us the Animators that we are today."

I'm beyond excited to begin the course, I have no doubt I'll improve drastically.

Cop Walk Final

Here's the completed version of the walk I posted last.



Nothing spectacular, just something to keep me busy.

Edit* My 40th piece of animation is done before I'm even a legal adult!!!

Something I'm working on

Here's another walk cycle. This time of a cop I designed.
Lotta problems in this first pass that I need to work out.

Random Character

I gotta start practising my character design for my portfolio for college.

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My First Hand Drawn Lip Sync

Well here's my very first hand drawn animation to dialog. I know it's incredibly short, but I gotta get the basics down.


I don't know what it is... but there's something I don't like..

RIP Pres Romanillos

The man who brought you the Hun leader, Shan Yu of Mulan and many other memorable characters has passed away after a long struggle with Leukemia at 47. RIP Pres Romanillos.

Ball Jump Final (I think)

OK here's the latest and most likely last ball jump test I'll be posting.
I think it's as good as I can make it.



Thanks Mr. Hartline!
I actually showed my brother the earlier version, to which he responded, "That's horrible. It's just crap".
Thankfully he approved of the new one.

Drawing Inspiration

Here's a video I found over on the Character Design blog about Pascal Campion.

Inspirational Artists: Pascal Campion from Onyx Cinema, Inc. on Vimeo.

Quick Animation Test

Here's a little piece of animation I did in no more than 15 minutes.
I was a bit bored and animation always seems to entertain me.



And that awesome shark rig helped too.

One thing a lot of my earlier stuff lacked was good settles which really make your work seem alive. I definitely try to hone in on that more with my more recent animation. Hopefully I'm not starting to add too much settles.

Blogger App Chosen

Ok I've chosen my blogger app.

The winner is..... Blogaway!

It came down to being able to see my uploaded images in the right rotation.

The only negative of Blogaway is that I can only upload one picture per post (same in all other blogger apps im aware of) and the compressed look of my posted images. Upside is that once you click the image it goes back to its proper dimensions.

Posted via Blogaway for android.

Finally a Drawing

Well here's my chance to use my droid for some blogging. Sadly this particular blogger app only allows me to put one image per post.

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Ball Jump Revisited

After sending my ball jump test to Aaron Hartline of Pixar animation, I was once again put in my place.
Frankly, I love it.

He kindly responded and gave me his thoughts on my "simple" test.

Looks good.

It took me a few times to understand what was going on exactly. Instead try having the ball come bouncing in and

without stopping, bounce up high to get over the block. Instead he doesnt get to the top, but rather bounces off the top part of the block.

Upset, he looks at it for a beat - backs up then does the bounce up to the top, and falls off. Then showing the anger and frustration, backs up really far - add that shake for the anticipation (like the rubberband example i give in the lecture) and have him it it a full force. Much Much harder then you have now and traveling more across the screen to hit it.

Once the block slowly starts to fall, then comes crashing down - then have his attitude change to being happy, joyful. Celebrating by jumping up and down - lightly! - then bouncing off screen.

You have alot of the beats - but im not feeling the emotion of the ball yet. Really play with your timing. How can you make this ball have feeling?

I'm going to go back through the shot and address the points Mr. Hartline mentioned.
The one re-occurring critique I get is always that my shot isn't clear. No one but myself understands what's going on.
That's something I really need to hone in on.

Ball Jump

Well here's my more basic animation of a ball with character.


And if your interested, here's a progress video as I go through the shot.


Overall I'm fairly happy. I always end up liking it more during the blocking stage then final though.
The only major complaint I can think of is that back track it does. It just seems off to me. I think it has to do with the jumps occurring over such a small a time frame.

Minor update

My "Man vs Machine" shot will be on a minor hiatus.
Awesome Dreamworks animator Steve Meyer has ever so graciously decided to critique it for me when he gets the opportunity.

In the mean time I've been working on the basics once again. I always seem to try something complex - fail - then move to something basic. Rinse and repeat.

So yeah, I'm at the basic part of the two step cycle.
Update on both shots soon!

Larger update - no one reads my blog!

Progress

Here's where I'm at with the shot I'm working on.
So far I'm not hating it. Although I know I will once I get to the Splining phase.

Random Model Sheet

Some inconsistencies, but who cares.

Flash Ninja

I wanted to try and get back into Flash, so I churned out this happy Ninja walk.

Happy Fathers Day!!

Happy Fathers Day dad!
And in honor of this special day, I'll post something I've been working on.

Here's the flipbook pass.


Hopefully the finished version will be up soon.

Anime Test

I remember seeing someone do this on another blog, although I forget which.

The concept is to have a held frame, anticipation, 1 or 2 frame smear, actions on 4's, 1 or 2 frame smear and land.
It's fairly Anime like timing.
Pretty fun to try.

Tangled Trailer

Here's the first real trailer for Disney's film Rapunzel. Excuse me, Tangled. I'm still a little bitter that they changed the name.
Although truthfully, this trailer suits the title 'Tangled' a lot more than 'Rapunzel'.

The trailer seems a bit Shrek-like to me, but then again Disney's trying to fix what apparently went wrong with TPATF. They blame the name and the audience it aimed at. Come on, look at The Little Mermaid! No one tried to market that with 'edge' and pop culture references. It was a hit!
Oh well.

Hopefully with Glen at the head of this it'll be something Disney can actually be proud of.

And come on, Pink? Really? That's the choice of song for a trailer to Disney's first CG MUSICAL?

One thing I do really like is the animation. I really feel a hand drawn vibe in the poses and timing. That and the look of the film.

Nerd Character Walk Completed

It is now done.
On one's now...



And then we have a new progression which includes the latest version of the walk.

17th Birthday!

Here's a Birthday sketch dump for you.
These were all quick gesture sketches ranging from 1-3 minutes.








































These were done with pen and watercolor, although the water color faded quite a bit in the scan.

Spungella Guilt Contest

"...create a shot or sequence based on a specific topic using only 100 frames within one week..."
The word that was given was "Guilt"

I tied for 5th with like 4 other people based on the votes emailed to Jean-Denis Haas (ILM Animator and creator of the website, Spungella).
I don't brag often, but I was pretty pleased when I read this on his site, "...My runner up for 4th place would have been #4. His expression after he drives over the guy cracked me up...".
That was referring to me :)

Anyway, here it is in all it's crudely rendered, poorly animated glory.


I'm still waiting on a computer animated piece that I can be as happy with as a hand drawn one.
At this rate I think it'll be a while.

And on a side note, this is the 30th bit animation I've put on my blog since last May when I started.

Nerd Character Walk

Well here's my submission to the Spline Doctors walk animation contest.

I'm fairly happy with it, although I have to point out one thing I wish I didn't do and will probably fix. During an arm swing I attempted to place a smear frame and it simply looks horrible. Just thought I'd draw attention to it.

And here's a progression for those interested.


UPDATE* Final version is now posted.

Sid The Pirate

Here is Sid, he happens to be a pirate.

Shogun knocks out Machida!

Here's a quick digital sketch of Machida after getting pounded by Shogun.

50th Post!

For my 50th post, I thought it would be only fitting to post a tiny ninja.

Bunny Story

Another attempt at storyboarding, did this over a week.

Quick Digital Sketches

Here's a few quick digital paintings I did, not where I want to be just yet.

Always Learning

Rad Sechrist, Dreamworks Story Artist, was kind enough to show me how to fix my drawings.
This only proves that I need to keep on drawing and learning as I go.


































Thanks again Rad!

Digital Painting

I'm really loving painting on the computer.
Especially how I can work in layers, it makes things so much easier.

Here's my process of designing a character as of now (I'm sure it'll change soon).















I really like starting my design in silhouette because it makes you ignore all the unnecessary details and focus on the character as a whole.
This method was adopted from Florian Satzinger.

Also there's a reason as to why I designed this nerd, the Spline Doctors are having an animation contest. A walk cycle of one of four choices has to be animated by May 14th, and I chose the one involving a child on his way to or from school.

Updates soon!

My Mural

I'm going to be painting this in the Drama room at my school.
A lot of pressure but it should be fun.
















Oh yeah, I'm the one in the orange.

Digital Painting

I think I'm finally starting to get the hang of digital painting!
Here's my caricature of me, much better in structure, composition, color, and resemblance than my first one.
I think it's safe to say I've been improving!





















It's actually pretty fun now!

Running

Another non-character exercise.



I don't really like this one.. It just doesn't feel right to me.
I'm thinking it's because I have to much action (tall character) in too short a time, but single inbetweens (giving more time) would probably make it too slow.
Who knows, maybe I'll try it.

Lifedrawing

I'm actually really happy about the first one. Although I know I need to improve a lot.
Especially with hands..

More Basic's pt 2

Here's that same vanilla walk but with single inbetweens putting it on 1's.




EDIT* Just for those who don't understand how difficult animation is, here are all the drawings laid on top of each other.

And that's just for a 32 frame walk.

More Basic's

Another relatively basic exercise.



Vanilla Walk on 2's.

Back To Basics

Scared of the Dark

Well, it took longer than I expected, and turned out worse than I expected. But it's done.
I decided to post it from start (blocking) to finish (final render).


Above is the blocking of my keys.


Above is my blocking with extremes and some breakdowns.


Above is my final animation.

At least I think I've improved. A tiny bit.

School Project

For my history class, we had to create a video on the discovery and use of fire during the time of homo erectus (Early man). We needed to put together a storyboard and so i took on that role for my group.
All boards were drawn by me, with idea help by my friend. It's definitely not some Joe Ranft masterpiece but it was my first try.


Also, the animated shot im working on should be up by then end of the month, hopefully.

Because I Still Need To Post

I never wanted this blog to have my drawings on it, I was planning on it being solely an animation blog. Oh well, drawing is a large part of both CG and Hand drawn animation.

So here's some new life drawings (Sadly based from more image's instead of an actual figure drawing session with a live model) where i'm definitely out of my element. The first drawing is me attempting to stylize the model, and the bottom two are in charcoal and are my attempt's at realism.

4 min












15 min









15 min










Stay tuned, i'm working on a new piece of animation goodness.

Because I Need To Post

Here are a few drawing's I've done in the past month or so.

3 - 5 min












5 min












2 min












3 - 5 min












5 min

Chair Test - Final

Hopefully with the darker lines, (Slightly) cleaned up figure, and full animation you can understand what's happening.



I'm happy with how it turned out, but I think it does get a bit swimmy.