Color makes me scared and weak.... (but once I get past it, I really enjoy texturing). I'm posting this now so I can show it to Anim Forum... which starts now. ;)

Here's what I've come up with for the group's color scheme. The challenge is giving them all a distinct color of their own (you know, since they're super heroes), and keeping them unified.)

I started somewhere around here, and didn't feel like they looked like part of the same group at all:


So then I unified them more, but it was boring:


This is what I've got right now. I ended up changing the outfit of the one on the right since she was sticking out the most (her clothes looked too formal). Right now I'm using the exact same colors on everybody, but I plan on varying these up a little more, so it looks a little less.. juvenile?


I've pretty much finished UVing Moe and will start texturing her tonight! The Max UV work flow isn't too much different from Maya, but it took me a little bit to figure out some differences. :)

Still a few little pinches here and there, but I'm happy enough with her to move on to texturing.

Some modeling progress - I'm almost done with my first JPop girl! Just need to get in there are start doing some asymmetrical stuff. I should come up with real names for them.. so far I've just been referring to this one as "Mo"





And, since I didn't post it with their character designs, this is the sort of look I'm basing my designs off of. This is the Japanese pop group "Buono!" The dance moves they will be doing are going to follow this style of dance.

Figure drawing from today!












Also some sketches from last Thursday's lunchtime sketch session. One of the topics was giraffes, which we all quickly learned we didn't know how to draw from memory. I decided to embrace this fact. :)

So for my next exercise, I had initially wanted to work on armed combat. In my recent push to make things more fun, I came up with a sort of 'J-Pop group gets attacked by robot' piece. Once I got really into the research and got my dance all choreographed I decided I simply had to make my own characters for this one, since the fashion references are too fun. :)

Here's a limited set of my initial exploration:



Then I decided I wanted to try more exaggerated proportions, and perhaps expand it to 3 characters instead of one:





And here are some more refined drawings from today:








I'm excited to move forward. My main issue right now is making them all seem like they're from the same universe (I think they maybe look too different in the pencil drawings)


Also, here's a random drawing I did the other week when I was first thinking about modeling, which is unrelated, but I wanted to share:

Some sketches from the Natural History Museum in NYC from last month's vacation:

Exercise from June: Takedown



Initially, I'd intended for this to be a combat test animation, but the more I thought about it, I really just wanted to work on the body mechanics of 2 people slamming into each other. This one's for all of my friends that have been getting married/engaged lately. ;)

I'm particularly happy with the guy's hit.

Animation I've been working on on and off for the last couple of months! It was supposed to be my exercise for May... :) Now I'll be catching up on June + July!

My friend Kristen and I participated in the sidewalk chalk competition at Riverfest this year! It was fun!

Dramatic Escape!!



Working on this month's exercise! :)

Admittedly... this could look more daring now that I see it in a still. I'll be making it cooler.

Wanted to try something a little more stylized. I think I could have pushed it a lot more.

Creeper in My Home, Crawled in through the Window....



Not done. Not happy yet.

Late exercise for April. Polished version + Run to follow this weekend. Stay tuned.

My first real experiment with ZBrush! I got this far and then I realized it would be better if I used a low poly model as a base - notice how cruddy his ears got. I'm working off of an old concept for Green Goblin.

Zombie Walk



Finishing out walk cycle month a little late. :) I'm not 100% happy, so crits are definitely appreciated. I think he might be moving a little too smoothly for a zombie.

Playing around a little bit with different types of locomotion. I'm not very happy with this and it's pretty rough, but I thought I'd share it anyway.

Mike Bauer Max Tutorials

When I was out sick yesterday I spent some of the day watching this guy's "Ninja Bud" beginner rigging tutorial for Max. I STRONGLY recommend looking at it, if not just to learn some basic working tips in Max you may not have been aware of. The rig is simple, but has a lot of the stuff we always talk about wanting, such as facial controllers in the Max window, and foot roll and banking. It's really easy to follow, and well-explained for beginners (like me!)

- Morph Targets
- Creating sliders and spinners for controls through MaxScript
- Linking through the Reaction Manager (think 'set driven key' in Maya)
- Semi-complicated IK foot setup (allows for various foot controls, such as left and right banking, foot roll, toe wiggle, toe swivel, etc)

Zombie MooM.



What I'm working on right now. Walk cycle month is fun! (Rig by Ramtin Ahmadi)

Sunset Cafe

At long last, our game from the Global Game Jam! The theme of this year's jam was "deception" - so we made a dating sim with a twist!

It loads a little slow, so if certain characters or backgrounds aren't there... they're probably still loading. ;) Play the game by clicking on dialogue options or fellows in the coffee shop. Currently there is no icon change to indicate the fact that you can click on the guys, but they are all selectable. Also - in the dressing room mini-game, you cannot progress until you choose the correct outfit combination.

For those of you not familiar with the Game Jam, it's an annual event hosted by the International Game Developer's Association. You get 48 hours to create a game from scratch - either by yourself or with a team.

For more info: Global Game Jam Site

I'm responsible for all of the line art. We decided to go with an anime style since it's a dating sim (also since it's faster ;) ) We were all involved in the initial concept design, and Ward and Kristen wrote the script. Kristen also did the coloring. Marcella and Issam did the engineering work.

Enjoy!

Figure drawing from today. ~10min each

I've been playing around in Flash after Katie's demo on Tues! The first was an attempt at a character walk cycle, but there's a bit wrong with it in terms of the character holding his form (particularly in the arms), and doesn't really have too much personality yet... He's supposed to be playing a DS while he walks. ;)

The 2nd is a cat walk cycle. I used some reference from Steve Robert's "Character Animation in 3D" for the keys.

2nd exercise from Feb. Still not completely done, but I thought it was in a good place for crits. I was trying to have a little more fun with this one, but I'm thinking it still needs a lot more exaggeration to do the trick.

Still not done with exercise 2 from Feb. It's coming along though! I'm really crunching on it to get it done - it should be up in the next couple of days. :)

It's wiggida-wiggida-wiggida-wack!



1st exercise for Feb - jump in place. I've been slowly working on this and the 2nd one throughout the month. It's not 100% perfect, but with my deadline being tomorrow for both I'm happy for now. It's really awesome to be working in Maya again!

Drawings from figure on Sat. The model had awesome poses!

So I don't ever really want to be pegged as that anime/manga girl - but I was reading volume 30 of Eyeshield 21 today and I thought that, from an animation perspective, it was definitely worth sharing.

Yusuke Murata works some serious magic in terms of action sequences and posing. The comic is about American style high school football played in Japan - so 90% of the comic itself is football games - a topic I have no particular interest in, mind you, but this comic makes me love it. :) Check out some of the posing - and if you ever get the chance, flip through a copy of it in the bookstore and see what wisdom you can glean in terms of strong, emotional, action-oriented posing.

NOTE: These pages read from right to left.

Exercise #4 and the last one for this month (just in time!)

Simple sentient ball bounce. Next month I graduate to the human form. ;)

The Basics: Ball with Tail

Exercise number two. I'm still not 100% happy with it - I didn't decide up front if I wanted the ball to rotate or behave more like a creature and remain upright. The result was sort of a mix of the two, where it does stay 'upright' but also has no life to it. I'm not really sure what kind of ball it would take to do that. ;) I might go back into it later.

The Basics!

Exercise One: Bouncing Balls (2 Types of Weight)



This year I wanted to take a lot more of my personal time outside of work to refocus on some simple, clean, polished animation! I'm also teaching one of my friends at work how to animate - so I took this as an opportunity to make a curriculum for myself based off of the one I've created for him. A number of people at work will be joining me as well - I think this will be really great!

In store for January:
X- Bouncing Balls: 2 Types of Weight
- Bouncing Ball with Tail
- Sentient Ball/Simple Object


Also - I did these 2 as quick illustrations of squash & stretch. They don't read too well on youtube though:

From today's figure drawing session at the Arts Center.

Getting around to posting pics from our last VV session (I think Nov. 21), as well as drawings from this Sat. We didn't have a model, so we drew each other. I'm trying to use some different media, since I realized I've been drawing with charcoal on newsprint pretty much all year.

2min





1-2min (crayon!)




5min


10min