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:
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!
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!
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
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!! =)
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!
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!
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?
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."
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!
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!
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
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!
