Animation Mentor's Stewart Rig!

So if you flick back a few posts you may remember a quick mention of the new Stewart rig made free by the good people at Animation Mentor, for the free rig, follow http://www.animationmentor.com/free-maya-rig/
So I have had a quick play with it and I gotta say it runs super smooth! Absolutely love it. I used it to re do that poor attempt at a jump test I did a week back. Did it in half the time and with twice the fun! Its so simple to use and nothing snaps or looks awkward, the controls are easy to find and select, no problems whatsoever. Think I will be using it to test out some action sequence as its adjustable automatic squash and stretch will lend it nicely to the style of sequences I wish to create! I may right a more detail report on its usage in a future post, but its 1:30 in the AM for me and this will have to do for now. Check out my jump cycle below guy!

Work hard! - P

Todays progress

Progress appears to be slow but I'm not gonna complain when it feels like I'm getting somewhere.
The right arm hasn't been fleshed out or even blocked correctly yet. All the facial and eye motion is to come, but I have noticeably altered the motion taking place. Before hand it was just three attempts to recover the phone and it seemed to happen to the beat of the audio. So I have changed the last move to a side swipe that turns into falling. I think its a bit more interesting that way. Still got some timings to tweak too. Sorry its been a bit of a rush job post tonight. I'm shattered and have the late shift tomorrow... grrr. Anyways enjoy!

More than you can chew.. new goals and realistic targets.

So in following on from the last post I have come to the realisation lately that I bite off far more than I should be chewing. My goals are all well and good but I need to alter my priorities! My show reel has been put off since I left university. Last time I had one together was for a job application in 2010 and it hasn't altered since... So I'm taking my work on this months and last months 11 second club and working on them continually until they sparkle. That can be the start of it and will act as a base to work from. So that will be my goal for the foreseeable future, I can work on competitions once I'm employable! Looks like the D.I.S.S award is going on the back burner this year... *sigh

Gonna keep it short and sweet for now, so heres the usual W.I.P lets just make sure I finish it this time!






Paul out!

Mental momentum meltdown mayhem....m

Once again I have gotten into a good working rhythm, where my enthusiasm is once again at an all time high. The only trouble is harnessing it affectively. I often see this "animation high" as a reason/opportunity to discuss things with the community and fellow enthusiasts, this is fine but I really need to put in as many hours as I can! At times like this it is as though I am being pulled under by a tidal wave of mental energy. Every idea is a grand painting... I just struggle to see where to place the first brush strokes.

So what have I been up to this week, well besides correcting the mess of a 'jump' exercise I created I have been plotting a choosing a few long term projects to draw out some new skills. At the start of 2013 a class mate of mine took part in and secured first place in the Jameson D.I.S.S awards hosted by Empire. To my knowledge he had entered the previous 2 years also before winning. Now I haven't made a complete "Film" since college and I would very much enjoy the excitement of progressing in such a competition, assuming I can get through any of the stages. Each entry is sixty seconds long, but I will be going at this alone for now. I'm not going to jump to the obvious film choices I would love to do such as Kick-Ass or the Avengers, so I am going to dig into my ever expanding list of favourite movies and choose from them. So far I have made a short list of the following; Karate Kid, Meet Joe Black, The Crow, Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, Road house and one of three Bruce Lee movies including (The obvious) Enter the Dragon, Way of The Dragon and Fist of Fury. If I take on any of these there will have to be a lot of creative research, both to help with stylistic techniques, aesthetics and technical knowhow. Its a daunting challenge for me considering I usual just do characters but its not a pressure I plan to buckle under.

In other efforts, I used to set aside a full month to tackle the 11 second club to allow for the amount of work shifts that would get in the way. But I have found that to be too long a time to spread it out amongst considering the level I was finishing it too. Also my workflow has come a long way since then and I need to force myself into creating more seconds of animation each week. With submitting it to a number of companies to query for job opens in mind, this should be an interesting test!

Jump animation exercise and brain training!

So heres my latest animation exercise or "animation workout" as I may start calling it. It's all sinking in and getting easy to produce these little clips which are perfect to flex that grey mater. Anyways heres the clip:
 



It's not overly exciting, but the thing I like about this exercise is the fact that I have been animating almost entirely in stepped mode and I enjoy how well it seems to flow despite having not splined or altered the curves in any way. Animation seems to be coming to me steadily at the moment, no stressed attempts to jump straight into splining and just sitting at my desk feeling sorry for myself! I can finally see some personal milestones being passed and now I just need to pick up speed! So what else have I been up to lately? Well I am pretty excited about the latest venture on the Kenny Roy animation site. He has launched his "Anim gym" Which I love the idea of simply because its what I have been working on for the past 6 months of so. I have long been a believer in exercising any skill you have in order to maintain or naturally progress in it. Life and learning is full of many plateaus, which can be daunting and disheartening metaphorical places. But as a great an once said "There are no limits, only plateaus,you must not stay there, you must go beyond them" (Bruce Lee) So it has long been my motto to always be moving forward, I'm not worried to be making mistakes these days, I am happy to be learning from them. It's been a fair amount of pressure to try and enter the 11 Second club along with my current animation course work and annoying part time job, so these little animation workouts that I can do as part of a community will hopefully prove to be a refreshing change of pace. I'm still keen to keep doing the 11 second club too, I am interested to see how I have progressed, plus I need something cool for a new showreel.

In other news, I just downloaded a cool free rig from the Animation Mentor people. Its the Stewart rig, looks really clean and easy to use. I'll try and use it for some of my exercises to avoid a lifeless expression from my usual Morphy rig. It should lend itself well to some of my martial arts driven clips. I've just finished a Seminar in Russian Systema and would love to animate some of the clips available on youtube. I mean, the flow these practitioners get on their techniques would be amazing to get down in my animations! Essay over :) - Watch this space!