Studying with Keith Lango's Video Training Series

I am probably the last person in the Animation Community to realize this, but the Video Training Series from Keith Lango is an awesome investment.  I had seen a couple of Keith Lango's tutorials on YouTube, but it was a post on Spungella that brought it back on my radar.  I missed the $29 blow-out sale, but for $99, this video set is well worth it.  Keith Lango is great at explaining animation concepts at a level that is very accessible to most, he is entertaining and informative and I can tell he cares about his craft.  I had been in a slump for a bit after finishing some new animations and these videos come as a great refresh at just the right time.  So head over to the Keith Lango's Animation Clinic for some great stuff!

Keith Lango's Animation Training

Workflow: Thumbnails

They're not pretty and you probably would never show them off, but thumbnails are critical to an animators workflow.  Thumbnails are usually the last step in the animation planning process for me and I would never jump into Maya without first sketching out my ideas on paper.  This allows me to play with my poses and see how they fit.  If you tried to find your poses in Maya with a rigged character you would waste too much precious time.  So here's a post dedicated to thumbnails, you are the mutant-stepchild-art-creation that we hide away in the attic and never show to the public, but we couldn't animate properly without you.

Studying with 3D Motive

As an Animator, you are always learning--that's something I picked up early from my mentors.  So, with my latest demo reel completed, I thought it would be a good time to polish up my skills.  I found 3D Motive while google searching "how to..." and after watching their sample videos, I was intrigued.  Not only are the lessons informative and concise but the lesson downloads with Maya scene files and unique animation rigs. That's quite a bonus, because I've found it hard to find new rigs that are actually bug free and animator friendly.  I was so happy with 3D Motive's courses in addition to the Animation Principles course, I also bought the Animation for Unreal and Intro to Motion Builder Course.  So, I'll be learning some new things and making some animation soon with awesome new rigs!  Happy Animator :)

Modeling, Texturing, and Rigging Update

I didn't have a chance to update my blog the last two months but that was because I had just finished a new  new demo reel in November.  In December I spent the month writing cover letters and tailoring resumes to  dozens of studios in my continued job search.  Looking for work is...hard work and when it was all done I wanted to take a break and do some other stuff like rigging and texture work.  I also wanted to model a new rifle prop for the gun trooper character since the original prop was so big it caused some frustration during animation.  So here's what I did over my holiday break:

This new blaster rifle is an original concept.  I experimented with using beveled edges to smooth out the hard edges some game assets suffer from.  This caused the number of tris to increase slightly, but the number is still within reason.  Maybe during my next break, I can sculpt some hi-res detail in Zbrush.  The gun trooper also got some improved textures, I added specular highlights and a darker hue to the armor, this allowed for his chest sigul to be more visible and added some needed contrast to the overall color.  Still needed though, are some damage and wear effects to the armor.

Next up is the gun wolf animation rig which just needed some mouth joints and shoulder controls.  I also created a new blinn shader to add specularity and began creating new base textures.  This could also use some damage and wear texturing on the armor, but I'll save that for next break.  Now that the new year has begun, I am getting ready to do some animating!

Cinematic Models

I've recently been in contact with the studio that I interned at a few years ago, and I was happy to find out that they had posted some of my work used in their cinematic promo for the Spurpunk game.  I contributed three models for this shot, the girl in the purple dress (Sickly Susie) the mummy (Mummy Dearest) and the civil war zombie.  It's a rough version, no fx yet, but it's still pretty neat to see this out there.

What are you doing?

Well I'm glad you asked!  Since my last post about the art test, I had already been working on a couple of new shots for my next demo reel.  I'm well into my third shot now, and I hope to have a fourth shot done by the end of October.  I'll take some time to polish the shots up, render some and finally compile my Fall 2012 Demo Reel.  I'm really hoping this will be something that will finally get me some interviews.  Just to tease it a little here is a frame from each shot.

The fourth shot is a mystery, ooohh....no not really, it just hasn't been started yet.  Although it will be the most exciting piece and I'm anxious to get it going.  Is it too obvious to say that all these shots are body mechanic shots?  There is a little bit of acting in them, but I've really been concentrating on nailing good body mechanics and building my workflow muscles.  More to come in the next month!

Modeling!

I took a break from animation recently to take an art test for a game studio.  It was an informal test, no NDA, so I can post these pictures here.  The model was based off a plastic toy and it was kind of a challenge to model the character in pose from photographs, but I liked the way it turned out.