Cartoony Pyro

Quick re-design I did. Sketched at Tully’s, colored after work.

WIP

Pyro-Mania!

Nuff said…

I think…

Baddies

I’m getting worse at drawing. Bleh… I want to leave these behind.

I would say “enjoy”, but… come on. These are not good. Hopefully next time things will work out better.

Batman

Or as Eliot says, “Meeman.” Just a quick sketch and REALLY quick color.

Enjoy.

Speed Painting

I’m not much of a painter, but I decided to throw some color on this. The topic was to twist a Disney hero into something evil. There you have it.

I know I’m a few chapters behind, but I’ll type out some stuff here soon. Promise.

Enjoy.

Great Blog

Check it!

http://www.ghiblicon.blogspot.com/

Yeah…

In Rainbows

“You are all I need”

Another quick rig test

***UPDATE***
This is dumb because the torso and arm animation was completely thrown in. Originally I was just testing the facial controls. I thought it looked weird without the head and torso, so I animated that really quickly. Then I thought, “well, why not the arms?” So I animated those.

So it was all after thought and now I’m trying to polish it. It’s just dumb. But anyways, I’m not working on this anymore. Here’s where I was when I abandoned it because I realized how stupid I am.

I know… I’m dumb…

—————————————————————————-

I wanted to check out the face rig on this so I spent about 30 minutes testing it. Nothing wonderful, but thought I’d post it.

Chapter 4 or Use Your Illusion forthcoming. I haven’t had time to write up a post yet. I will soon though.

Enjoy.

Quick rig test

This rig used to kill my system. Don’t know what happened, but my compy works fine with it now.

This is just a quick test I did to see how the controls worked. Pretty spiffy. I’ll probably use it to do some longer animations once I move on to full rigs.

Animation… it’s cool.

After work fun

So I did a quick bouncing ball animation with Plastic Animation Paper a while ago. The prospect of doing a bouncing ball in 3D was actually a little nerve wracking. I’ve done it before, but I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to do it again. Well, I faced my fears and took a pass at a little bouncing ball character.

As you will notice the ball isn’t spinning. That’s because there is supposed to be a tail attached. I wanted to try my hand at some Overlapping Action as well. Alas, I broke the rig and the tail won’t follow the ball. So yes, it distracts the eye a bit, but it was supposed to be supported by the tail.

Anyways, no more excuses. I’ll take a couple more passes at it to clean it up and then move on to tackle that Overlap.

Enjoy.

Team Fortress 2

Due to time management issues I don’t have time to play video games… ever. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point I stopped playing and stopped having time to play. The last console I owned was a GameCube which I gave to a friend and the last game I played on a PC (this is embarrassing) was Shogun: Total War. I do occasionally play my DS, but even those times have become fewer and farther between.

Regardless of my LAMENESS I will be resolving to play TF2. I don’t think I’ve ever been so excited about a game. Ever. I am absolutely horrible at FPSs and I’m sure people will HATE having me on their team. I once played Halo at a friends house (and yes, Halo. Not 2 or 3) and they took to letting me die because it was “just easier that way.” But I’m hoping to get my fast-twitch muscles ready and not be dead weight because I REALLY want to play this game.

The in-game animation is as good or better than any I’ve seen. The “Meet The” series is truly inspired AND inspiring. If this game is a huge success I would hope that the entire game industry moves toward really well thought out, really well executed art in video games. Not that those games aren’t out there now, but seeing a game like this succeed would be great in my opinion.

You can DL the “Meet The” series at gametrailers.com. Here are some shots from the series’:

I’ve the opportunity to visit Valve in a couple weeks! Lucky me!

Enjoy!

Use Your Illusion: Chapter 3 – Part 2

Wow! I feel like I was in the middle of an enormous sandstorm, and now that I’m done with chapter three I’m alone in the desert. So much information in that chapter. I feel like I could have spent twelve days reading it, a day for each principle.

I especially enjoyed the explanations of Secondary Action and Exaggeration. I think I’m going to have to make some signs myself and post them around my work area. They will say things like:

“Make a unified statement.”

“Try, fail, try again.”

“Make it convincing because real things are”

That last one is derived from a great quote by an unnamed artist,

“I don’t think he [Walt] meant ‘realism.’ I think he meant something that was more convincing, that made a bigger contact with the people, and he just said ‘realism’ because ‘real’ things do…”

There was a lot of great history on the trial and error that they went through to learn these principles. From Dave Hand trying to impress Walt with an animation of Mickey in a cab to Ron Clemens learning the consequences of twinning from Frank Thomas to all of the animators passing each other in the halls shaking their heads at the limitations of their “crude medium.”

I’m hoping to get some time animating this weekend and put some of these principles into practice. We’ll see though. I’ve got to get over the motion sickness from the amount of information that just whizzed through my brain.

Use your… oh you know the rest!

Use Your Illusion: Chapter 3 – Part 1

So between last night and lunch today I’ve only read through the first six of the twelve principles. I’m still going back through analyzing the drawings, highlighting, making notes on Stickies (from Staples) and putting them right in the book and generally trying to soak up as much as I possibly can.

I really enjoyed reading this portion of the book. You can almost hear Frank and Ollie’s excitement as they go through the things that they were figuring out through the years. Parts of it are almost frantic. They may not have felt that way, but there is a DEFINITE tone to this area of the book. My favorite so far is the explanation of Staging. I had to write the five categories on a post-it and put them right there at the beginning of that section. There is so much there that I don’t know how you can read it without all the note-taking paraphernalia.

The example drawings here are great as well. Many come with little blurbs next to them with the essence of the particular principle being pointed out. I found that helpful and the examples absolutely masterful. Just perfect, clear examples of what they are trying to stress. Some of my favorites were the example of Art Babbit’s Country Mouse, Fred Moore’s two quick rough poses of Micky and Bill Tytla’s wonderful example of drag and overlap on Doc. There is also some great info on audience interpretation in the explanation of Anticipation.

All in all WONDERFUL, but it’s a lot to have thrown at you all at once. I’m hoping they spend more time unpacking all of the principles throughout the book. I’ve decided to post a couple pics of chapter three this time to keep things fresh.

Man I hope somebody’s reading this!

Use Your Illusion!

***Update***
I’m adding a page on the top with links straight to the Use Your Illusion posts.

Use Your Illusion: Interjection

So, I wasn’t able to finish all of chapter three last night. My head was spinning from all of the information. I’ll finish it today at lunch. I just wanted to take a moment to write a quick defense. Not that it needs it from the likes of me, but just in case someone has it and isn’t reading it or thinks it’s not worth reading AND happens to stumble across my blog.

I’ve read a few reviews of The Illusion of Life that accuse it of not containing any information pertinent to becoming a better animator. Arguments that The Animators Survival kit is much better because it has info on exact timing, poses, etc. Both The Animators Survival Kit (SK) and The Illusion of Life (IoL) are wonderful books, but written a bit differently. While you might find poses and frames and keys and breakdowns in SK and some great drawings in sequence that fit different situations, IoL seems to inspire you to look inward. Don’t get me wrong, there are wonderful drawings, examples of acting, thumbnails, x-sheets and a plethora of things that can be copied out of IoL, the call, at least in the first few chapters is to find out for yourself.

While in SK you can find an example of a sad walk cycle, IoL would encourage you to be sad yourself and then walk. How are you walking? Would everyone who saw you know that you’re sad? Is there a better way to walk to show sadness? Look at how other people are walking. Do some quick thumbnails. Boil it down to it’s essence. Does it still read? Try it again if it doesn’t. The answers aren’t in animation, copying drawings and timing against someone else’s animation. They’re in observation and thoughtful consideration of the audience. In caricaturing what is real. What people see and know.

If you’ve ACTUALLY read IoL and don’t feel like you’re a better animator then you missed the point. Sure you can go to SK or to any number of other books to get drawings, keys, breakdowns, frame numbers and yes, they might read well, but being an animator is about taking risks, making statements, doing it from the heart and doing it for the audience. I might also add that SK isn’t about copying either, even though you can.

“Say something. Be brave.”

I enjoy a good sermon and one of my favorite people to listen to is Alistair Begg (and not just because of the Scottish accent). He said something really cool in one of his sermons. He said: “The reason most preaching is ignored today is that it deserves to be.” I think IoL is about saying something through animation that doesn’t deserve to be ignored. I’m really not discrediting other books, I’m just defending IoL.

Now, you might rightly say, “who are you? You’re not that good AND you’re only on chapter three!” Yeah… you’re right. All I can say is that I hope to be able to animate well one day and yes I’m a youngin’ when it comes to animation knowledge. I think IoL is beginning a shift in my thinking thinking when it comes to animation. Most of the above argument is something I hope to grow into and if I can put to practice half of what’s laid out in IoL it will be a miracle.

Use Your Illusion.

Use your Illusion: Chapter 2

I won’t clog up the site with more pictures of the book. Rest assured it is marked up with highlighter and ink. Arrows pointing to areas of interest, brackets for paragraphs of interest and notes all over.

At first I thought it was going to be a daunting chapter. At the beginning it’s a lot of history. Not that it isn’t interesting, it’s just not enlightenment in every sentence. It’s like being a kid and going to karate class wondering why your being lectured because you just want to kick somebody’s ass!

That goes by pretty quickly though and chapter two has some AMAZING words of wisdom and keys to making great animation. I remember making a mental note the first time I watched the special features in The Incredibles. Brad Bird said that the reason to do animation is caricature. I didn’t realize it comes right from chapter 2.

“These were the things that could hold an audience, and to Walt they added up to one simple approach — a caricature of realism.”

There are also wonderful things like the key to the illusion of weight and great sayings animators posted on signs to help them to remember very important aspects of acting, animating, entertaining… captivating.

Chapter two was great. Frank and Ollie have a great way with words and write with great perspicuity.

USE YOUR ILLUSION!!!

Look two posts down to find a link to The Illusion of Life on Amazon if you don’t yet have a copy.

Quick sketches

Here are some sketches of Spider-man and Wolverine I had laying around my cube. I’ve got some more random sketches, but my camera ran out of batteries. Post ‘em when I get the chance.

Enjoy!

The Illusion of Life

So, I’ve been guilty of using this wonderful book as a reference, but mostly as a picture book. Not wanting to be a fool any longer I’m calling this time in my life “Use You Illusion”. I started reading it a couple weeks ago after I read a few posts by Stephen Gregory in the Spline Doctors archives, but realized I wasn’t retaining any of the info, nor was it good for reference if I didn’t know what to look at. To solve this problem I started at the beginning again, but this time with a highlighter, pen, note pad and dictionary (to write the definition of certain words right in the book… so what?! I’m dumb). I’m going to try to TAKE IN as much as possible. Not just read it. I’m not on a schedule so I’m going for quality, not quantity.

The first chapter is rife with information about history, psychology and theory. It is, for me, a fundamental shift in thinking. I knew that these things existed, but have practiced apart from them. And what good is practice if you’re practicing wrong? I think the biggest thing I’ve taken away from the first chapter is thinking things through. I have, from a process standpoint, added a lot of planning to what I’m animating, but there’s a difference between thumbnailing and surface stuff and real, thoughtful consideration.

I’ll be hitting chapter 2 tonight. Can’t wait to see what Frank and Ollie have in store for me. If you don’t have a copy of The Illusion of Life grab one HERE!

Here are some pics of the first chapter: