Week 12

So, without further delay, here's week 12 assignment: The Progress Reel!

Alan Starship AM Progress Reel - Class 1 - Basic Foundations from Alan Starship on Vimeo.

Week 11

So here it is! The final assignment for this term: The Personality Walk!

Week 10

Week 10 was the blocking for the personality walk. Also we had the EXHAUSTED pose. So here it is:

Aaand the blocking:

Follow Me!

Since my friend Jerry Matsko told me he was following my blog, I realized I have never used this "follow" feature here. So today I did two good changes in this blog: I removed all ads (who needs them anyway? hehehe) and added the "followers" section! So, if you check out here every now and then, I invite you to be a follower! Welcome!

Thought Of You

Well, you probably already heard about this animation by Ryan Woodward in some other blog or site, if not, you're so missing out, go check it out right now! Anyway, if you did see the animation, it's also cool to check out the making of:

link

Awesome stuff!

Cheers!

Week 9

Ok, so here's the final version of the walk:


And the pose for this week was CONCERN. My first idea was the classic "Thinker", but of course I needed to experiment a bit, so here's the planning:

Then, I tried the one in the middle:

But, in the end, decided to go with the classic instead:

Can't go wrong with the classics, right? hehehe

So that's all for my week 9! See ya in week 10!

Week 8

So, week 8 was the first of a two week assignment. The Vanilla Walk! At first, I thought it was easy to do a vanilla walk, but I noticed that it's really hard to find just the right balance in everything. If you put something a little too much or too less, it looks like a character walk. Also, it's kinda subjective what's vanilla and what's personality in walks because everybody walks differently... The thing is, in real life, there are no "vanilla" walks... Also, we had to do a pose again this week. The Physical Strength pose! Here it is:

And here is the blocking for the walk:

It's pretty bad, but it's just a blocking, it will look better in the next post! =)

Week 7

Wow! Week 7 is late, so let me post this QUICK:

And of course there was the planning too:

No poses this week, tho... See ya next week!

Week 6

Wow! Week 6 was really a rush! I'm posting from Brazil now! Woo!!! I was traveling in the middle of the week, and I took 3 flights! (and missed one of them cause I was late...) I even tried to animate during the flight, but the result was far from great... hehehe In the end, I went back to the basics and finished the assignment in the last minute... So, of course, I wasn't very happy with the result. I also didn't have time to do the revisions I wanted, so I promise they'll be here in the future posts. For now, this is it:

Week 5

So, my assignment for week 5 was another bouncing ball. But this time in an obstacle course, which makes it a lot more fun! And a lot more challenging also...

This week we also had to do another pose. This time communicating DEVASTATION. So here it is:

First, some sketches to experiment with the idea:

And the pose:

There are some small issues with this pose, but you'll see them addressed in my next post with the revision. Overall, I kinda like it!

Now the obstacle course animation! Here's the planning:

The biggest problem was the frame limit. We only have 120 frames for this assignment, and my animation was 150 frames long! So I had to cut out the final settle... sigh.

Here is the final assignment:

And that's it, week 5! See ya next week! Cheers!

Week 4

Yeah, I'm a little late, but here it is: Week 4!

The assignment this week was simpler: Animate two bouncing balls, one heavy, one light. That's it! No poses this week... So, my idea was something like a heavy vs. light fight. Here's the planning:

Not much room to play tho... as the balls can't have any type of force of it's own. It's just natural mechanics. Without further delay, here is the final animation:

Week 3!

Yeah, week 3 is over... Now some updates!
This week's assignment was to do a simple bouncing ball and a pose that communicates EXCITEMENT.

First things first, I revised last week's pose with my mentor's notes:

Some minor adjustments but they make a big difference!

Then, I started sketching some new ideas for "excitement":

It was hard to decide which one was communicating excitement better, so I experimented with two of them:

But I ended up deciding to go with the simpler and clearer one. So I worked a little more on it.

This is my final image for the assignment:

Now for the bouncing ball:

I experimented a bit but ended up going simple again. It's very important to be simpler and clear, you can learn much more like that. Here's a video with the progression:

So that's it! It was an awesome week and I'm already working in the assignments for the next one! See you soon!

Week 2

So, week 2 is almost over, time to post some assignment stuff here, right? OK! So our assignment this week was to go to a public place with a sketchbook and draw some simple sketches of poses we see. Then we choose the one we like most and pose our 3D character STU. I first chose a pose of guy seated and it came out ok, but I decided to play a little more and did another pose. You can see the progress in the video below:

So that's it! First assignment done! Let's see what else is coming... See ya!

It finally started!!

Yeah! Yesterday was my birthday and one of my presents was that my first term in Animation Mentor finally started!! Yeeeeah!!! So, in this first week, there's no animation assignment. Instead, we just meet the campus and the students and have access to a LOT of awesome stuff! Videos, lectures, tools, etc! It's being really great and I can't wait to meet my first mentor in my first Q&A today. His name is Richard Fournier and he's an animator from Blue Sky studios! Awesome! =D

Demo Reel update

I had to do a small update to my demo reel because of some minor issues and, while I was at it, I decided to change the content a little to be more character animation focused. It's shorter now, but more "focused". Also, I think this will be my last demo reel without any animation mentor material, because in September 27th, I'll be starting my journey! Yey!! =)

The World of Jim Henson

I found this on youtube yesterday and I though it would be cool to share it here. It's really nice!!

And here's the complete playlist with all the parts together.

Meanwhile, I started working on a short film! Yeah! And I'll post something about it as soon as I have some material to show. Stay tuned! =D

SIGGRAPH!!

From upper left: Shawn Kelly and me; los 3 amigos in the student demoreel review; the Animation Mentor Happy Hour; Godzilla star and me! lol!

Yeah! Siggraph 2010 was great! Sorry for not posting anything during the time I was there, but it was a little difficult to have some free time and internet access... hehehe It was my first time in L.A. and also my first Siggraph, so I was thrilled! The blockbuster scene breakdown was pure awesomeness!! And in the end of the student demoreel review, they announced that the student short films are back and also the new Bishop 2.0! I'll post more pictures later showing all the coolest things I saw there!

See ya!!

Siggraph!

Siggraph 2010 is just around the corner and I'm really excited because, this year, I'm finally going! =D Can't wait to see the animationmentor booth and the demoreel reviews and feature-film scene breakdowns they're doing. It'll be great! If somebody else is going and want to meet there, drop me a line by e-mail or comment here! Any interesting news I found there, I'll be posting here, so stay tuned!

See ya!

A little more iPad drawing. Now with video!

Having this video playback feature in brushes is cool because you can see that I changed my mind a lot of times while drawing. In the end I decided to make her a little Scarlett Johansson like. Who doesn't love Scarlett Johansson, right?

Animation Mentor!

Hooray! =D So, last week, after almost 3 years dreaming about it, I finally applied to animationmentor.com! I filled the form and answered the short essay questions. Then they sended me a test and a few hours later I got this on my e-mail!

"Congratulations! You've been accepted as a student at Animation Mentor."

Couldn't be happier!! =DD

We Have Jobs!

I did this about a year ago when I was doing Keith Lango's Animation Personal Trainer. It was a very nice piece to study, but I never rendered or posted it anywhere until now! I don't quite like some acting choices I did at the time, some things too much, others too little, but it was very good for learning that. To change this now would be to re-do everything from scratch, so I'm not changing it... =). Anyway, I like the overall result and I really love the dialogue. It's from "School of Rock", witch is a great and very funny movie! Hope you like it!

Stereo 3D

Well, we're working with stereoscopy here in Ool Digital, and we decided to do an animation to show a character in stereo 3D. So I did this little animation with a very simple rig of a Monkey (it's in my reel too). Now, to test youtube stereoscopic capabilities, I uploaded the "changuito" to see how it looks like. For some reason, the quality of the video is bad (and my source was a perfect quality fullHD) and youtube seems to not understand the 16:9 ratio for some reason, and insists in putting black bars on the sides... really odd... But, anyway, here it is, in full you-tube-esque 3D glory:

PS: I just noticed (after I posted) that the embedded video lacks the 3D options... so, unfortunately, you have to click the video to see the youtube page with all the 3D features available. Or just click here!

Digital Finger Painting

Few months ago, I've got myself an iPad, and I couldn't find a better use for it than painting. Of course is not like Photoshop with a Wacom tablet but it's really portable! I bought this very good app called Brushes and started to test this new portable painting/sketching system. Really cool! =D

New Demo Reel 2010

Ok, so a little update: I'm living in Mexico now and working for a recent started company called Ool Digital. I just put together a new DemoReel to be presented in Ool's website. Hope you like it!

on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PlU6kpPLSI

Hey blogspot! I'm alive!

It's been a loooooong time... How have you been? I think we can put our differences behind us... for science!