Update on hiatus

Hello readers!  Sorry for the incredibly long absence.  I can't believe it's been a year already.  A lot has happened since my last post.  As I said in the previous post I had started to work on a short piece for my reel as a means to land a job and before I even finished it, I was offered a position as a character animator at Nelvana working on a children's television show Mike the Knight.  It's great to be working on a production again and I'm having a blast.  Needless to say, a full time job plus a family does not leave a lot of time to work on a short film.  Wallace has been keeping busy as well teaching himself modeling for gaming as well as working freelance.

But trust me, Perfect Match is still always on my mind and hopefully once I have some time on my hands (which might be hard in the near future since my wife is expecting another son in 4 weeks) I plan on jumping back into the film. 

So stay tuned and I hope I can get to work on the film again in the coming months.

Cheers,

David

Film temporarily on hold

Attention blog readers, we have decided to temporarily put work on the short film on hold.  Wallace and I began this short as an attempt to create something that would impress employers so we could get work.  It has already gone way past our initial time estimates, and we would rather put the amount of work in that the film deserves than rush it to get it on our reels as fast as possible.  Wallace put his part of the film on hold weeks ago and I am doing it now.  I was given some good advice on what I should add to my reel by a friend that works at Pixar that can be completed in a few weeks.  Once that is done and I'm happy with it, I will gladly return to working on the film.  I love what we have accomplished so far and I can't wait to finish it.

Needless to say there might not be many posts in the next few weeks but maybe I'll put up what I work on for my reel when it is done. 

We'll be back soon!

Playblast 2

Here are two more animation playblasts.  Unlike the first playblast which was pretty much final, these two are of my first rough pass.  I'm just trying to get the timing and poses down before I go and do a second pass to add overlapping motion, follow thru, and finer motion like the fingers and wicks.  Check them out and let me know what you think.  Feedback is always welcome!

Awesome Maya Plugin

Just wanted to share this awesome plugin I found for Maya.  In one of our scenes Bang and Boom are playing catch and I wanted an easy way to parent and unparent the ball they are throwing to their hands.  I searched online and found this:

 ZV Parent Master

Check it out.  It's great.

First Playblast

Hey everyone.  Here is the first playblast of the first scene I worked on.  It's pretty short but I wanted to do a quick shot first just to get a handle on using the new rig.  Feel free to leave any comments especially fellow animators.  Constructive criticism is definitely welcome.

Absence

Hey everyone.  Sorry there hasn't been any posts in the past 2 weeks.  I was dealing with some personal decisions about life, the universe, and everything.  All's good now and I finally started animating yesterday.  Should start posting some playblasts by next week.  If you are a fellow animator and have any constructive criticism feel free to post them.  That is one of the reasons I'll be posting them.  Stay tuned.

Bang and Boom Pose

Now that I have the finished rigs I wanted to play around with them and put them in a pose.  It was important to me to show their personalities in this one pose and I think I accomplished that.  Bang is the cool and confident brother.  He protects his brother but also enjoys playing jokes on him.  Boom on the other hand is a bit clumsy and tends to be in his own little world.  He's definitely the comic relief but he doesn't know it.  I even used this image to make myself a new business card.  Hope you like it.

Rigging Finally Complete!

It took longer than I thought but the rigs for Bang and Boom are finally complete!  I want to give a special thanks to Tiru for fitting in all the work he did on the body rig in between all his grad student work.  It turned out great.  For time saving purposes, I myself ended up doing the rig for the face.  So now that the rigs are complete, animation is a go.  Right now I'm shooting to finish animation by the end of May.  I'll definitely post some playbasts along the way.

While I'm animating, Wallace will be busy painting textures for the sets and Noah will be finishing off our other two characters for me to animate once they are done. 

Here are the rigs.

Animatic finished

I finished this last Friday but completely forgot to post it.  Here is just a part of the animatic.  Keep in mind it is really rough but it gives me an approximation of the timing of the shots and camera angles.  Obviously these things might change once I actually animate it but it's a good place to start.  Check it out.

Animatic

I'm still waiting on the finished rigs for Bang and Boom but in the meantime I've been working on a 3D animatic with a test rig Tiru had sent me last week.  It should be done by tomorrow so I'll post some of it when it's done.  I'm trying to get the timing of the shots down as well as the camera angles.  This will help me figure out how the story flows as a whole and will allow me to make any changes that need to be made before I actually start animating.  Getting the cameras set will also help Wallace see where we might need high res textures if we get up close to anything.  I'm also blocking in character positions and movements around the environment to get a sense of where they'll be throughout the piece.  Come back tomorrow and the animatic should be posted.