Tutorial 5: Lip Sync

... is coming soon! I had issues with importing my sounds, and then just ran out of time. Bummer.

Tutorial 4: Walk Cycle

This one was probably the most difficult for me, due to my limited knowledge of Flash and the amount of setting up the tutorial required. I got stuck up on managing all the symbols within symbols, and I never got my guide lines to look or work like the ones in the demo, but the walk across the screen still turned out alright. Maybe I just got lucky? But anyway, once I got the asset management all straight, it was pretty much smooth sailing. One foot in front of the other, and all that. (haha...)

Tutorial 3: Rotoscoping

Yay! This was my favorite so far! I've never rotoscoped anything before, so it was a fun experience, and .... I got to draw everything, which is a big plus. I wasn't really happy with the reference video we got, but whatever. I also didn't feel like drawing a horribly strobing naked dude, so I drew a horribly strobing chicken-legged robot-dude instead, using the naked poses as a guide. the high contrast images of the video made it very easy to see the basic poses, and therefor translate them to another character.




And this one is me. Don't laugh. It was late, and I needed some video. It actually turned out pretty well, I think, with the hair flipping and everything. No, it's not sped up. Yes, I was being that spazzy. Most importantly though, this was a fun assignment that I really enjoyed doing.



Hmmm ... The lines are kinda thin ... sorry 'bout that.

Tutorial 2: The Puppet and Jump

Here's the first jumping exercise with the little springy foot man thing. It was relatively easy. The only tricky part was the fact that the various symbols didn't always move together from one major pose to another. In other words, his head would float off his body which would detach from the foot as he moved to the peak of his jump. Because of this, I had to add extra keys in the passing poses to stick all the parts back together.




Aaaand, the second. He's a blue penguin! I had a little fun with him, and really exaggerated the squash and stretch as he jumps, almost treating him like a bouncing ball from the last assignment. For some reason, I didn't experience the problem I had with the other; all his limbs stayed in tact as he bounced around.

Tutorial 1: The Bouncing Ball

Here's the first of the bouncing ball exercises. I'm not sure what else to say about this one besides ... The ball goes up and then down and then up and down again. Look at it go! The ease slider was an interesting tool to use, but I kind of prefered the custom ease in/ease out window. Utilizing a motion path was very helpful as well, and I'm glad I learned about that.




And now, the second ball! This one is blue. I found this exercise much easier to tweak using the custom ease in/ease out window. I'm guessing it was because of the visual representation of the movement as a motion curve rather than a simple numeric value that the slider uses to describe the tweaks. Also ... it was pretty much like the graph editor in Maya, so I was used to working that way. *bounce bounce*

Short Premise

I -finally- decided on a short story to tell in my animation. It is about a charming little squirrel on a quest for the largest acorn in the forest! It begins with him scouring the underbrush for acorns, popping them into his mouth as he darts through tall grasses, under tree roots and around bushes. All of a sudden he comes upon a shallow stream with fallen log spanning it. He spies a tree on the opposite bank full of giant acorns! His jaw drops and the nuts he was carrying fall from it and scatter across the ground. He must get to that tree! Bounding quickly across the log, he almost reaches the other end when the top of it snaps open, flipping the squirrel into the air. He squeaks in shock as he falls back down, right into the open mouth of an alligator. It wasn't a log at all ...

Oh, here's a background - an establishing shot. I think I need to up the contrast a bit to get the look I want: a look similar to the second watercolor animation below.
Character turnarounds and storyboards coming soon!

This blog has cobwebs already ...

Hey dudes. I haven't updated in forever <.< Portfolio's been a pain and I had a rather personal issue come up in these recent weeks ... but it's resolving, and there will be more stuff posted later this week. I promise!

Favorite Piece of Work ...

Oh, here! I finally got it to work. Granted, it's on YouTube, but whatever...



My senior film would have to be my favorite piece of work so far. I put a lot of work into it last quarter, and it's the most complete piece I've put out. I mean it does need some work - some tweaking here and there that I didn't necessarily see when I was looking at it every day before. I think it looks a bit floaty as well, but that's not too hard to adjust. It's also just a playblast with unfinished credits and editing.

The characters in this film went through a lot of changes in development. I actually had them all modeled and half-rigged when I decided one day that I just didn't like them anymore . . . and redid them. I gave them a new color scheme - black and white and pastels - and edited the colors in the set to match that look. It kinda set me back a bit, but I'm very glad I did it. It sucks working on something that just doesn't inspire you, and that old aesthetic . . . just wasn't doing it for me.

But anyway, there it is. I love my characters and the story, and I'm pretty proud of this one.