Animation Mentor - Class 1 Progress Reel

basicwalk_revision.mov

Polished Vanilla Walk

revision

This walk cycle looks much smoother. There is less pop in the body and the knees. I think it is pretty close to done.

Walk cycle polishing...

Walk cycle polishing. I think it is looking pretty good here.

Walk-Refining-Side View

Refining the side view of a vanilla walk cycle. Added in-betweens.

Walk Cycle Blocking

Blocking out a walk cycle for two full steps. Next phase is to do some in-between frames.

Pendulum test

Testing a pendulum to show overlapping and follow-through action. I think that I can lose the last settling action at the end. It seems to go on for too long.

Animation Mentor- Class 1 - Obstacle Course

There are a couple timing issues from frames 45-49, and again at around 55- 60 I think it hangs too long in those spots. Thing is, I kind of like the cartoon-y hangtime.

The purpose of this exercise is to show weight, timing, and anticipation through the squash and stretch technique by making a ball go through an obstical course. The ball is is to use its own inertia to begin the proces

Bouncing Ball- Revision

Animation Mentor - Excited Pose Revision

Animation Mentor - Pose 1 Revision

Altered the escalator pose a bit. Made the character look over the rail as if he/she is looking at something down there rather than looking at the camera.

Animation Mentor - Class 1 - Basic Foundations - Simple Bounce Revision

Bouncing Ball Revision.

Edited the amount of bounces and the rotation. It seems more realistic now.

Animation Mentor - Class 1 - Basic Foundations - Week 3 Assignments

This week I had to do a bouncing ball and an "Excitement" pose with the STU character.

1st Assignment for AM Update

Had to do some gesture drawings and pick one pose for 3d.

Here were some options

Assignment 2 Part 2 ... Posing

I am supposed to pick one of the gestures from below and pose the figure in maya. so here is what I have so far.

Oldie but Goodie

Really bad timing and animation principles... I think we spent more time devloping characters, learning Soft Toons. Larz and I had only a couple weeks to throw this together. It is still remotely funny.

Some sketches for my first assignment at AM

Assignment: Using a physical sketchbook, go to a public place and do some quick sketches of what you see in your surroundings. Be rough – even simple stick figures work well to communicate ideas of posture, attitude, weight, balance, etc.

I have not drawn gesture in forever...

Added some more detail... ears, nose ...

Frog Warrior gets some more details

I added a lot more detail to the frog warrior today. The mouth and eyes are starting to show some progress. It is slow-going, but I have not made any major mistakes. This effort is going pretty smoothly compared to the last model. I am taking much more care in where and when I add more geometry. It looks like this character will work out. My goal is to complete this model before my class starts Monday.

Ok ... I am back

I start my animationmentor.com class next Monday. I have not touched Maya in like 8 weeks. So, I have been brushing up a bit this week. I scratched the "fish dude" for now and started workign on a new model off a tutorial website.

I will be posting a link to my animationmentor.com blog as soon as it is live.

Here is the little warrior project so far...

Mitch

Project 1- Update

Got into some trouble with my model, got frustrated and walked away from it for a while.. I ended up adding too much geometry too soon. Anyways, spent like 8 hours yesterday and today fixing it up so I can begin modeling again. The entire mesh is all 4-sided polygons. Now, I will be able to actually work with the geoometry and the modeling should go more quickly.

Project 1- Added a little more details

I have converted the head, body, legs, and arms, converted to polygon mesh, spent some time cleaning up the geometry and started building a hand. Still looks like probably 20+ hours or so clean it up so I can begin the rigging process.

Project 1 - Rough Model Progress

I have made some progress on a rough nurbs model of the character. The point of roughing it out, is to slowly build make the character take form before delving into any serious details. Basically, try to find some good contour lines before I make the geometry more complex and converting this sucker to a polygon model. Tomorrow, I will start roughing out some hands. My goal is to make this character seamless.

Project 1- Fish Dude Ready for Modeling

Well, I am ready to begin some modeling in Maya. Hopefully, I can have it done by Monday. I decided to go ahead and wrap-up my character drawings for now. I could get a lot more detailed, but I figured I would try to ease off on that for a bit. I want to ornate the character with a tail, some fins, and whatnot, but I feel that would be too agressive out of the gate. I also decided against the fat belly for now, I will save a fatso for later.

Anyways, here is the character design and the image plane setup for reference in Maya 3d:

Project 1 - Fish dude gets a little fatter

I am trying to add some more weight to the character.

Now I will try adding some more aquatic details and work on feet and hands more.

Project 1 - Fishman Bully/Brute

I have started a project for my first creature model and animation rig sincein 12 years. I decided to quickly decide on a motif so that I can begin character design so that I can get to modeling and rigging by the weekend.

I decided to work on a Brute/Bully character first. I thought that would be fun to work with a heavy character. Another issue I am dealing with is that I am much better at superhero comic style drawing than cartoons. I would prefer to do a more simplified model since that will make the modeling portion go more quickly. My goal is to get a decent model done and build a good rig.

Some characteristics of brutes and bullies are:
High shoulders, no neck, big arms, little legs (cartoony), tiny feet (cartoony), a small muzzle, and a large head

Some of my inspiration for the character will come from sea creatures since I am a salt water hobbyist. I chose to take some characteristics from these fish : http://listdom.wordpress.com/category/top-10-ugliest-critters-ever/. Also from some comic-book characters like : Merman (he-man), Kingpin, Hulk, and the Blob. I am still struggling with whether or not to make the character fat or ripped.

Here are some initial sketches: (Keep in mind I have not drawn in years either. I am sure the skills will come back after a month or so. Hands and feet ... ugh. These were taken with a webcam. I was kinda lazy on getting the lighting right.

Creature creation

I just started designing a creature today for modeling and rigging. I will post pics when they are ready.

Some basic walk cycles

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