Nathan Hibberd - Animator

End of Blog

2011-09-28T22:09:00.000-07:00

Well, looks like this blog's been dead for quite a while. I'll keep it up as a record of my student work, but from now on any new work that I post will go on http://nathanhibberd.blogspot.com/

11 Second Club February Entry

2008-02-17T17:26:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been a while since I posted anything here, but I'm entering this month's 11 Second Club competition, so I've finally got something new here. This is for the February competition and the sound clip is from the movie "Sneakers".

If I have time before the end of the month I may go back and polish it up a bit.

Lip Sync Practice

2007-08-26T18:07:00.000-07:00

Alright, it's been a long time since I posted anything here. Since the last post I've graduated from college and got a job as a junior animator for Nerd Corps.

I haven't done much animation in the last while so for practice to brush up before I start working I decided to do a lip sync and time myself. It ended taking me about 3 hours and 50 minutes for this animation.

The sound clip is from Arrested Development.

Bowling Vignette With Full Sound

2007-06-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

I already posted the bowling vignette that I made for this month's CGTalk animation challenge with some sound. But the sound that was there was very minimal since it was for my demo reel, which has music that will fill in the quiet spots. This video is the non-demo reel version, for which I finished putting sounds in.

FK/IK Blend Tutorial

2007-06-20T19:27:00.001-07:00

I've finished another tutorial. This one is for using FK/IK Blend in XSI. You can see it here.

Demo Reel v02

2007-06-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

I've added sound effects to my demo reel. Here's the updated version:

Bowling Vignette With Sound

2007-06-19T18:56:00.000-07:00

For the sake of my demo reel I've added some sounds to the bowling vignette that I did. In the version of the video shown here it's got large sections of silence, but my demo reel has music so the limited amount of sounds should work okay on there.

I've also re-rendered it with a lighter shader on the ball, because the ball was pretty much pitch black before. There was also some harsh specular at one part that has been removed.

Demo Reel v01

2007-06-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

The awkward silence is finally over! For my demo reel now has music, and with that this is pretty much the first version of my demo reel that could be called complete, which is why I called it "v01" even though there have been some earlier versions posted on this blog already.

Path Animation Tutorial

2007-06-16T08:17:00.000-07:00

I've just finished a new tutorial. This one is for using the "Set Path" feature in XSI to animate along a curve. You can find it here.

Demo Reel WIP6

2007-06-14T22:06:00.000-07:00

Well my demo reel is getting near completion. I've adjusted the jetpack fire to look better, all the animation is now complete and rendered and music should be coming very soon.

Download High Res Version (28.4 MB)

Rendered Bowling Animation

2007-06-14T12:10:00.001-07:00

The bowling vignette that I've been doing for this months animation challenge over at CGTalk is now done and rendered.

Download High Res Version (7.83 MB)

"I'm in Charge" Lip Sync Final Final Final

2007-06-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Alright I've revisited this animation a few times, but this time is hopefully the very final version, rendered.

Click here to download high res version - 17.6 MB

New Domain Name For Portfolio

2007-06-13T10:36:00.000-07:00

Hazaa for smaller watermarks! No longer will the address to my portfolio have to be the tedious "http://nathanhibberd.blogspot.com/" I've just finished buying nathanhibberd.net, which will forward you to my portfolio.

Old Characters and Set Designs

2007-06-13T09:40:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm getting near then end of the course at school and so I've been looking through old stuff to put in my portfolio. I got some old character and set designs and over the last few days I've scanned them into my computer, vectorized them and coloured them. So here they are (Click on images for bigger versions):

From a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde assignment, this was my "Hyde" character design:

And from the same project, this was a set design assignment for Hyde's laboratory:

Here is a thief character named Hassan:

The last character here will be familiar to people who have seen this animation. Before I made that animation I did this model sheet.

2D Animations Added

2007-06-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

As you can see below, I've added a bunch of 2D animations. I didn't start making regular posts on this blog until after I was done 2D classes, so I've decided to post some of the old 2D animations. So now on the menu on the right side there's a link to my 2D animations.

2D Water FX

2007-06-07T15:29:00.001-07:00

Alrighty, here's the last old 2D animation that I'll be uploading here. This one is for water effects.

2D Quadruped Walk Cycle

2007-06-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

And here's yet another old 2D animation. This one is the first quad walk I've animated.

Flour Sack Animation

2007-06-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

Here's another video for the 2D collection. It's an old 2D assignment where I had to animate a flour jumping. From what I can recall it's also the first character animation I ever did.

Overlapping Action Assignment

2007-06-07T15:15:00.001-07:00

This is an old 2D animation assignment for which I did overlapping action for the first time.

Character Walk Cycle

2007-06-07T15:14:00.001-07:00

Another animation from the old 2D class. This is a walk cycle for a character I created:

Flag Animation

2007-06-07T15:11:00.000-07:00

This is a flag animation from back in the day when I had 2D animation classes.

Demo Reel WIP5

2007-06-04T19:45:00.001-07:00

Here's the latest update on my demo reel. Things that have updated since the last version:

- The bowling animation is now near complete
- The "I'm in Charge" lip sync has been changed yet again, so hopefully the girl's emotion is easier to read now.
- The taser animation is rendered and has electricity effects.
- I've added some animation to the jetpack piece so it can be used as a transition piece to tie everything together.

Anyways, here it is:

Return to the Return of "I'm in Charge" Lip Sync

2007-06-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

Once again, I have revisited the "I'm in Charge" lip sync from a while back. I have recently been made aware of the fact that it's hard to read the emotions of the girl in the animation. So I've reanimated her for the second half of the animation. She basically just stays annoyed/frustrated at the guy talking, and this time around the animation is toned down so as not to distract from the main character.

Bowling Vignette, Nearing Completion

2007-06-02T22:29:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest update for the bowling animation. This thing should be just about finished.

Bowling Vignette With New Setup

2007-06-01T22:42:00.000-07:00

For the bowling vignette that I'm working on for this month's animation challenge over at CGTalk, it's recently been pointed out to me that it's hard to feel the emotion in this piece. So I've added some animation to the start that will hopefully help with that. Right now the new animation is just enough to get the idea across, it's not finished. There's still no facial animation on the kid and there's a lot of tweaking to do in that section.

Guishnu Idle Animation

2007-06-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

This is an idle animation that I made using the Guishnu Character made by Orrie Walls:

Taser Vignette Rendered

2007-06-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

Here's the rendered version of the taser vignette I was working on a little while back. Some of the animation has been tweaked a bit, mainly at the start where he notices the taser. Also some electricity effects have been added.

Right Click to Download High Res Version (8.9 MB)

Free Character Rigs For XSI

2007-06-01T18:04:00.001-07:00

Orrie Walls has offered to host the rigs that I use in my animations, so if you're interested in them you can download them for free here.

Bowling Vignette Update

2007-05-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a new update for the bowling vignette. I've added facial animation and cleaned up some glitchy looking spots.

Demo Reel WIP4

2007-05-30T07:16:00.001-07:00

Here's the latest update on my demo reel. It's still very much a work in progress. Some of the things that still need to be changed are:

- The music isn't done yet.
- The "I'm in Charge" lip sync near the start will need to be alterred some more.
- The taser vignette needs some electricity effects, as well as a few minor tweaks to the animation
- The "Bowling" animation at the end needs to be finished and rendered.
- There needs to be transition pieces of some kind to tie everything together.

So here's what I have now:

Bowling Vignette Rough Animation

2007-05-28T20:14:00.001-07:00

Here's the latest update for the bowling animation that I'm doing for this month's CGTalk Animation Challenge.

At the moment there is no face animation, and the animation overall is still very rough.

Demo Reel WIP3

2007-05-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

Here's a little update on the ol' demo reel. This version has the rendered version of the new "I'm in Charge" lip sync. I'm in the process of rendering the taser animation, and should be able to post a new version of my demo reel with that either tonight or tomorrow.

Yes, I know it's still very quiet, but I've found someone to do the music. So that's being worked on now.

"I'm In Charge" Revisited Rendered

2007-05-28T06:18:00.000-07:00

Here's the render for the "I'm in Charge" lip sync that I did.

Bowling Vignette Keys

2007-05-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

I've got all the keyframes for the bowling vignette done. Currently, there's no face or hand animation, but here's what I've got so far:

Bowling Vignette Character

2007-05-25T14:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a small update on the bowling vignette. I've modified the "Eric" rig to look like a child for this animation. Here's a picture of it:

Bowling Vignette Leica

2007-05-24T23:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I've started on another animation now. For this one I'll be doing the non-audio topic for this month's CGTalk Animation Challenge. The topic is: "Athletic Event (you can choose any sport or Olympic event)"

I've chosen to do an animation of a little kid trying to play 10-pin bowling. So far I've got the leica reel for it:

"I'm in Charge" Revisited Final

2007-05-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

I done with the "I'm in Charge" lip sync now. The guy on the left didn't really have any reason to be there and was just distracting from the important characters so I removed him. Aside from that there's also been a bit of tweaking done since the last version.

Anyways, time to move on to something new.

"I'm in Charge" Revisited WIP4

2007-05-21T19:22:00.000-07:00

Here's an update on the "I'm in Charge" lip sync. I've done some more tweaking and added overlapping action to the girl's hair. There will probably not be much changed between this and the final version, since I've been on this animation for a while and I want to get to another one.

"I'm in Charge" Revisited WIP3

2007-05-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest update for the "I'm in Charge" lip sync with multiple people. Not much to say about this update, I just did some tweaking.

"I'm in Charge" Revisited WIP2

2007-05-17T17:37:00.000-07:00

Here's the "I'm in Charge" animation with more people in it, now one step closer to completeness.

Demo Reel WIP2

2007-05-16T21:15:00.000-07:00

Well, here's an update on my demo reel. It's still missing music and not all animations are rendered, but some animations have been moved around since the last version.

All the bits from "Unfolded" have been removed, since that short needs to be shown in it's entirety in a different video. The run cycle didn't really fit in, so it was scrapped. The taser animation has been improved since the last version. The jetpack animation at the start has been rendered, although for some reason the particles didn't render, so I'll need look into that. And last but not least, the "I'm in Charge" lip sync has been moved to front, since it's my strongest piece, although it is not in its final form yet as more will be added to it. You can follow the progress for it here.

"I'm in Charge" Revisited WIP1

2007-05-16T19:50:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm come back to work on a lip sync from earlier. Since the character is supposed to be talking to a crowd, I've added a couple people. There is a particular hand gesture that the guy talking does which my teacher misinterpreted as a bit of "interaction" with another character. It wasn't intentional, but it seemed like a good suggestion so I went with it, as you can see in the video below.

At this point I'm still not sure if I should keep the guy on the left in, since he's just there to show that the main guy is talking to multiple people, but isn't really entirely necesssary.

As this is a work in progress, there is still a lack of face and hand animation on the girl.

Taser Vignette FIN

2007-05-14T08:16:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been working on this taser vignette for a while now, so I think it's about time I moved on to something else. Here's the final version.

Taser Vignette WIP5

2007-05-12T16:28:00.000-07:00

Here's another update for the Taser Vignette. It's getting near the end now, I'll have to finish up soon because I need to move on to other things.

Taser Vignette WIP4

2007-05-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest update on the taser vignette. There's an ending now, although it still needs work.

Taser Vignette WIP3

2007-05-08T22:06:00.000-07:00

Well I've been tweaking the taser vignette animation for a while so it's almost up to the quality that I want it at, but it still needs a better ending at this point. Here it is so far:

Early Demo Reel

2007-05-08T15:02:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I threw together a bunch of the animations that I've been working on for the last month to get a quick demo reel together. So here's the first version of my demo reel. It's still early and will change. Currently there is no music and not all the animations are rendered. Also, certain animations will be removed, added and modified.

Quad Walk Rendered

2007-05-08T15:00:00.000-07:00

Here's the rendered version of the quad walk from earlier:

"I'm in Charge" Lip Sync Rendered

2007-05-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

The "I'm in Charge" lip sync has finished rendering, although this is probably not the final version. I will most likely be adding in one or two of the people in the crowd that he's talking to.

Uphill Walk Cycle Render

2007-05-08T14:40:00.000-07:00

The uphill walk cycle from an earlier post has finished rendering, here it is:

Taser Vignette WIP2

2007-05-07T09:23:00.000-07:00

Here's an update on the vignette I'm working on about a guy who finds a taser:

Taser Vignette WIP1

2007-05-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

I've started a vignette about a guy who finds a taser and has a little accident. Here's the first work-in-progress:

"Robbed" Lip Sync Render

2007-05-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

Here's the render for the "I got robbed" lip sync that I finished earlier.

"Vampire" Lip Sync Rendered

2007-05-04T07:48:00.000-07:00

Here's the rendered version of the "Vampire" lip sync animation that I did.

"I'm In Charge" Final Version

2007-05-03T08:20:00.000-07:00

This is probably the final version of the "I'm in Charge" lip sync animation that I've been working on lately.

Quadruped Walk Cycle

2007-05-02T20:44:00.000-07:00

For my latest walk cycle I decided to do a quadruped walk.

Long Lip Sync WIP 2

2007-04-30T14:49:00.000-07:00

Here's an update on the long lip sync that was posted earlier.

"I Got Robbed" Render

2007-04-30T11:38:00.000-07:00

I've just finished rendering the "Robbed" lip sync animation that I made earlier.

Here it is:

Double Bounce Rendered

2007-04-30T11:05:00.000-07:00

Here's the rendered version of the double bounce walk cycle from earlier.

Uphill Walk Cycle

2007-04-29T08:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest walk cycle, an uphill walk:

Long Lip Sync WIP

2007-04-28T17:40:00.000-07:00

I'm most of the way through a nice, long, 21 second lip sync animation. There's basically just tweaking left to do.

The sound clip is from Arrested Development.

Final Vampire

2007-04-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

I'm now done with the vampire lip sync that I've been working on. I may come back to work on it some day, but for now I'm moving on the next animation.

Double Bounce Walk

2007-04-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

I've never done a double bounce walk cycle before, so I decided to give that a try. Here's how it turned out:

Scared Run Cycle Render

2007-04-23T15:37:00.000-07:00

I just finished rendering the scared run cycle from earlier.

Here it is:

Vampire Lip Sync -- Updated

2007-04-23T12:50:00.000-07:00

Here's an update for the lip sync that was posted earlier:

Final "Robbed" Lip Sync

2007-04-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

Well, not much of this has changed since the last version, but here's the final version of the "I Got Robbed" lip sync animation:

Vampire Lip Sync

2007-04-21T18:16:00.000-07:00

All that's left to do on the "I Got Robbed" lip sync is minor tweaking, and I've been looking at it for too long so I wanted a break from it before finishing it up. So I've started my next lip sync, at this point there is no facial animation, and the body animation still needs some cleaning up, but there's enough there to hopefully get the idea across.

The sound clip is from the US version of "The Office".

Anyways, here it is so far:

"Robbed" Lip Sync Update

2007-04-19T16:00:00.000-07:00

I've got an update to the CGTalk Animation Challenge lip sync that was posted earlier. It's now got facial animation and is mostly done. I'll move on to something else for now and come back to this animation in a little while once I've got fresh eyes again and tweak it.

Scared Run Cycle

2007-04-19T12:13:00.000-07:00

For walk cycle #3 of this quarter I decided to do something with more room for exaggerations than the last two. This one has the character running scared.

Tired Walk Rendered

2007-04-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

The tired walk cycle that was posted earlier has now finished rendering, so here it is:

"I Got Robbed" Lip Sync WIP

2007-04-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

For my next assignment at school I was planning on doing a short lip sync, about 5 seconds or less. I've also been meaning to find an animation challenge in a forum and enter it for a while. Well it turns out that this months animation challenge at CGTalk is doing an animation for a 4 second sound clip, so I've decided to kill 2 birds with one stone and do the animation challenge for my current assignment at school.

So here it is so far. This is still a work in progress, obviously, as there is no facial animation yet. The sound clip is from Eurotrip.

On side note that's not so much related to animation, I've just discovered a better site to upload my animations to instead of youtube. It's called vimeo.com and when you embed videos from it there's no watermark, other vimeo members can download the source video, and the sound doesn't get offset by a few frames like youtube keeps doing to my videos. So..... Hazaa! I just felt like mentioning that.

Sneaky Walk Rendered

2007-04-18T19:18:00.000-07:00

Here's the rendered version of the sneaky walk cycle that was posted earlier.

Tired Walk Cycle

2007-04-14T18:08:00.000-07:00

Here's walk cycle #2 for this quarter. This one's a walk cycle for a character that's very tired.

Sneaky Walk Cycle

2007-04-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

Over the next few months I plan to do walk cycles regularly. Here is the first of what should be many walk cycles to come. It's a walk cycle for someone that's sneaking.

Stretchy Test

2007-04-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

I've recently figured out how to get stretchy bones to render properly, so I'm now building a rig that uses them. I animated a zipout real quickly to test the rig so far, so here's the video of some stretch test action:

Facial Animation Practice

2007-04-08T22:48:00.000-07:00

Well, after working on one animated short for 3 months I'm in mood for a bunch of small animations that only take a few days to do. I've had a short break and now it's back into the grind as my final quarter of school will be starting very soon.

I've decided to get some quick practice in facial animation and I've made it about as far as I can without critique. The sound clip is from Futurama.

I don't like the look of photobuckets embedded videos. The reason I used it is because when I tried uploading to youtube, it kept offsetting the sound to be out of sync.

I may or may not go back and work on it later after getting some feedback, depending on what assignments come up once school starts up again.

Final Version

2007-04-07T14:50:00.000-07:00

This post is a little late, as the short has been done for a few days, but I've been taking a break and just got around to posting this now. Here's the final version of "Unfolded":

Tutorials

2007-03-23T22:43:00.000-07:00

A tutorial that I did was added to Digimill today. I now have two tutorials up. The first is for XSI's Animation Editor, and the one that was uploaded today is for Overlapping Action.

New Blog For Portfolio

2007-03-23T13:24:00.000-07:00

I got another blog set up for showing my digital portfolio at http://nathanhibberd.blogspot.com/

I will continue posting pretty much everything I do on this blog, including works in progess, and the portfolio blog will just have final stuff.

Sound Added... Almost Finished...

2007-03-23T13:17:00.000-07:00

The short that I'm working on is almost finished. I just recently got the sound from an audio student and the whole thing is rendered, but I will be re-rendering a lot of it so it has different lighting. The version in this post is the latest that I have right now and is the version that will be shown at the 10th Okanagan Film Festival. The deadline for EA's Art Competition is a little later so the final version will be what I enter into that.

Coming into the final stretch...

2007-03-17T10:56:00.002-07:00

I haven't been able to post in a while because it's coming up to the end of the quarter at school and I'm very busy. So anyways, here's the latest version. It's mostly rendered, but there are a few spots where I'd like to re-render due to bad lighting and glitchy grass.

First 25 Seconds Rendered

2007-03-09T21:35:00.000-08:00

For the Lawn Chair short that I'm working on I made some backgrounds today, and I've been rendering for the last few days. The physics on the grass have caused some trouble but so far it's going okay. Unfortunately it looks like I'll have to re-render some stuff here already, as there are lighting problems after about the 16 second mark. So anyways, here it is:

I should also mention that this short now has a name: "Unfolded"

Test Render

2007-03-05T09:00:00.000-08:00

There are two videos to show today. First is the latest capture for the whole short:

Since the last post there have been some tweaks to the animation, the cylinders have been changed to simple trees, and the head has been tweaked to have more of a skull.

The second video is a test render for the first few seconds of the short, where I tried out grass. It's looking pretty cool, making the grass was easier than I thought it would be. The only problem is that it took 9 hours to render this much. I will probably tweak the lighting in the scene, also the blue sky is a very quick temperary background that I made in about 2 seconds. I will most likely paint the backgrounds for the short in Photoshop. The last thing I should mention is that I haven't rendered a shadow yet.

Anywho, here it is:

First Grass Test

2007-03-04T09:17:00.001-08:00

I spent a few hours screwing around with XSI's hair tools trying making cheesy grass for my lawn chair short, and I must say you can do some pretty cool things with hair. I've got it set up so that there's a breeze affecting the grass, and I'm going to try to get it all set up so I can render a scene overnight and see how it all looks in motion. If it takes too long to render then I'll just kill the forces and make the grass stay still, because then a lot less rendering would be necessary.

Anyways here's a test render of one frame:

Hopefully a test render for a whole scene will come soon.

A New Face

2007-03-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

For the Lawn Chair short that I'm working on right now I've changed the face to something not so oddly shaped.

The facial animation is going to need some tweaking, and I'm still not sure about the chair flip at the end. Anyways, time is getting shorter and I'm getting busier, so hopefully the rest of my work on this short goes smoothly...

The Mystery of the Missing Posts

2007-03-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

I've taken down some of my earlier posts for copyright reasons (which those who have read the comments in the last post know about). Basically me and people at my school have been using a rig that's near identical to Animation Mentor's Stewy rig, which it turns out is a copyrighted character and they don't want people to be confused about which school our animations came from. So the old videos will come back up over time as I change them so that the character in them won't be mistaken for Stewy.

Yet Another Lawn Chair Update

2007-02-23T20:28:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest version of the Lawn Chair short. There are mostly minor changes since the last post. One thing I should mention is that the cylinders that show up about half way through are placeholders for trees. They were placed there for two reasons.

The first reason was based on a suggestion to make that section unique from the rest of the short in some way, since at the start the character interacts with the ground that he's hitting as he falls down the hill, then the next section is unique from the rest of the short in that he's falling through the air. Then it didn't make much sense to just have ground again, the same as at the start. So the trees seperate the section from the rest of the short somewhat.

The second reason is that in the section where they show up the character is flying through the air for a few seconds at a high speed, but the ground is too far away so it just looked like he was sort of floating there and then speeds up when he hits the ground. The trees give that shot better context so you can see that he's actually moving.

I will probably make the trees very thick for part of where he's flying through the air so that he flies through branches and stuff, and he can come out the other side covered in pine needles or something.

Anyways, here it is:

The New and Improved Lawn Chair Short!

2007-02-22T18:20:00.000-08:00

Here's the latest version of the short I'm working on. The scenes have been rearranged a bit since the last post. There are some different camera angles as well.

A new piece to the puzzle

2007-02-19T19:14:00.000-08:00

Here's a new scene for the Lawn Chair short. In this shot the main character is falling down the hill, and the camera follows him through the air as he takes a high bounce:

At this point I don't intend to add any more scenes, I plan to spend the time I have left for this short on just improving the shots that are already there.

Full Lawn Chair Animation WIP

2007-02-18T08:42:00.000-08:00

For the last couple weeks I've been just working on the animation for the beginning and the end of the lawn chair short. Yesterday I did some animations for the middle to tie it together, so here's the video of everything together.

At this point pretty much everything in that video is a placeholder. Now that it's all there I will be working on tweaking and redoing animations as necessary over the next month, and will also probably add one or two more shots to fill out the middle.

The deadline I've set for myself to have all animation done is March 16, at which point I'll start rendering and putting backgrounds together.

Any and all critiques are very much appreciated.

Revised Beginning ...Again

2007-02-16T21:35:00.000-08:00

I've made some quick changes to the intro based on some critiques I got recently. The most recent version before this is in the last post. Here's the new clip:

There are 3 things changed. First, in the last version there was a problem at the start when the guy was grabbing the lawn chair from under his arm where one of his feet lifted off the ground and made him somewhat off-balance.

The second thing I changed was when he first tries to pull the chair open. It's now been changed to have a bit longer of a hold and a small second pull before he actually picks up the whole chair and really goes at it.

The last change is at the end of the video, where I've switched back to what I think is the only element of the very first version worth keeping. He now rolls down the hill instead of what I was experimenting with in the last version, which was more of a bounce.

A couple new bits

2007-02-14T22:35:00.000-08:00

There's a couple new bits of animation here. Most of the first video was shown in the last post, but this has some more animation added to it:

My first attempt at this had him rolling down the hill (that video is in this post). In this one I wanted to try more of a bounce as he goes down to see what works best. At this point I'm thinking the roll worked better, but I'm still not sure because I think the bounce could look better with some tweaking.

The second video is the ending and most of it has also already been posted before. The difference in this one is that I changed it at the end where he falls to something that should work a little better, although I still think I'll need to tweak the timing a little for it to work better.

New Beginning

2007-02-11T13:14:00.000-08:00

I've been working on redoing the animation for the beginning of the short. The original animation is in this post.

Here's my second crack at it so far:

All comments and critiques are welcome.

Facial Rig updated...

2007-02-09T18:42:00.000-08:00

Just a small update here. Today I reworked a bit of stuff on my facial rig, which should make expressions come across a little clearer in my short, particularly in the eyes and eyebrows.

So here's a video to show the updated face. Aside from the new face and one different camera angle this is the exact same animation as in the last post.

More updates to come soon...

Lawn Chair Ending

2007-02-08T21:24:00.000-08:00

Here's the ending (work in progress) for the animated short that I'm working on. If you haven't already seen the start then take a look at the post below before watching this video. It has a video with the beginning of the short so you can see what it's about before seeing how it ends.

I should mention that the video in the last post does not lead straight into this one. There are several scenes that go inbetween which I haven't done yet. The reason for me skipping from the first scene straight to the end is that many of the shots in the middle are interchangeable, and if I can't get all the scenes done because of time constraints, the short could still be considered finished without a couple of them. So basically I'm just getting all the scenes that are absolutely necessary done first, and then I'll go back and do the ones that I skipped over.

Keep checking back for more updates on the short in the future.

Lawn Chair Animation Begins

2007-02-03T17:01:00.000-08:00

Things are finally moving along for the lawn chair short that I'm working on. Below is a video with a few captures that I put together to make the premise of the short.

Obviously the control objects are all showing in the first half. The reason for this I'm not even really sure of, but I was having some weird constraint problems in the first scene where the constraints wouldn't work if I hid the control objects. The second scene had about the same number of constraints but, oddly enough, they all worked flawlessly.

Anyways, on a completely unrelated note one of my teachers just finished setting up a forum for students that you can check out here.

Facial Rig Test

2007-01-28T16:07:00.000-08:00

I've started on a short to be entered into the EA Reveal competition (information about that here), and I'll be posting some clips from it as I make them. I've just recently finished testing a facial rig which will be used for the main character in my short. Here's the video of the facial rig test:

Attic Door Animation

2007-01-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

I've taken aside a bit of time to work on my attic door animation. I've added a little extra piece about half way through that was suggested to me back when I originally made the animation.

The original version is in this post.

And the new version is right here:

Break's Over

2007-01-15T14:00:00.000-08:00

I had a break for a couple weeks but it's over now, so here's new animation.

It's a short lip sync that I did to test a facial rig that my teacher made.

I've also added a little bit to my attic door animation, and I'll post that once I've got it rendered.

ZBrush Character

2006-12-18T10:22:00.000-08:00

For ZBrush class this quarter the major assignment was to model and texture a character. First here's the concept art:

Next I made the character out of sculpey in Life Drawing Workshop class:

And finally, I modelled and textured the character using XSI and ZBrush. Normally I'd upload my videos to youtube and embed them in the blog, but for this all the detail was lost once it was brought into youtube, so the turn-around video of the character can be downloaded here.