Carlos Baena!

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I came across Carlos Baena's website earlier and it really inspired me with all the resources and tips and tricks he has on his website to help people like me. He mentioned what to think about when creating a showreel and sending it to companies. This really inspired me towards creating my own showreel which I am currently working on. Carlos is also a co founder for Animation Mentor, which started in March 2005. Animation Mentor is something I'd love to do in the future, however finding the cash for it is a bit tricky. Maybe one day ayeeee! Character animation is what I want to get good at.

http://www.carlosbaena.com/

Check out his website, very inspiring!
Below are some of his 3D artwork.........

Drunken-ness!

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Great inspiration for my silent comedy animation:



Thinking about whats going to happen in my comedy animation is rather tricky to plan out as my character has to fall, trip, pick something up and etc. Basically, we have to make Andy (our tutor) laugh and it obviously has to be animated well. So, a few things I have thought about, about drunk people and cartoons:

1) Hiccups - a lot of 1990's cartoons tend to use hiccups in drunk scenes
2) Friendly? - people sometimes act over friendly
3) Wobbly - can't really stand still or straight
4) Slow reaction - reflex's are useless
5) Lack of balance - find it hard to stand
6) 'Seeing Double' - spinning rooms
7) Confident - don't care what they do or say
8) Emotional - hormonal

Showreels for inspiration!

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I could go on and on, the amount I've looked at...............

Rough Sketch!

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Contemplating whether to subscribe to Digital Tutors because I really want to learn character animation in more depth. The free tutorials I find online don't seem to cover a lot. I would also like to learn a lot more of Maya especially for character animation.

Below is a rough sketch of my old man that I am going to model in 3Ds Max. For now the sketches below are suitable for me to start modelling. I want to create a drunken old man, so his clothes will be a little worn when I add textures to the 'drunk' haha!... think I might call him 'Derek' - Derek the drunk! Although my grandad was called Derek and I'm pretty sure he wasn't a drunk. Oh well!

So, below is a rough sketch and I will keep blogging screen shots of me modelling Derek, enjoy......

Update...

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Updates of new projects...

Unfortunately I asked our tutor and there isn't a brief for this project, which is a bit annoying. I'm not very clear on what we have to produce to be honest, so I will have to speak to him properly. However, we've been recently learning the basics of Maya and last week we learnt how to create particle effects. It is still rather confusing getting to know Maya but tutorials online and the seminars are really helping me get my head around it better.

Testy test!

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With out self illumination and light.......















With out self illumination but WITH a light.......

Evaluation & 'The Art Of Seeing'

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For the ‘Still Life’ visualisation project, we had to produce four still renders of a ‘Still Life’ scene which included designing, modelling, texturing and rendering using 3Ds Max. For this we had to collect and model at least six objects for our scenes. Our influence for this project is painter Ralph Goings and Visualisation Artist Alex Roman.

For the project I researched many visualisation artists and photographs to get inspiration for creating my own scene. I found a visualisation artist who really inspires me and as from now I follow him on blogger. His name is Daniil Alikov, who is currently working at Lucasfilm Animation in Singapore. I originally came across his working when researching for visualisation artists and saw his work on ‘Still Life’ (As shown below).

The lighting and shadows in the image above really inspired me. I wanted to create something dull and dingy within my own work for this project. I focused on researching the lighting and textures for the project, which is where I thought a mantel piece would be the perfect idea for the sort of scene I desire. I think the lighting would work really effectively, especially the lighting from a fire.

Therefore, I started to look at images of mantel pieces and think about the objects that I could collect and model in 3Ds Max. I also thought about composition of how the objects are laid out within the scene.

In seminars, we learnt how to model simple objects to quite complex objects from reference images. We also learnt how to add relevant cameras and lighting for our scenes, whilst thinking about composition, along with developing skills with the modifier tool ‘Unwrap UVW’ to texture our objects.

First of all I had an idea to make a series of four mantel pieces, which would show a story through time of a family moving out of the house and a new family moving in. My ideas started off with an old dusty mantel piece, which then moved onto the mantel piece and wearing out, through to it getting re furnished and then modernised with fresh new objects in the scene. However this did not go to plan, as I wanted to spend a lot of time texturing the scene and making it look as realistic as I could. So, I planned to stick with one mantel piece that then eventually gets worn out over time, for example the objects would become more rustier and worn. I also thought about adding cracks to the mirror and getting rid of the photo in the photo frame to show signs of a broken family as a narrative.

Therefore I used my reference images to start modelling the objects for my scene, where I used the skills I’d learnt in seminars to create the feel and atmosphere of the scene. Throughout the process of this project I thought the most difficult part was using the Unwrap UVW modifier. At first I wasn’t confident using this tool, but as I thought myself how to use it I then improved so much more.  I learnt that you have to spend a lot of time on this to get the result you want. I am still not fluent in the tool but I would say I enjoyed using this and applying the textures the most throughout this project, even If I found it difficult.

Overall I have a learnt a lot from this project. I would say mainly I have developed my skills in visualisation, especially texturing and lighting. I think feedback from other people throughout this project has helped me a lot, along with reference images to see how detailed an object actually comes across. I will continue to use and enhance these skills further, as this has given me a better understanding for visualisation.

'The Art of Seeing'

As a task for this project we were asked to create a texture/lighting online library. For this I photographed several textures around where I live that I thought were interesting and had abstract feel to them. When taking images I thought about textures that people don’t really see or look for. I used my macro lens on my camera to be able to show detail of the textures and surroundings. I thought this was a motivating task to complete for the project, because it made me think about texturing the minors details within my work.

My 'Art of Seeing' Flickr Libary: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lyslop/sets/72157628951328587/

More Test Renders!

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Visualisation

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Below is my progress of the mantel piece that I have modelled, designed, textured and rendered in 3Ds Max. I still need to work on textures a bit more, as I am also doing close up renders of the objects wearing out.

Test renders:






























Screen shot:

11 Second Club!

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I've been working with the MAX rig, thanks to Peter Starostin and James Hunt. I have started off animating a walk cycle, although I'm not posting it on my blog just yet because I'd prefer it to be a bit better :-)

I really want to start entering the 11 Second Club, however I don't think I've mastered everything just yet, sooooo I'm spending a lot of time learning how to animate characters. In my last animation project 'The Chess Player', I was told to focus on my timing so I have been researching more on timing than anything lately. I also got a book for Christmas called 'Timing for Animators' which is really useful.

I'm inspired by a lot of the entries from the 11 Second Club. However, one that I really inspires me is the winner from May 2011. I think the timing works brilliantly and it shows you don't need facials to make a great animation. It is also inspiration for my next animation project....

Happy New Year!

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2012 is going to be a good one for me! I've decided my new years resolution is to draw more and get better at it. When I start back at uni, I'm going to join the life drawing sessions which will help me a lot.
I'm also going to try as much as possible enter into the 11 second club's animations every month. Although... since I'm not very experienced in animation as I'd like to be, I have started animating with free rigs online. I really really really want to be a character animator!

Last night I watched Pixar: 25 Magic Moments on BBC3, which was similar to the documentary: Pixar's Story which I watched a few years ago. They both really inspire to work harder to get where I want to be.
When they were talking about the animators who work at Pixar, they mentioned that they have one animator working on only 2 to 4 minutes of the entire film. Which I thought was crazy, but amazing!

Bobby Podesta (Supervising Animator at Pixar) mentioned " A good animated film looks like one person animated everything but a great animated film looks like nobody animated at all."

I thought this quote was interesting to think about. Meaning, a great animation looks like it has been filmed by actors because the animation is that good.

I also enjoyed how parts of what happens in the featured films reflect on something that has happened in the directors or animators life. They also add the code A113 somewhere in all of the featured films, as this was the room where it all began at California Institute of the Arts.













I keep thinking and thinking about my next animation project at University. We have to create a Silent Comedy character animation. Where the character has to apparently think, decide, pick something up, drop something, walk, climb, trip, slip, and fall. So lately I keep thinking what my animation could be based on to make the audience laugh.

I watched a short animation recently, where I thought of a similar ideas for the character to walk across a busy road by dodging the cars driving past and then when the character reaches to the other side, he gets knocked over by something like a cyclist. However, I thought this might be a bit of a challenge and I need to make sure the animation is good because this is purely based on the quality of the animation.

I keep thinking of other ideas that I could possibly use, but nothing has been a favourite so far.