What's going on here?

I'm busy with finals projects and such. If I get things done, there will be a few things to post, but in the meantime, I'll probably be quiet until the 3rd week of December. In the meantime, have a pokemon.



http://fav.me/d342vqx full rez here


His name is Snivy, from the latest generation, and yes, he is more awesome than you are, and he knows it. Hence why Nintendo couldn't use his real name, which is too awesome for any company to utilize, "Smugleaf". I even feel a bit guilty saying it, I am not sufficiently cool enough!

More Flash animations!

Flash animation test WIP 2

Another update to the flash test, almost done.

Walk Cycle, with the Norman Rig. This is my first "fully completed" animation in Maya since my first attempts at 11second club over a year ago, so this is a vast improvement from that at the very least! I have made progress!

But of course, there is much more room to improve.

Animation WIP

Just working on some fun little animations for class, although I'm deviating from the assignment a bit.

Put your money where your mouth is.

This is a really great point about how you need to handle your career.

While you are at school, you should spend as much time as possible working on your portfolio. You have the rest of your life to relax and have fun, college is the time set aside for preparing for your career. In an industry as competitive as ours, there is no room for the lazy. If you have applied to lots of places, and they have seen your portfolio, and they don't offer you a job, you are not good enough yet. Sometimes a single place isn't looking, or wants someone with more experience, but with the current state of the game industry, there is always a job for good people. Many companies will manufacture a position for someone if they are good enough even if they weren't currently looking. When that happens it is called an opportunity hire. Some students believe it's because they don't have enough experience. This is almost never the case. The reason companies list experience requirements for job listings, is to discourage the people who know that they currently aren't good from applying. No company will see an awesome portfolio, and then decide not to hire you based purely on not having any experience, unless it's for a senior or lead position. Remember you will always have people with experience and shipped titles competing with you for jobs, and they have been paid to work 40-80 hours a week for a while. If you are investing only 5-10, you aren't going to be catching up anytime soon.

Follow the link below for the whole article by Ben Mathis.

Put your money where your mouth is

Digipaint!

Some paintings up at deviant art.

11Secondclub Preproduction (oct 2010)

Here are preproduction pages for my 11SecondClub submission... I want to keep track of it even if I don't finish on time (at the very least, I think I'll finish this month's submission on the merit of a potential demo reel piece.)

11Secondclub WIP

Here is a rough animatic of what I'm doing for 11secondclub... I'm getting nervous because I will need to start kicking it into animation gear soon... I'll need to do several burnout days of animation. And I may need to order some more paper... We'll see. 408 frames, here I come!

The essential books for animators and character designers...

Or... how I spent a lot of money in order to be better educated.

Here are the first 3 books I think animators especially should get.

Force: Dynamic Life Drawing for Animators
Draw the Looney Tunes

Animator's Survival Kit

Force: Dynamic Life Drawing should be studied first, along with Draw the Looney Tunes (provided that you have been studying drawing already, beyond the basics). Both books combined form what I like to call "The Art and Zen of Stylized Drawing", because they are not the standard drawing manuals that describe how to perfectly make a complex character from a sphere: rather, these teach you about the head game.

Draw the looney tunes looks like a simple book, but actually it is essentially the cartoon manual granted to new Warner Bros. animators, who are just starting to learn. It is all about the proper psychology to drawing, starting with the line of action, followed by advanced concepts like rhythm. It is definitely a text that requires you take each page slowly, drinking in all of the info it is giving you.

Mattesi's book, Force: Dynamic Life Drawing essentially teaches you a specific process and thinking behind life drawing. It teaches you how to create some very pushed and exagerrated drawings, more to find the active forces in the image rather than the realistic edges.

I'd suggest supplementing either of these with something that keeps you grounded in realistic life drawing as well... It could be dangerous to make yourself a one-trick-pony early on, and it is good to have as varied a level of expertise as possible.

Last, but without a doubt not least, Richard William's Animator's Survival Kit is now your Bible as an animator. It is the holy writ in regards to motion and timing, and is indispensable as a resource and guide. No animator should be without their own copy of this book.