CTN was a blast

CTN was fantastic!  I was expecting something more like GDC, but I was overwhelmed by how friendly absolutely everyone was.

Biggest thing I learned there is that I love game animation, without a doubt.  I am strongly considering trying out iAnimate games workshop, rather than more Animation Mentor.  Just seeing the reel for their Games Workshop; I mean sure, I look at AM reels and say, that's really nice work; but I stared at the iAnimate reel and said, that, THAT is what I want to do.  There is something really visceral and reactive about games animation that I can't help but love.  But enough gushing about animation.

Speaking of gushing about animation, it was weird to see Eric Goldberg randomly start signing autographs, and be so kind to every single person.  I would have joined them, but I was already on my way to getting a copy of Blacksad signed by Juanjo Guarnido.  I even got a smiling picture with him with my own I-don't-know-what-I-am-doing awkward smile.  I'll chalk that up to being star struck, why not.  (He was a cool dude.)

That's a starstruck face.

Also, I got a Stitch.  I don't impulse buy anything, but Stitch was calling to me.  CALLING, I SAY.  No regrets, he totally kept me company while I was in the air on the way home.

That's the face of love.

I can't wait till next year, and I'll see you all then!

Those are the tired faces of a CTN well done.

CTN is coming!

Ah, once again, I haven't had the chance to update my blog. But I am excited, because CTN is coming up very soon! I'll be heading off to the Creative Talent Network conference in mid-November, down in Burbank, California. A week following that, I'll be at ITSEC in Orlando, Florida, doing some artist presentation for my work.

Once again stay tuned, I have a number of back-posts to post, and I'll get to that after my conferencing dies down. I've been super busy, if not evidenced by the fact I haven't made posts in several months. Sorry if I'm late in receiving comments or updating. Between work, contracts, and taking classes with Animation Mentor, I'm going to be pretty swamped for a while.

Stay tuned!

AM3 and AM4 wrapup

I really enjoyed class 3, though I didn't as much care much for class 4.  I liked working on the pantomime shots in class 4, and I think it's highly important to understand.  But I've found I'm really drawn to the action of video game animation.  It's interesting, because the first film I worked on, Flower Story, was all about the emotion.  I know I could do that now, hundreds of times better, yet I still look back on it with an approving nod.  But that's also not where I want to be anymore.

Knowing the difference between strict body mechanics, and the more subtle pantomtime, has helped me realize what I want to do in animation.  Of course, they are of equal importance it comes to animation fundementals, but I can see myself focusing towards one over the other.  I can really appreciate watching animation that is focused on acting and pantomime, but it's those over the top weighty animations that really get me excited.

Onto the next adventure, I suppose!

Animation Mentor Class 4 - Lipsync with a flustered office worker

Ugh, I did not like working on lipsync.  The sound clip just gets lodged in my head, and eventually, it just went flat.  Moreso than other animations, more I hear it and see it, the harder it is for me to view my work critically.

I think that picking out the sound clip was also very difficult for me.  It's easy for my mind to go with pure fantasy and just imagine a really cool fighting combo, or a cute interaction, or a broad motion.  But when the sound came first, and without context, it was really difficult to put a scene to it, let alone with a camera, environment, and subjects.  If it already went through visualization, I bet it would have been much easier for me to make the animation itself.  But layout and storyboarding a dialogue piece was far more difficult than any other piece I've done.

I don't think I'd call this demo-reel material.  It was fantastic practice, and it was really helpful at telling me what I enjoy working on (or don't.)  It just seems to lack the interesting bits that are in many of my older animations.

Progress reel:

Animation Mentor Class 4 - Pantomime with a dear childhood toy

I had a few ideas for this one.  The concept I settled on was some sort of longing.  My first idea was a guy chucking something into a lake.  Maybe a ring, a locket, or an heirloom; something valuable, but something that held too many painful memories.  The point right before he throws away the object would be a really interesting emotional shift.

As I'm apt to do, the first idea was very long winded.  A pause, a reluctant throw, a failed throw followed by a casual toss, a wistful glance back, a struggle to recover it.  All of those ideas were cliche, but at the same time they held a clarity I didn't want to lose.  From my last several storyboards, I settled on a guy throwing away a beloved stuffed animal.

I thought of it as the Toy Story 3 moment, where Andy grows up and has to give away his toys.  I'm not ashamed to admit I still have a couple stuffed animals, so this idea spoke to me.  The lake was simplified into a trashcan (with a push-button lid for interest), and the wistful glances and reluctance were kept in.  I thought this was an idea that would hit home for most people -- the concept of giving up your childhood, or losing something that was once important to you.

Also, writing "Old Stuff" on the box did wonders for subtle readability.

In the end, I quite like this one.  The story is clear, the emotions are clear, and the environment is simple, but reads nicely.

Have some progress shots!

Animation Mentor Class 3 Dungeon Crawl - The Thief on the Ledges

Last one of the semester, and I'm ending strong!  This has been a great semester so far, and I feel that I've learned quite a bit.  Shoutout to my mentor, Drew Adams, for his support and guidance.

I combined two ideas to make this one.  I really wanted to do a leap to a ledge; but that idea wasn't interesting on it's own.  I also had an idea of a thief going through a bunch of springing traps: wall arrows, spikes, tripwires, etc.  I thought that latter idea, though potentially hilarious, would be much less suited in this series.  So I kept the pressure plates and wall darts, and merged it with that broken rope bridge.

The dagger spin is really neat.  That gets some attitude down, not to mention, tosses and catches just look straight up cool.  I had to make sure the pressure plates read.  That intro was a bit heavy handed to reveal how they work, but I think it is worth the readability to the shot.

In the progression shots below, you can see that he originally climbed onto the ledge.  I ended up cutting it out because it just didn't match the leap the character did.  If I were to come back to this (which I may still do), I would give him a spring leap up -- maybe something a bit more cartoony.  But as is, with that lumbering heavy pull, it just didn't add to the animation, which was really about the run and the jump.  I AM getting better cutting stuff, and being okay with losing time, if it strengthens the shot.  Progress!

Grimoire First Person Animations

I just finished up the first pass on the first person perspective animations for the wizards.  Ch-ch-check it out!

Animation Mentor Class 3 Dungeon Crawl - Scary Rooms, Cute Wizards

(Note: I added in the beast at the bottom at a later date. Subtle, right?)

I loved the last one?  No, I love this one.  I could make animations like this for the rest of my life.  I need to do more cute characters.

This one came together really well, just as the last one did.  I'm getting a bit better at my reference; something really clicked once I started my Animation Mentor classes.  I think it's the experience that comes with time, too.

I thing the story in this one is nice and simple.  The animation just came easily with this guy.  I don't know if it's because he is blobby and all about shapes, or if the idea was jut that well visualized.  I got to the point where I was polishing to the camera a lot quicker than I have in the past.  And every part of it, I enjoy watching back.

I decided to play with the lighting a bit, because I wanted that staff glow to play a part when he 'takes a closer look' in the room.  That gave me the opportunity to get that nice lean-in pose, and the really exaggerated waggle before he runs out.  Natural looking lighting is still difficult for me, but I think I pulled it off here.

You can see from my reference below, that he was originally supposed to recover the staff, in an even cuter pawing at the ground from around the door.  But for the staff to land in an orientation that the door could open and close, and he could grab it and pull it out, AND for his stubby arms to be able to reach it; it was just unrealistic.

Animation Mentor Class 3 Dungeon Crawl - Collapsed Tunnel Escape

The three body mechanics assignments in class 3 don't have to be related, but it seems as if most people like to put them in the same theme, myself included. I chose the theme "Dungeon Crawl", though I'm not making them sequential shots, because I want to try out the other rigs available to me. I'm haven't decided on the other two yet, but I have plenty of ideas on paper.

I must start by saying, I love this shot. The reference (which you can see below) went really smoothly, and gave me a great idea of how this would look. I have axes flying in from some unknown pursuers, and the warrior girl cleverly causes a cave in with the loose doorway strut. It translated really well into real life, including the shield prop, and it translated back into an animation quite well.

I love the slide in, and I love the stumble on the run out. There is something really flowing and visceral about the weight when she stumbles. It's easy for me, as a viewer, to empathize with the speed or panic in which she's moving and stumbling about.

The one spot that I need to take another look at is the second swing. The first swing has nice power to it, but the second swing is just kind of weak. I think I need to cut out that whole section and reanimate it from scratch. I spent an extra week trying to strenghten that section, but I was a bit limited by what I already had, and I don't have the time right now to make that broad change.

I also want to come back and clean up the modeling. The walls are fine, but I need to make the wooden struts look actually weak, and actually like wood. Of course, the cave in should use proper rocks; I think I can do that with a simulation. Also, her shield and mace need some love to up the badass factor. Last, I think she could probably use a helmet or something that says "warrior" at first glace. Maybe I can do something to the texture.

I'm pretty darn happy with the way this came out, and that only makes me more excited for the next two! But first, here is my video refence, and a few progress shots along the way:

Sneak Peek at Animated Facial Textures Script Update

Centering on texture and pupil secondary-offset control.

Tile offset, U and V tweaking, working all in one!

I am currently working on a Version 2.0 of my Animated Texture Offset script.  The biggest things I am adding are the option to choose the attribute to read in (position, rotate, scale, X, Y, Z) and support for pupils as mentioned in this post.

Choosing the attribute-in was something I had thought about when I was writing the first version, but it adds a significant amount of complexity to the process, though mostly on the Maya end.  That's actually why I'm writing the Unity C# script first.  I might have to do some weird fanagling with some local variables Maya's Expression Editor.  It could be on the simple side, of setting some variables and copying a script in, or it could be much more than that.

The second bit, the pupil animation, is actually easy to do in Maya.  I was originally going to write a second script to focus on a single pupil texture and offsets with that, but I realized I could merge it with the tiling texture script, allowing for multiple pupil types, as well as keeping it all in one package.  It makes the math significantly more complex, and the script a little harder to read, but it functions just fine.  The one reason it will be more difficult in Unity is because Unity's default shaders take RGB and A all in one channel, so I can't separate out the Place2DTexture of the diffuse and opacity.  I think the solution to that is to include with the script a custom shader that separates out those two maps.  At least that will be easy to write.

On top of those two things, I also refactored the code to just make it a little cleaner and a bit more robust.  The Inspector public variables are much nicer (for example, it takes a GameObject now, rather than a string name), and I have some good error checking in there.