3D Modeling/Animation II final

Welcome to community college.

Here you get to take pretty much whatever class(es) you want and hopefully pick up some job/life skills.  Or, if you forget to turn in your homework like I do... things get murky.

So the rig we were mostly experimenting with this semester was pure FK.  Basically you set up control objects on joints that don't render, and treat it like claymation in zero gravity.  After the midterm I Frankensteined the top half of that rig with an IK (Inverse Kinetics; honestly no idea how to explain this one) rig at the center pelvis/waist joint and somehow broke the thumbs.  Don't ask, I'm still not sure how I broke them.

The project had ups and downs to say the least, though the greatest down was trying to mimic a 2D movie in 3D.  Aside from inconsistent scene staging, character scale, limb placement, and lighting (this last one is normal in all movies actually) and uhhh... well it's a terrible idea for a class project.  Making up my own "inspired" material from a stolen source would have netted a project multitudes better than trying to copy frames and key frame/tween them.

Anyway, there will always be more excuses about things like painted weights (how joints influence the vector points--where the lines cross on the models), but this  enough excuses, on with the material:

I Don't 3D Model Very Often.

Currently taking my third class at a local community college (Maya1, Maya1 repeated, Maya2).  Self-improvement and learning need to start somewhere, I think I personally do best when launched first from a classroom setting and then tossed into the wild.

Quick Walk Cycle

It's been a while since I did one of these, so thinking about it I found for myself a quick project to do tonight. Wasn't as quick as it should have been, nor is it polished at all, but it had to be done, and it was fun to do it.

It started as the standard 4-frame walk (contact, down, pass, up) before adding two more frames to make a 6-frame walk. Never drawn one before since all the basic exercises are the 4-frame. Plus it now makes the step 50% longer to take the same step.

Good exercise. I might throw in a bit more time on it in a day or two just because I should for practice and cleanliness.

Character sheets

Basically around the winter/spring transition of last year some friends wanted to start an iPhone app development house. I've got a fancy-shmancy degree in studio art, and I'll totally work on the cheap to pro bono if it pads my portfolio. I didn't intern in college and I need/want professional degrading at hands of demanding management.

While the animation for the elephant was completed late in the game due to project mishandling and mismanagement at the fault of multiple hands and my laziness, the project itself was 90%+ completed, and then abandoned for various reasons that aren't the fault of one, but of the many. Anyway, these are two character sheets, one of which isn't completed as one can identify by Toast Man not having a shaded or colored 3/4 angle.

Done purely digitally back and forth between Painter and Photoshop.

The Girl Gets the Bird

This started out, and essentially still is, as a response to an acmeanimaton.org challenge. That challenge was to have a girl (the age of 8-10) walk onscreen, find a dead bird, emote, walk to and pick it up, emote more, have the bird wake up and fly off, then have her emote as it ended. All within 30 seconds or less.

Playing with narrative I wound up getting it closer to 90 seconds in length, taking nearly 4 months of work, and close to a whole ream of paper. The very last of the animation being done digitally over the scans.

There is no audio at the moment, I'm considering consulting some friends about changing that.