New book

Yeah I finished How To Cheat In Maya. It was a good book for learning the animation tools in Maya, but in terms of animation, it was okay. But I do think that anyone who is just starting to use maya for animation shuold take a look at this book. It was great for showing you all the cool tools maya has to offer to help you animate. There was a great chapter on animating with props and how to prevent gimbal lock. It also came with a DVD with example animations and maya files, which I want to explore more.





I have now begun reading timing for animation.

animation revisions

After I finished up my last shot I went back for a few days to make any revision to the previous shot I had worked on. Here is the new playblast of my last shot with some revision. I plan to do this with ever shot.

Right Click Save As

Booger Cookies

So i finished this shot last week but blogger has been annoying so I have not been able to post it, but anyways here is my 2nd shot of the summer and i am pretty happy with it, but I feel like it is a long way to being finished. On that note any comments and crits is greatly appreciated. The rig is by tommy Taylor a great modeler and aniamtor you can check out his film here ( which the character is from) Night of the Living Dad

Here is my animation
Right Click Save AS



The shot I have planned next is really going to push me as an animator so we will see how that turns out.

Power to the character

A couple of days ago I saw the Adjustment Bureau. really good Movie I highly recommend it.

But anyways the reason I bring it up is because I saw in the movie a great example of a single character and how they act and react differently according to there surroundings. in this case people. It was the main adjustment guy that chase whats his face ( i think Matt Damon around) when he talks to Damon he is the one in control and has all the power over Damon. He is intimidating and really scary. But as soon as this guy is talking with his superior in the adjustment bureau he suddenly acts like a scared little school girl. now that is a little exaggerated , but it gets the point across. I was just really intrigued by how a character can behave so differently in two shots that were so close to each other in the film, but it never seemed out of character. I wish I had these clips so i could really analyze them and so i could show an example.

I just thought I would share.

My first Animation

So Here is my first animation of the summer. It was a lot of fun and I feel like i learned some things from this shot. Like Plan everything and don't ever say Oh ill figure it out later because I won't and I didn't. Overall I am pretty happy with how it turned out except the beginning. In the begining I do not like the acting and it is still really rough animation and this is all because this was the one part of my aniamtion that I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to do , I just said I would figure it out. And it clearly shows that I did not plan. Unfortenitly that was a hige acting moment that I totally missed out on. O well il get it next time.

Also the Cube in the foreground willl eventually be another character.

So here is the animation.

the rig is from Russell Miler and Eric Chou and it is from there Senior film. Check it out here. http://vimeo.com/23427776

it still needs alot of work but i said I would post it today and I am going to I am goging to put t aside for a week let it settle and Ill be back in a week to tweak things for a couple days. So any comments I would love to hear. So tomorrow I start a new shot , this one involves cookies. woot woot. I will make sure that before I move one control on the charcter that I have everything thought out and know what I want to do for every second of the shot.

the first book of the summer

So i got this book earlier this year but never got around to reading it and now that prepro is all done I've decided this should be a great book to read first. So far it has been great there hasn't been much on animation specifically , but I have jumped ahead a bit and there is greatness to come. So far the book has been a goldmine for improving workflow. It teaches you all these little shortcuts. a lot of the things that I wish I could do I have found out that I can or I have found an easier way to do things I have done before. I have enjoyed the book a lot so far and highly recommend it to begin CG artists. Plus it has a DVD that contains maya files so you can follow along in Maya.

O yeah by the way it is called How to Cheat in Maya by Eric Lutha

If there are any great books out there that you think I should read or blog posts let me know I am always down to explore something new.

First Post

Howdy all this blog is dedicated to a challenge I was initially given to by David Torres, Supervising animator at Dreamworks. I had an interview with him a few months back and he gave me a summer homework assignment. It was to animate dialogue/ acting pieces of animation that were around 80-100 frames and do them in one week. So I am taking him up on this challenge. So every Sunday I will be posting the animation I have been working on and hopefully it will be done, but I will post it no matter what state it is at. I am also pondering the idea of going back to each shot after a week of working on another shot as to work on polishing up my animation.

During every single interview I had with recruiters I was given the note to continue to work on my acting and to polish polish poilsh. So those are my goals. I want to create believable characters that think within my shots and I want to be able to polish a shot out the wazoo. I am also wanting to read and study animation more this summer and I plan on posting about my findings.

Hopefully this site will help me keep my promise to David Torres. And learn something this summer,

So if there is anyone who actually stumbles upon this blog remember to annoy if you do not see a new animation posted on Sunday. Except this Sunday because I need a little bit of a break, but next Sunday it begins.