Load the catapults!

New milestone here... :)
Posting a playblast (not a real render, really just an animated screen grab of the camera movement etc. In this short film, our hero Delgo conquers great obstacles and loads a catapult.


I don't know if you can tell, but during the animation, after he **SPOILER** releases the rock **END OF SPOILER** his hands go weird and swivel around a couple times. I tried fixing it in the graph editor, but I have a feeling the problem goes back to the rigging, so not really sure how to completely fix it. I know my wrists can be picky at times. The whole thing still feels quite rough to me and I'd work on a lot of details, but I'd rather spend the perfectionizing on my own project, so I'll move on to rigid bodies... that is, dynamics. Let's smash some walls with this siege weapon!
Later,
Stuart

Pickup animation

So I finally got back to my maya beginner's book and did some more animation of delgo lifting a rock onto the catapult. There was a bit more artistic license with this bit, though I still got through it by checking every keyframe against the book's... and he still looks a bit of a robot... haha. Here's a screenshot of part of the process:

Nothing too special. I'll upload the whole animation once it's pieced together. I think that's the next section in the book, i.e. combining the walk cycle I did and the pickup animation into a complete little clip. Should be fun.

I'm looking forward to finishing this book so I can order some training DVDs which I found on Digital Tutors. We'll see if that happens first or me ordering my new computer!! Yay! I'll post the specs once they're finalized, but it's looking really sweet right now...

Later,
Stuart

Furniture challenge

So... due to an unfortunate series of events I haven't been able to do much on my computer, including concept art, so I'm going to have to just post my bro's entry and give him the win this time :)
Seriously, he did a pretty nice job, and I couldn't really figure out how I was going to visually convey the concept I was thinking about... ah well, I'm going to spend some time tonight working on my Maya again, hopefully get back to Delgo, who I haven't worked on in a long time.
Anyway, here's my brother's futuristic furniture:

I'll get back to you once I get somewhere with my Delgo animation.
Stuart

Challenge 1-Alien

So here's my final concept art alien submission pic thing:

I'm moderately satisfied with how it turned out... learned a bit about photoshop and brushes, layers, workflow, lighting and all that sort of thing. I'll be doing lots more painting in photoshop to practice lighting and color schemes and stuff.

Erick produced a decent effort, but neither of us spent a ton of time on the pics, so the first challenge resulted in a draw. (haha, get it)

Next challenge: Due Saturday evening, a piece of futuristic furniture...

Concept art challenges

So my brother just got a Wacom Bamboo tablet and he's wanting to do some practicing, as am I. Therefore, we're starting periodical drawing/art challenges of some theme/topic that must be completed within a few days.
Our first challenge is this:
Create a hominoid alien with lots of character in full color with a simple background/setting by Saturday evening.

Should be fun, I'll post my final image (and his too if he lets me, and then you can judge them :) )
Later,
Stuart

PS A "short animated live-action film" ("Huh?" I hear you say?) should be coming soon as well... stay tuned.

PPS I know... I haven't been doing as much computer animation lately, but it'll happen, I promise.

The Fish (Or, The Flight of the Bumblebee)

Daryl and I made this short film (short film) on Saturday in a new format I like to call MMA (mixed media animation). It combines Stop Motion, Digital Compositing, and Rotoscoping to make a little piece worthy of Cannes (or at least cans).
Hope you enjoy.
Stuart

DIY iPod Touch Case

If you've got an iPod Touch and want a very cheap way to cover it up and protect it from all those scratches and bumps, look no further. Here's an excellent do-it-yourself iPod case for the very affordable price of one or two bucks... as a bonus, you get 12 pieces of minty fresh chewing gum!

Notice how the size is perfect; in addition, there's a handy semi-circular opening for easy access to the all-important home button. If you've got your tunes in your pocket and are worried about proximity to keys and other dangerous items, this handy case will alleviate all concern. To use the touch screen, just slide the case off the top to view the screen for any touching necessary.

Hope this has been an informative and handy do-it-yourself post for all the ipod-owning-skinflints in the world.

Finished character

Yay, so I finished the little character guy thing. Didn't come out great, but the point was to learn some tools and workflow, which I did. Here he is.


Not sure what's up with the aliasing... that's definitely something I'll have to work on for the next project. It seems to have something to do with depth-map shadows, but that's just a guess. So that's one thing off my list. I guess I'll get back to Delgo next and do some animation. I'll upload a vid once I get that done... should be fun.
Until later,
Stuart

PS Hmm... on looking at the final image, the aliasing doesn't seem to be a problem. I wonder why it looked bad on my render output in Maya... ah well. Always something to figure out.

Cartoon Dude

So I think the first or second thing on my list was to finish up a tutorial I was working on. Not quite done, about 3/4 done actually, but I thought I'd post a WIP so you could see how it was getting on. If you remember, I modeled Delgo from a poly cube (actually, I didn't post much at the beginning, but that is what I started with); however, this tutorial starts out by blocking out the shape with NURBs, which I think might be more common. I suspect that it takes a bit longer, but it gives better topology in the early stages. Then I converted to polys, and connected everything up, which was time-consuming and a bit frustrating to maintain quads and still have good topology. I think that just takes a lot of practice. I still haven't decided whether I'll be doing a lot of this sort of modelling in my career (I suspect not) but I'm sure it's a useful skill to have and the principles apply to everything (even shopping).
I do hope my rambling style of writing isn't off-putting. I'll try to be more concise in future. So, without further ado, the picture:

Drawing Skills

So I've decided for a variety of reasons to leave the super villain challenge, one of which is that my character got scooped (sorta) by a ten year old... ah well.
Another reason is that I want to spend some time learning the basics of drawing, form, color, line, composition, perspective, etc. You know, the boring stuff...
But really, to become a good modeller/animator, I need to have a good eye (and a good hand to capture what my eye is looking for) and this is the simplest way to develop it I think.

So all that to say there's no 3d stuff right now and I need to push myself to keep working at the simple things before I get too ambitious.
So I think I'll create a...

To Do List:
-Finish cartoon human figure tutorial
-Do project 4 in my Maya Foundation book
-Do several sketches to practice and become competent with my Wacom Tablet
-Learn some color theory and produce some colorful digital canvases

Well, I think that's a good start of things to do for now... keep pestering me if I don't produce anything in the next while. It'll keep me moving, which is what I need to do at this early stage in learning and practicing and learning how to practice.

Talk to you soon,
(hopefully with some sort of image next time)
Stuart