Goaticorn and Portfolio

In case you haven't noticed, off to the right here I've got a link to my online portfolio now. Prospective employers for my internship this summer will be directed there as I keep applying. Most of the stuff on there has been put up here in some form, mostly the life drawings are new.

Also this is new. It's that model+rig I was talking about. The 2D design was done by my fellow classmate Keely, but everything 3D is my handywork: model, texture, rig and animation. I wasn't able to make much else new since this took a lot of effort on its own, possibly I might make more and update the portfolio later, but for now I'm happy with my selection and people have been giving it a positive reaction (thanks everyone, I really do appreciate it!) so for now this reel is what I'm applying with.

You'll have to go to the online portfolio for the full reel, I don't feel like putting that on Youtube, but here I'll let you watch the rotation and animation of my Unicorn/Goaticorn character:
It's been suggested that the front legs need work and more bounce in the body as well. I was going for a more pompous walk, but a nice trot I think is what people are envisioning and it wouldn't be overly hard to re-time things to get that. For now I don't have the time to re-render, but again it's certainly something I'm considering for updating the reel with later.

Year 3 Semester 1 (madness) Wrap-up

SOooo that was crazy. Most of us were pulling all-nighters, some had several all-nighters in a row. But that's all behind us now, well until next semester. Or until immediately after Christmas, because we have to get working on our demo reels to get internships this summer...

While I'm working on that, here's what was put together this semester! First up is the Action Analysis project:

Well I didn't pull any all nighters for this, but got pretty close. Anyways the shadows were done last so they need lots of fixing, which is why I made them very faint so they wouldn't stand out too much. Also if I do get around to fixing this up there's lots of line wobbling that can be fixed. But overall, I mean it is 'done' and worse stuff has been put on television, even on the big screen!
Next up is the 3D animation project, 'A Thinking Character'

So I had a LOT of fun with this, and I feel there's still a million things I could play around with. Pretty much this and the 3D walk before it (might get that up, might not) taught me that I love 3D animating. I feel so much more in control and not having to worry about re-drawing the structure perfectly for every frame for me means I can focus on how the volume is moving and why. I'll always do rough paper tests of the poses before I jump into the 3D, but it's in 3D where I really feel I can start creating a unique motion.

And finally the last stop motion project, the puppet walk:

This turned out better than I expected. I didn't really do a final playthrough before handing it in (we only have 1 class to complete each test in the stop motion course), but I've discovered this semester that as long as I'm constantly flipping the frames while animating, checking to see that each one relates to the frames around it, I can trust the end product to move convincingly.

So the ending of the walk is a bit abrupt, I think even just one more frame would have fixed that, but I'm really happy with the smoothness of the walk. Again, no big plans for stop motion, but given the positive experience this semester I'll probably dabble with it somewhere.

For now, I'm working on that demo reel. The plan is to make, rig and animate one model, do one other model, and make one or two other animations using pre-made rigs off the interwebz. I've got a good start on one model and a rough on the other. Aside from that, I feel I can drop in this stop-mo walk, and maybe if I fix a few things in the Action Analysis I can put that in too. I'll put in the 3D animation I got here, but only if I can't make something new in time. I mean I love the animation, but just about every other animator from Sheridan has used that rig so I'd prefer to stand out.

Merry Christmas!

Stopping Motion

Well my action analysis is actually still at the school so that's not going up this weekend. However I did discover I had the frames with me from my Stop Motion assignment we did this week, so you're getting that instead!



While I don't intend to go into stop motion (I like the forgiving nature of computer 3D much better) I am having lots of fun with the class, and I can feel how handling these puppets relates with handling a digital rig. The program we use in class is VERY limited as far as editing goes, pretty much if there's something wrong with a frame you can either delete it and hope everything else matches up, or delete it and EVERYTHING else afterwards. You can't insert frames made afterwards into a previous space.

Didn't really need to do anything crazy to fix this up. There were 2 frames during the anticipation right before the 1st swing which were slowing down the movement far too much, so I just removed them. I was going for an effect like he had real trouble swinging forward the first time he brought the club behind his head, but after I shot it it didn't really work, so I edited it to be a more straight-forward swing. I made a double swing because I felt I needed to put more energy in after the 1st still. Also, the ending is a little abrupt, needs about 2 more frames of ease-in, but too late to fix now.

Unrelated, you've probably heard about Minecraft by now, and if you haven't, well, uh, now you have. I started playing it back in July and I've built a fairly extensive castle by this point. I've been using it as inspiration for drawing landscapes, buildings, and creatures lately. I did a bunch of sketches of the monsters and this weekend I caved-in (spelunked) and scanned them so I could paint them. Here's the 3 I got so far:

1st one is actually one I made up for the game, I just call it 'cave beast' and while it might not be implemented by Notch (the Minecraft creator's alias) I hope someday I'll be able to mod it in. In the middle we have the Creeper, the exploding enemy, and the last one is the new zombie pigman found in 'The Nether', complete with golden sword! Obviously these guys will never appear in-game with this much detail, but like old games the concept art exceeding the in-game graphics has it's own charm. Something I like about Minecraft, the limited graphics (to compensate for infinite manipulability) make everything sort of iconic, like how I used to make the starship Enterprise out of 5 square LEGO bricks. And it entertained me for years.

Year 3, and GO

Well Summer as always did not go as expected, but it certainly wasn't dissappointing either. I picked up quite a bit of know-how for Maya through tutorials and practice, which is helping immensely as we get into Maya Animation class this semester. I have 2 short videos from that, but I'm still fiddling with export settings so I'll have them up here when that's solved.

Meanwhile, there are basically 2 projects this fine 3rd of Animation: the group film, which is only in the concept stage 1st semester and gets produced 2nd semester, and for this semester we have the Action Analysis assignment. Animation class and Layout class are both completely dedicated to this 1 assignment, I finished the rough storyreel for it today, so here it is:


The end product might have some of this art in it, we don't have to animate the whole thing, only up to 6 seconds worth. For layout we'll have to make a complete, full colour background, which also pans. We also need voice during the part we animate, the sound clip in this vid is a placeholder, though the line and timing will be roughly the same. But the sound quality will be better since we'll get access to the sound studio for recording. In the meantime now you know what I sound like! (I'll do the voice for the finished line too)

I've been doing some vehicle doodles lately that I might put up in a sketchbook dump (if you cross your fingers hard enough, I wanna hear those phalanges cracking!), unfortunately I can't put up stuff about the 3rd year film, cause it's not independent so I don't have all the rights. But when it is finished (of course it's not technically even started yet!) I'll be sure to link you guys towards it!

Older Berry

So this one was put together fast. Fortunately the next assignment is a clean up of either this animation or the previous one (aka: guy angry at the dutch clip) and considering the way I make my roughs cleanup shouldn't be too too difficult. Mostly I figure this because I make sure to maintain the volumes of each part even at this rougher stage, some things will need to be fixed still but volume is a very important factor here.
So he's a bit too active for my intention, but I often worry my animation style is too stiff, so I figure if I overshoot to correct that eventually I should land on the 'sweet spot'. The line is from Monty Python's Holy Grail for those who don't recognize it, I used the lizard I made for character design, the design I still don't have here yet...
Animation!

And there's lots more of this lizard to come. I think I may use this animation for the clean-up, and I'm already using this guy for the final Maya project too. Here's what I cooked up today for that, it's halfway done already after less than 3 hours...

People keep asking if I want to be a modeller, I'm certainly interested, I'm not sure if that's all I'll do if that is how I start up, I might move onto animating. Storyboarding also interests me... well we'll see in about two years won't we?

Dutch Kart?

So I got this animation done yesterday. I seem to have a strange ability to make an animation work WITHOUT TESTING IT ONCE. Obviously I could make it much better if I tested it and reworked any issues, I don't see this as an opportunity to continue not revising my work, but rather that I have a fairly good understanding about timing/spacing etc. Again, I could improve, but at least I can do it. Yay.

So that's the animation's story, for the second part of this post I bring you more from the 3D world (or virtual 3D world to be precise). This is my first notable model in Maya, 1st and 2nd project (a bowl of fruit, and a snowman) notwithstanding. It's of my Mario Kart toy which came with an awesome Yoshi action figure, hence the kart is green, for Yoshi, who cannot hear me over his awesomeness. Here's some renders:

Really happy with how this turned out, well I mean it looks just like the intended object so that's really all there is to it. Hardest part to model? Probably the three-spoked steering wheel, figuring out how to get the spokes in with only basic polygon modelling took the most brain power, but it didn't break anything. I think.

Animation!

Mr. Big Hat dissapproves of people from the Netherlands (the line is from Goldmember if you couldn't tell).

The Hounds

Before getting into the next animation assignment, here's our first assignment from this semester, the lip sync. Very straight forward but also very necessary, and I definately can't say I got it perfect, but that's what I'll work on for the next one. The next one involves a full figure with acting and lip sync, should be interesting.

Lip Sync:

Semester 1, Year 2 in teh bag

Well 1st semester of year 2 ends tomorrow! All the projects are in, only reason I'll be at class is to get my exam back and head off to see Princess and the Frog with my fellow animators. Hoping the story works great, I don't doubt the animation will be good. If 2D is to survive in the feature film market they need to remember to do what 2D can do that 3D and live action can't. There's certain liberties that can be taken by 2D and still hold the all important suspension of disbelief. That's what will keep 2D around, like how painting managed to stick around after cameras showed up.

Anyways, finally got enough time to grab and upload some of my animations from this semester. I'm not showing the walk and run, cause I hope to fix it up a bit (though that won't happen over the holidays so it will probably have to wait till summer!). What I do have is the finished Weight Lift and Toss, as well as the final animation for this semester, the Expression change, which was produced mostly this week, hence lack of work-in-progress shown here.

Oh, and I've also put up the final version of my "I Can't Sleep" (aka: Magician vs Clownz) leica reel. Music is changed because we weren't allowed any video game music at all. The 'Tetris' theme does not count, since it is a Russian folk song that is well in public domain and Nintendo only holds copyrights over its use in games, not movies. Enjoy!

Weight Lift and Toss:

Expression Change:

Storyboard Leica:

Heavy Guy and a Frog

So over the weekend I put together pretty much the ENTIRE Weight Lift and Toss assignment, just finishing clean up now. I didn't test it at all while I was drawing it aside from flipping a pair of frames here and there (yes, right now I can only 'flip test' about 2 frames) so I had no idea if the whole thing overall worked, at all.
So rather nervously I did a shoot of it today at the school and for the most part, it works! Was a very happy moment, felt really blessed to put it precisely. So anyways, here's what was shot, working on again cleanup, but also a few minor fixes and when I shoot the final I'll get it up here eventually, but for now:

Also having fun in sound class. We had a practice assignment where we were given an animation and had to add in sound effects. I've had some previous experience mixing sounds back in the days when I would make my own units for Civilization 3, it was fun then but it's much more fun now especially since I know so much more about how animation and sound work together:

Sound library at the school is fairly good but navigating it can be a little tricky sometimes. I've been growing my own sound library (lots of great samples taken from games) as well so for future films I've got lots of options already. w00t!

So a Wave, a Boat and a Flour Sac walk into a bar 2

Well it's quite dark and not perfectly aligned, but in essence this is my finished wave-boat-sac-splash animation. I shot it at home, and had to fiddle with the contrast to brighten it up, hence the lower production standard here. I'll get a better version up once I shoot it at the school, might scan it there (cause their scanners have built-in peg bars) for maximum quality, which is becoming quite an issue with this animation mainly because it's got 4 levels plus the background, so really that's 5, and so every speck of blank space that isn't perfectly white gets darkened 5 times, you get the idea. Just pretend you're seeing it through a periscope or something.

Fairly content with the result here, happy with the splash, there's about one frame of the boat that's a little wonky still and the sac moves around a bittoo much before the wave hits, but I'm very happy with the lift and drop after the wave. I felt I was exaggerating the drawings too much in that part at first, but the animation shows it's leaning towards not exaggerated enough. I feel it's close enough to the middle of these extremes to not need fixing, w00t.

Next up in animation is a crossover from character design... well actually the character project is the preparation for the 2nd animation. A character has to pick something up and toss it. Already got the character designed, just have to make the finished model sheet since our animation prof wants to see those for Monday's class. Otherwise I would've had till late Tuesday to complete that, but since for this weekend everyone decided to go nutzorz with the projectz I need to finish it tomorrow. Fun times.

And now, I needz sleep.

So a Wave, a Boat and a Flour Sac walk into a bar...

Most of my fellow animation friends will be putting up their completed versions of this assignment, but since Group D's (my group within the year, D rules!) animation class is on Mondays, we missed the first week due to teh Labour Day, thus our due date is pushed back one week.

So Animation #1 for Year #2 brings us back to our old friend the flour sac. This time he is braving treacherous waters on a floatation device of choice (pirate ship, tea cup, Data etc.) Actually works well in conjunction with my first flour sac animation (recall Easter Island roasting action), he's either sailing towards the island or making his escape from the enraged Moai...As you can see I just got the wave down. There's actually 4 parts to this assignment, the wave, the boat, the flour sac and finally the splashing effects. The boat can be quite simple, pretty much trace a boat drawing and move around each frame appropriately. The sac will need to be fully animated of course, as does the splash, but the splash only occurs over a few frames near the end so that won't be too bad once I get to it. Plus it's really organic (water eh) so I can have some fun with it. I already have the movements for the boat and sac roughed out, should have at least the boat done soon.

And what you don't see in this wave is that half of the basic motion had to be completely reworked, and the texture of the water (foam-ish stuff) needed absolute reworking which involved a boat-load of erasing (see what I did there? yes I know it was awful). But I like it now, and suffice to say I don't really have time to rework the water AGAIN, so this is it.

Tune in next time to hear the punchline for the joke in the subject!

Next post may or may not include aforementioned punchline.

The Island

This is it! Final animation of Year 1!

Which is of course the famous Flour sac animation, I'm pretty sure we have more flour sac assignments in year 2. Anyways, my object was an Easter Island statue. Naturally I had it shoot laser beams (and cannons as it were). I mean how would you feel if your pillow jumped in and woke you up from a one thousand year slumber? Hmm?

Anyways we had 12 seconds to do perform two jumps and some sort of interaction with the object of choice, besides that we had free reign. I actually went a half second over 12, but the part that's after the 12 second mark isn't 100% necessary, but I sure like it!

So without further ado, Mr. Flour Sac meets his end:

Yes, he taunts the statue after the first shot by waving his butt at it, bad idea buddy, bad idea.

So even though, like just about every other project I had to stay up till 4am on the last day to get it done, still happy with the results and it would be difficult to fix the issues that are there while keeping within the 12 second timeframe. This is of course because the only real issues are with the timing, the jumps come down maybe one frame too fast and a little more time for the transitions from action to action would help guide your eyes to the right places at the right time. But hey, we still get to see a flour sac get roasted by an elder statue of death, and that's all that matters right?

My workstation

Finishing up the final animation for this year. w00t!

Go figure it's now that I finally pull together a fully functional workstation at home. I know we get our own desks in 2nd year, but I like working at home, and anyways I don't think we can pencil test on Flipbook at our desks. And if we can, still I like working at home. It's homey.

I'll put up some rough work of my Flour Sac before the day is done (it has to be finished before the day is done!), but for now, behold my completed workstation arrangement:

My computer is less than a meter to the left of this desk, I can stand behind this setup with the keyboard on this desk or my chair, so I can hit the enter (capture) button, then just reach over, switch to the next drawing, capture, rinse and repeat.The lightbox is on when shooting to provide consistent and strong lighting, which is a problem with the stations at the school, they;re by the windows so the lighting condition can change while shooting. I have a line penciled on the wall showing where to tape the peg bar. Might just buy a 2nd peg bar and keep it taped there all the time.

Then to work on the drawings I just spin it around, take down the peg bar and re-stick it to the lightbox. If the webcam cord is in the way I can disconnect it on this end since it's on an extension, the webcam's original cord is very short.

Phone, speaker (I still have to get up to change songs gosh! but a few of my playlists last a few hours at least) and even my fridge are all within arm's reach. There's lots of space behind me so I can spin around and pile drawings there if the desk gets too crowded, which it always does!

So yeah at this rate I'll be like the people in Wall-E who can do everything they want without getting off their butts. Except I'm underweight, so that's at least a good place to start that habit, right?

Right?

Polar Bear Walk 2

Here's my finished polar bear, would've added more details (ie: fingers/toes and pads under his paws), but still happy with how it works overall. Onto the flour sac! 144 drawings of characterized sac-y goodness!

Polar Bear Walk 1

3rd animation assignment this semester, a quadrupedal animal walk, I went with a Polar Bear, because my Penguin army needs steeds for their cavalry-I mean, you didn't hear tha- ah whatever, the plan can't be stopped now!

ANYWAYS, here's the rough, this also marks the first animation I've made at home with my recently acquired Flipbook and Webcam. Still need a proper stand for the cam (ie: not just clipped to the top of my monitor) as well as some decent lighting, but it works fine for pencil testing, infinitely easier than taking photos with my digital camera.

I'd like to add I like Jasc Animation Shop better than Flipbook as of the moment. I'm not sure if Flipbook is actually limited but it feels like it (I know I have the FULL version), what I know for sure is that if the capabilites are there the user interface is sub-par (for instance, it shouldn't be this hard to figure out how to delete frames, not just clear their contents), Jasc handles the basic functions much better, I feel more in control, and it was just as easy to aquire the program (ie: Google search, 1st or 2nd link, download, no torrents)

Well all that's left for this is the clean-up, with low quality image capture and the unfinished state it rather does look like a Polar Bear in a snow storm...

We've had a whole lot of projects being handed in, at least in layout we handed in one project before we even got the marks back from the previous one, which was inconvenient considering how similar the projects were, would've liked to have fixed mistakes from the first one. Anyways there's more stuff to be put up I'll add it as it comes back, meanwhile I have an essay to write and a polar bear to bring out from the storm.

New Videos

After an epic-busy week our reading week has begun, which means we can finally stop taking caffiene intravenously. w00t!

Anyways, two videos for this post, one is the coloured version of the Pink Panther walk with a panning background, which was our Digital assignment these last two months:
Yes, commies on the moon.

So... the next video is our 2nd Animation assignment this semester; a head rotation, expression change and lip sync using a character of our choice. I chose Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast, mostly because he's a clock, and clocks are cool. It was technically due Tuesday, but like most people I know I only got it finished near the end of this week, cause everything was intense. But it's done! Much rejoicing:

Sorry if the video is a little hard to see near the end, combination of the low quality format it's converted to when it's posted here, non-ideal image capture of the original drawings and the fact that the originals aren't all in black graphite.

Teh Panther 3

Here's the finished Pink Panther walk!

Yes, he exits the frame a bit fast, I think it needed an extra cycle on the exit, or maybe it was missing a cycle (?) but not a big issue. Onto the Character Rotation+Lip Sync, which we officially begin next week.

Teh Panther 2

Fixed the legs, just about to clean this up, I was about to say I hope I can finish clean-up today but today has already become tomorrow (?) so... so much for that. Like everyone else I'm sure the true definiton of 'day' for me is that weird thing that happens in between sleeping, and it couldn't really care less about what the sun, moon and earth are doing. This is especially true for Animatorz. So it's still going to feel like I got it done today, right???

ANYWHO, next video I put up for this project will be the final, for now see the completed rough!

Teh Panthar

Working on the Pink Panther walk, wish this weekend (the last weekend I have to work on it) didn't end up being the best time to work on this, but meh. Anyways, discovering the issues with my animation thus far required discovering how to pencil test this thing at home without flipbook or the camera tables that are at the school. Well, it can be done! I've got a program called Animation Shop, doesn't work quite the same as Flipbook but it still does the job. For getting the drawings into the computer I've improvised a setup with the peg bar on the wall and a taped-down camera, plus a lamp. If I had a tripod I could get better quality (less jumpy), but I work with I gots:

So I've yet to add the tail, but I'm already happy with the head turn (which as you can see isn't in-betweened yet) the body bounce and hip+shoulder movements. The legs need some tweaking as do the arms, for both I seem to be having an issue with when the limbs snap forward, I think it's just one in-between frame going the wrong way that's causing that. I mean it's passable, but it's not smooth enough for me yet. The Pink Panther walk should be like a glide, he's a relaxed guy, er, cat, like he just got back from a massage.

EDIT: I've fixed the arms but not the legs yet, I replaced the old video cause it only had one cycle and this one's better anyways. The new video has the fixed arms, the problem was indeed just two in-betweens being wonky.

Ball and Tail Animation

Last animation assignment for the semester! And thus 2008 as well. 2 other projects left, but they will be done shortly.

Here's my Ball and Tail animation. If I had a little more time I'd go in and add more frames to the part around half-way, where the ball jumps in from lower left, lands, looks around then jumps away (particularly the tail is moving too fast as it twists to the 'jumping' position) but other than that I'm happy with this: