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Sunday, May 17, 2009
LA earthquakes, a lot like SF earthquakes
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Time for another addition of I survived the earthquake! Moments ago we had a 5.0 earthquake smack in the middle of LA. I'm a few miles south of LA, and while it wasn't a super violent one (nothing got knocked over), it certainly was the strongest I have felt to date... sure as hell got my attention. I miss hurricanes, at least you can get out of the way of a hurricane.
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Tuesday, May 05, 2009
Squirrely Rig
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Hey Folks, take a swing on over to Josh Burton's website for a fantastic and adorable new rig he has very generously released for our enjoyment: "Squirrely". I've been playing with it for about thirty minutes, and it's a very easy to use and highly functional rig (rigged using The Setup Machine 2 if you are familiar with that set up already). It seriously is one of the more appealing free characters out there, something that does not usually go with "free rig". Go get it now before he comes to his senses and decides to keep it all for himself! I'll have an animation test of it in a few days (hopefully) ;-)
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Monday, April 20, 2009
The Pumpkin Of Nyefar
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A buddy of mine sent me this wonderful 2D short film "The Pumpkin Of Nyefar" by Tod Polson and Maurice Noble. Maurice Noble has such legendary writing credits as "What's Opera Doc" and "Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century", and this short certainly shows it. I haven't seen writing and animation like this in a very long time, it absolutely revels in its medium. There isn't a preachy lesson to be learned, or fart jokes, and it doesn't treat me like a 6 year old... just good old fashioned fun writing and animation. There's something very freeing about it that you don't see in most 2D work these days.
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Tuesday, March 24, 2009
I'm walking away...
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So I've decided to stop working on this test and render it. I'll make a confession here, this really was my first time doing a test of this nature. Ultimately it was and is intended as a learning experience rather than my "masterpiece". Yea, I know there are things I could do a lot better with it (like the lip sync), but I've learned a ton and I just want to take what I've learned and move on to the next one, rather than continuing to mess with a bad foundation.
At any rate I don't think it turned out too bad, I'm mostly pleased.
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Saturday, March 21, 2009
Finish your damn work!
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Raise your hand if you're like me and have started many of animation test only to get bored, distracted, laid off, injured, married... or any other number of reasons and never finish your personal animation. It's really hard to find the time and energy when you get home from your job... animating all day. Doubly so when you have a noisy cat that wants your attention after being gone all day.
Well I am pleased to say that after torturing such a dialog animation test since... longer than I want to admit, I'm just about done. I'd thought I post up the playblast and get any feedback ya'll might have. I'm not looking for any major re-works at this point, I've made my bed and now I have to sleep in it, plus I want to move on to the next animation to torture. But yea, any thoughts, comments, complaints (actually you can keep those to yourself), and suggestions to tighten up and improve it are welcome before I go off and render it.
***UPDATE! Click here to see the newer playblast/version. |
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Sunday, March 15, 2009
Tips from Don Bluth
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First off just wanted to say that I have recently received a lot of support and e-mails from people who have been reading my blog and seeing my work. Frankly I really didn't think anyone actually read it besides my Mother (hi mom). But yea, thanks for the words of encouragement, you all have no idea how motivating it is.
I also want to give a shout out to Jean-Denis Haas. Not only has he linked me a couple of times in his blog, but more importantly he is an incredibly talented animator and a blogging machine! Seriously, the dude has like four sites, all of them tasty and useful. Check them out: Spungella , his portfoloio site, Animation Buffet, and Swench.
On to the title of this entry, how about some animation tips from Don Bluth? Not sure why it has taken me so long to come across his website, but he has an "Online Animation Academy". While calling it an "academy" may be a bit of a stretch, he does have several pages of good animation reading! Check it out. I found his tips on dialog particularly interesting. |
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Friday, March 13, 2009
Ralph Bakshi Just Called You Lazy!
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I came across this video of director and animator Ralph Bakshi speaking at Comic Con. Someone in the audience asks him how he witnessed and survived the collapse of studio animation in the late 60s and 70s. While I don't %100 agree with him with on his angst towards the big studios, he certainly tosses a bucket of cold water on your face to get off your ass and create something... bad or good, anything! Just stop talking about what you are going to do and do it.
Ralph Bakshi at Comic Con |
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Thursday, February 26, 2009
Updated Animation Portfolio
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| I've updated my 3D animation portfolio with more clips, including ones from The Force Unleashed that did not make the reel cut. I also finally took down the old student reel thats been sitting there for three years, I still may yet put it as an easter egg else where on the site. |
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
A lesson in physical animation
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| If you want a lesson in really strong (amazing) physical animation, check out the latest trailer for God of War III. I spent about 45 minutes just frame by framing the whole thing back and forth, really watching the spacing, posing, and timing on it. Needless to say its pretty epic. Though when you take away the fancy camera and visuals, and just watch Kratos, it's a really really great lesson in animation foundations. While it looks really complicated (well it is complicated) when you start to break down every move he does individually, how many frames he does it in, and the space he covers, it's surprisingly deceptively simple and inspiring. I'll be definitely be going back to this video for inspiration, you should too. |
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Monday, February 16, 2009
Zombieville USA
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So continuing on the iPhone theme of the last post, I give you zombies. Well, I don't give them personally, but the app store for the iPhone/iPod does! While cruising toucharcade.com last night, I came upon ZombievillUSA.com, a side scrolling redneck, zombie, apocolyspe, survival shooter. Frankly it has production values as good and if not better than some of the big developers out there. Not to mention it's fun, gory, has tons of weapns, and perfect for short attention span gaming. And did I mention it has zombies? For $2.99 its well worth picking up. Just another example of how apple and the iPhone are changing the face of mobile software developement.
Also check out this kotaku article on the creator of iShoot, made $600,000 bucks of his game so far. |
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