Matthew Long

It's been a long time

2011-05-14T23:26:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long. Everything has gotten so busy this last year. Animation Mentor has been a blast, been able to keep up with it barely as you'll be able to tell in this latest demo reel I put together. There are 2 sequences I didn't include in it due to them not being good enough I feel, like that fugitive animation from my previous post (that leads into the running and sliding down the cliff animation.) It and another of a guy trying to wave down a bus hit the cutting room floor this time, though I would like to polish them up 100% and include them.

My edited demo reel for May 2011. from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Currently I'm working on a 2-person dialog test, it's 350 frames long and features a clip from Something About Mary. I'm just in the blocking phase right now. This will be my final animation for Animation Mentor. The next class is the polishing and portfolio class so I'll just be making tweaks to these old ones to make them better and maybe do my own animation as well, we'll see.

In other news, Miyuki and I are expecting our first child in July so I'll have a bouncing baby boy to take care of as well. He can help keep me company while I animate at 3 in the morning.

Also my first hiatus at work begins in June (hence the premature demo reel,) it's been a fun 7 months since I started as a storyboard revisionist, I've learned a lot since then. Hopefully we get a 4th season, it looks promising especially when Activision just announced the Generator Rex video game.

So if it's another 8 months until I post again, you'll know I'll probably just be changing diapers, working, animating and trying to find time to sleep somewhere in there.

Fugitive Animation - First Blocking Pass

2010-10-10T15:34:00.000-07:00

Fugitive Animation - Blocking from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is the initial pass at my fugitive animation for the 1st assignment for the 3rd class of Animation Mentor. It's part 1 of 3-4 scenes that will tell a little story about this fugitive who survived his prisoner transport vehicle crashing and in the process breaking him free of his restraints.

I gave him a limp/sleepy foot to add some interest to his movement.

As for this term, my animation mentor is Martin Hopkins who has been a long time Dreamworks animator going from their older 2D projects into their 3D films. So he has a lot of experience to pull from and I think he will be a great mentor this term like Drew was last term.

In other news, I have a new job. I am no longer a Production Assistant, I'm now a Storyboard Revisionist for Generator Rex. So now I get to draw all day for a living, finally! Now I can keep improving my 2D drawing skills and 3D animation skills without any of that paperwork stuff getting in the way, I'm looking forward to it.

See ya next week.

Animation Mentor Class 2 recap

2010-10-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

Animation Mentor Class 2 Reel from Matt Long on Vimeo.

I'm back in town and caught up with everything so I finally had time to try to figure out why Vimeo kept dropping frames on my class 2 reel. So here it is, hopefully it's running smooth for everyone. Now fully rendered. Ooooh colors.

Class 3 began last week, and I've started planning my next scene. This time we can link up all the scenes this term to work as a mini short film if we like. So I'm going to work in the junkyard scene from class 2 to make it 4 scenes long and hopefully make a nice little sequence out of it.

Meet Stewie, the escaped convict. He'll be running from the cops, so we'll see how that goes for him.

Class 2 - Final Assignment

2010-09-12T21:34:00.000-07:00

Run and Turn - Final from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is how my run and turn animation turned out (sorry, Vimeo added some frames from the end to the beginning for some reason and made some textures pop at the end for some reason.) I want to add a head turn in the run before the slide so that he's looking around then notices the dog and then anticipates into the slide. Also I want to animate the dog fully.

That's it as far as assignments for Class 2 of Animation Mentor, now it's off to Class 3, more body mechanics all with the same character.

1 Week Left

2010-09-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

Run and reverse direction - refining from Matt Long on Vimeo.

So here's my animaion as it currently stands. I have one more week until it is due, and a little under a half week after that to make any final adjustments for the end of term progress reel. So this week is going to be pretty much getting in there and getting the beginning all splined and polished up, and fix some spacing issues in the run and then really refine the movement and timing of the slide and run at the end, that part is still pretty rough. This week I've shown it in a few different views to see it from static camera, the first is the one that matters though.

Run and turn - more blocking

2010-08-30T11:19:00.000-07:00

Run and reverse direction - Blocking+ pass from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Not much to say, just making progress.

Double update!

2010-08-23T11:33:00.000-07:00

Run and reverse direction - Blocking pass from Matt Long on Vimeo.

This is my latest animation, still in the blocking phase, with and without the extra stuff. The assignment was to have Stewie running, and reversing direction. So I set up this junkyard scene for it. The dog poses are just stand-ins to sell the idea, and the BG elements are going to be desaturated and slightly out of focus in the final render so it will be easier to read the action. The run spacing is temporary as well, the strides should be closer and faster but it didn't read well at-speed in blocking like that, a bit too Benny Hill looking, so I spread it out to help at this stage. It's also my first time animating to a moving camera, it's a welcome addition I think.

Walking in a heavy wind - splined from Matt Long on Vimeo.

This is the spline pass on my heavy wind walk. It's not really polished, more just cleaned up and somewhat presentable. Life took priority that weekend, I'm going to finish it off for the end-of-term progress reel though.

See ya next week.

Refining the blocking pass

2010-08-09T10:05:00.000-07:00

Walking in a heavy wind - Refining Blocking Pass from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is the same animation, this time taken a step further with more breakdown poses. This week I'm finishing and polishing it up.

Class 2 Assignment 2 - Blocking

2010-08-03T10:26:00.000-07:00

Walking in a heavy wind - Blocking pass from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here's my blocking pass of my new assignment. I'm to have the no-armed Stewie walk in a heavy wind for 120-200 frames, that's all the assignment asks for. I approached it the same way Mike Nguyen taught me during my time at July Films, to try to feel the forces and where they originate and how they act on the body and unfold throughout the animation to make for good clear animation. I think it's pretty successful and reads fairly well.

Saw Inception this weekend. It was really good and I highly recommend it. Interesting story, great acting, and an intense 3rd act. What is it with Christopher Nollan always making Cillian Murphy wear a bag over his head in his films?

Polishing pass, and Comic Con

2010-07-25T21:10:00.000-07:00

AM Class 2 - Big step Polished Pass from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is my polishing pass on my animation for Animation Mentor.

I went to Comic Con today. Overall it was a bit underwhelming. I think I've been to too many in a row that I'm running out of books to buy now. I only got 4 books this time. Peck 'n Paw, Florian Satzinger's "Duck," John Nevarez' and Chris Sanders' new sketchbooks. Even Stuart Ng offered nothing that I had to have, closest was the oversized Daan Jippes process book that shows his roughs and final art on non-reduced pages. The $200 price tag however turned me away.

So that's it for this update, see you next week with a new animation assignment.

Refining

2010-07-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

AM Class 2 - Big step Refining Pass from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here's my refinement pass on Ballie. Got a few minor notes from my mentor on it, so I'll fix those and then take it into spline mode to smooth it all out. This is mostly on 2's with some 3's and 4's in there. I have to finish it up soon, San Diego Comic Con is this weekend and I can't stay up all night Saturday working on it.

And they're off!

2010-07-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

AM Class 2 - Big step Blocking from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Class 2 is in full swing, I'm at the start of week 3 now, and this was the blocking pass for this 4-week assignment.

My mentor for this term is Drew Adams, he worked on the late 90's Disney films as an in-betweener then got into 3D for Ken Duncan's studio and ReelFX, and is now working on Kung Fu Panda 2 at Dreamworks. I'm really enjoying his teaching style, much more of a lecture/classroom-type of style with video reference and he gives in-depth critiques with plenty of draw overs.

I got quite a few notes from Drew on this so I'll kind of be doing another blocking pass on it before getting into all the little details. I figure AM is supposed to be preparation for a studio environment, so I'm treating my mentor as a director and will try my best to address his notes and comments. I wanted to go with something more cartoony this time around and this was the result but there are some areas he felt could use a little clarification and believability.

Class 1 Wrap Up

2010-06-18T23:00:00.001-07:00

Animation Mentor Class 1 Reel from Matt Long on Vimeo.

My first class at Animation Mentor has concluded. Above is my work from the last 12 weeks minus the sketches that I did for the class. This is the first time my character walk has appeared, I'm not too happy with how it turned out, it can use another finishing pass to fix some of the timing and stuff. We get 1 week off, and then it's off to Class 2 where we will be doing things like 180 degree character turns, intricate maneuvers and even some parkour/free running. It should be fun so stay tuned.

Limitations of the computer

2010-06-01T08:46:00.000-07:00

Vanilla Walk from Matt Long on Vimeo.

For the last two weeks on Animation Mentor we've been doing a plain vanilla walk using the Ballie rig. I've done quite a few walk cycles in the past, and they're something I admit that I'm not great at, but I'm fairly comfortable with them and can do them satisfactorily. Or that was until I had to do them in Maya and with Ballie. For a beginning walk assignment this rig is a horrible torture device for us naive enough to think he is our friend.

The first of these two weeks was the blocking phase of the walk. Simple enough, do the contact positions, and passing positions with a couple of breakdowns, and plan for the arcs and anticipate the overlapping parts and any overshoots. So we did that, all was well, and then this week it came time to do all the inbetween frames. This is when the true Ballie showed his evil self.

The greatest aspect of hand drawn animation is that you have complete freedom to draw a character any way you want, and you can cheat in ways that are imperceptible to the viewer and allow you to maintain the motion and feel you like. In Maya if the rig you're using isn't built for it, it's nearly impossible to pull it off because the controls just aren't there to do it. This week that was the problem with Ballie's knees. We have an extremely limited amount of control over his knee positioning, so when making the animation all look good on the rest of the rig, the knees will be popping into seemingly random positions or moving backward in relation to the movement as the legs straighten in the middle passing position. (edit: I just noticed you can see an example of this in the above video at frames 34-40 on the front knee, the knee goes straight and pops backwards, this one managed to slip by) It became infuriating. The only way to rectify it was to change the rest of the animation to compensate for the knees' limitations resulting in many awkward walks or lack of fundamental basics in the walks.

In my case I had to shift the foot position in a way that removed the straight leg from the contact position, removing much of the contrast between the contact and down position. This is something that is so important in an animated walk that I tried to work around it at all costs, but it was a futile effort. In the end the CG animation industry's need for pristine and smooth movement with no jitters or pops left me with no other option but to alter the animation for the sake of the knees. So I was left with an awkward walk that moves smoothly with little to no knee pops but is lacking by my standards believable weight and nice spacing and is being critiqued by campus mentors as not having enough of a straight leg in the contact positions. Talk about a lesson in frustration, damned if you do, damned if you don't.

This was the pose for Week 8, "Strength." I chose to have Stu lifting a manhole cover. I went with the first pose because of the strain he shows, it didn't really work out with the rig though. Stu lacks shoulder controls so I couldn't use them to increase the sense of strain, and he doesn't really have a rib cage either, so I had to exaggerate the pose more. Ultimately my mentor thought it was too much, felt broken, and wanted me to do pose 11 instead, or 4 or 9. I went with 11 due to time constraints but it seems a bit bland to me and lacks a sense of actual strength.
Week 9's pose was "Concern" This was a difficult one to think up. In the end I decided the best way to show concern was to show the person or thing Stu should be concerned about, and then come up with a small scene that will tell a little story. So here's Stu checking up on Tailor.

Animation Mentor Week 7

2010-05-17T07:48:00.000-07:00

Tailor Ball Animation from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is my assignment from week 7 of term 1. The assignment was to have the ball and tail rig named Tailor, hop around and show overlap animation of the tail within 75-120 frames. So I made it harder on myself by introducing a second Tailor, and making one chase the other for a more interesting scene. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, I wish I could have a few more frames though to show the big one's reaction after it leaves the log, I'll just let your imagination come up how that goes, for now consider the end a camera cut to the next scene which will never exist.

Animation Mentor Week 6

2010-05-09T16:16:00.000-07:00

Pendulum - Animation Mentor Week 6 from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is my work for Week 6 of Animation Mentor. Overall I'm pretty happy with it, though there are things I would have liked to have done with it but couldn't due to the 200 frame limit. Even now, I had to cut off the first 3 frames to get the ball and the pendulum off screen (except the tail thing) at the end. So most of my time was spent hacking up previously animated stuff and trying to figure out how to do similar things with less frames.

There wasn't a sketch assignment or pose for this one, and there isn't one for next week either. We have the one legged ball or the fox tail ball to animate for next week, we get to choose so stay tuned.

Animation Mentor weeks 4 and 5.

2010-05-03T22:02:00.000-07:00

Weighted Ball Bounce and Obstacle Course from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is my animation from week 4 and week 5. The assignments were a heavy and light ball bounce (no squash and stretch enabled on the ball rigs,) and a ball capable of squash and stretch bouncing through an obstacle course. Both were limited to 120 frames. The obstacle course took longer than I anticipated, it's difficult maintaining those arcs and not going through the geometry while making timing and spacing adjustments.

Week 5 had a sketch/pose assignment due as well, we were supposed to show somebody feeling devastated. It kind of looks like he lost an eyeball now that I look at it, I should add one to his lower hand.

Generator Rex Premiere

2010-04-20T08:17:00.001-07:00

The show I've been a part of for almost a year now as a production assistant is gearing up (pun not intended) for it's big premiere this Friday the 23rd at 8:30pm right after the new Ben10 premiere. Generator Rex is a really ambitious show and we're doing things that you don't usually see in American TV animation, like slow motion action sequences, hand-held camera type moves, detailed anime-inspired BGs, licensed music from a real band and more. So check it out.

You can find some stuff online already, like there is a free music video of the theme song on iTunes available right now: Link

Here's a promo that's been available for some time now:

My First Animation Mentor Assignments - Meet Stu

2010-04-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

I am now in week 4 of animation mentor. So far everything is going smoothly, some pose assignments, bouncing ball assignment, and some sketching have already been completed. This week we have a light and heavy ball assignment. Here are what I've turned in so far.

This was my week 2 assignment. This is Stu, the assignment was to go sketching on location and take one sketch and pose it out with Stu. The top one with the basketball is the one I turned in for credit. The bottom was just an extra one I did for practice and now I'm liking it better than the one I turned in. Oh well.
These are my poses for week 3, the assignment was to pose Stu expressing excitement. and below are the ball bounces I did for the week's animation assignment. I did 4 total, here are 3 of those, the last one is the one I turned in for credit.

Ball Bounce Exercise from Matt Long on Vimeo.

A new journey

2010-03-29T23:23:00.000-07:00

Today was the first day of Animation Mentor for me. For the next 18 months I'll be taking part in this journey trying to build a large body of work and learn how to improve my animation and hopefully become comfortable with Maya for once. I discovered trying to animate on my own that I really need hard deadlines to force me to get my butt moving and finish some work, back to school I go :)

My mentor for this first term is Raquel Rabbit who's site and reel can be found here: http://www.raquelrabbit.com/ we'll be meeting with her for the first time Thursday.

So stay tuned for regular updates again with some work-in-progress videos (It's about time!)

Something fun

2009-12-13T05:04:00.000-08:00

Over at Firingsquad.com a computer tech site I read, they're running a contest where you use screen captures to make a comic explaining how the new DirectX 11 technology will effect you using your favorite game characters. I took it a bit further and drew in the characters to get them situated how I want. So I've come up with this. Voting is over at http://www.firingsquad.com/matrix/cluster.asp/91 you need to register to rate the entries.

Oh, and go see Princess and the Frog if you have not already. Help bring back traditional animation.

Getting back into it

2009-10-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

After about 3 or 4 years since my last time doing any life drawing, I have returned to taking a life drawing class at the Animation Guild with Karl Gnass. Here are are few select ones from the last several weeks. They're 5-15 minute poses and the loose brown one at the bottom was a 2 minute pose and is actually my favorite one.

It's been far too long for me to be away from doing any life drawing like this. Although I now approach it with a better understanding of form from my time animating, and find some areas much improved over my old stuff. Much of the time now I'm just struggling with the charcoal and crayon which feel foreign to me now and my lines and shadow tones end up all wonky.

Return to Traditional

2009-10-22T17:55:00.000-07:00

Accountant 2D Dialog from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Well the Squirrely rig was fun to mess around with in Maya for a couple of weeks, and I still may use him again in some other things, but I wanted to get a traditionally animated dialog scene on my reel. So enters this Buddy Hackett dialog from It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World and my new little accountant character. So here's the first full pass at it, now for some tweaks and fixes.

Squirrely run cycle - complete

2009-09-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

Squirrely Run - Complete from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here's my final run cycle with the Squirrely rig. I'll be going back in and adding a blink to add a little bit of life to the cycle and touch up some stuff here and there before placing it in my demo reel, but this for the most part is everything.

Squirrely Run Cycle - WIP Part 2

2009-09-03T12:27:00.000-07:00

Squirrely Run Cycle - WIP 2nd Pass from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here's my 2nd pass, now on 1s. I disabled the tail for now as I'm working from the body's core outward. Added quite a bit more weight to the run and delayed the upper torso during the passing position, as well as further delaying the shoulders and head. This makes it much more organic and you can feel the contact better. Still need to adjust the legs a little to get the push-off of the feet, and then it's off to all the little extra details like ears, hands, toes, tail, and then facial.

Squirrely Run Cycle - WIP

2009-08-31T13:50:00.000-07:00

Squirrely Run Cycle - WIP from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here's a work-in-progress playblast of a run cycle I've been doing in Maya. I initially started off animating it straight ahead, similar to how I approached the sack hop and soccer kid runs in 2D. It worked pretty well, just took some adjustments after. This was on 2's, now I'm inbetweening it on 1's while making changes and tweaks to it like delaying the individual parts more, fixing the tail so it actually works, and other such things. Stay tuned for more updates on this one.

Comic Con Books

2009-07-27T20:05:00.001-07:00

I made it out to Comic Con this Sunday, and picked up a few books. I wanted more but it was difficult getting around to it all in one day while sticking together as a group in the crowds. My biggest disappointment was forgetting to pick up Torch Tiger.

I finally picked up the FLCL groundworks book after all these years of putting it off.

I dropped by Stuart Ng to check out the French books, so I picked up the Skydoll process/sketch book and discovered the amazing Spirit et Fantasio, number 48 in which the title translates to "The man who didn't want to die." I wish these would be translated, I guess only one was back in 95 and is out of print. It has some awesome and expressive drawings and is an extremely fun cartoony adventure. I also happened across Guarnido's book, at Stuart Ng, had to get it, Blacksad Vol 1 and 2 constantly blow me away with their amazing watercolors and drawings when I dust them off from time to time.

Rounding out the list are the only domestically published books I bought. The always amazing Chris Sander's sketchbook now at number 3 and Jose Lopez's 4:00am complete with a full page sketch of the Mariachi Samurai.

Each year the quantity dwindles due to the growing level of print quality, and the increasing presence of expensive imported books.

Small update

2009-07-27T18:49:00.000-07:00

Hey guys, just updated my links list to include my fellow CN crew, well those who had sites or blogs I was able to find using Google. Check them out, it's a really talented crew.

It's been too long

2009-06-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

It's amazing how fast time between posts seems to go, so I figured I need to update with something. So here are a few sketches of an idea I've been kicking around for awhile, it's a re-imagining of Robin Hood during the the early years of the gun in France (pre-musketeers so probably the 16th century). The Robin character may look familiar, he's made a few appearances on the blog way back in various incarnations.
Robin, found out at the age of 8 he's a descendant of the legendary Robin Hood decided to take on the mantle of the outlaw to once again help his fellow man. A bit of a fool, but a highly agile one. This would be Little John, the gruff blacksmith with a heart of gold. Won't even attempt to make one of those crude guns the run-of-the-mill blacksmiths have been going nuts over. Gerard, a distant relative of some rich lord who believes he's a hero of the people but is really an unlikeable pompous nitwit, and always trying to show up Robin and mostly failing.

I've started working on a new action series at Cartoon Network as a production assistant, and some of the prop guys introduced us to Google Sketchup. So after hours while waiting for Miyuki to get off work, I created this tudor-style inn to go along with the Robin Hood theme. Cool program, I suggest everyone try it out, especially since the basic version is free. If I end up using this for anything I'll draw over it and make it more organic and stylized before taking it to color, still a nice start though I think.

Dialog is done

2009-04-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

Jilted Dialog - 3D from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is the final pass.

Dialog test update

2009-03-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

Emotional Dialog Animation Stepped Keyes with breakdowns from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is the current state of my dialog test, animating it a little bit here and there during the week and spending a few more hours on weekends. The blink/eyes and mouth are just place holders so it will read for the time being. We'll see where it goes from here. Feel free to leave me any constructive criticism on it in the comments.

3D Animated dialog

2009-03-12T07:54:00.001-07:00

Emotional dialog animation stepped keys from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is my first blocking pass of a 3D dialog I started working on, the dialog is "Are you trying to say you're jilting me?" Right now it's just stepped keys of the main poses with generic mouth shapes and expressions to convey the idea. I'm still changing the timing pretty much each time I view it after a long break, like making it have more contrast from beginning to end. It's still not quite there. I'm generally pretty happy with the phrasing, but need to break up the poses so it's more natural looking and ready for the overlapping animation when I add breakdowns. It sure does take a lot more tweaking than hand drawn 2D to not make CG look lifeless.

Sorry for disappearing!

2009-03-04T13:43:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've updated, sorry to anybody who reads this and the 2 people who follow my blog currently (I feel honored to have repeat readers). I was in Japan for the new year and after that got lazy with the blog. So now I'm back in full force and will try update it at least once a week.

I just started as a production assistant for Transformers Animated at Cartoon Network for the next two months, no longer will I be working in recording as a part-time employee. Becoming a full-time employee though means I will not be able to spend my Monday and Friday afternoons with Mike and the crew at July Films. I'll miss my time there, I know there's so much more for me to learn and everyone was so talented and nice to be around. I hope to drop by from time to time to say hi and get feedback on my animation.

I'm currently working on a couple of things, one is too early to share, but here is a more up to date (but still old) version of Princess and Tiger getting excited.

Princess and Tiger animation from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Merry Christmas

2008-12-23T10:49:00.001-08:00

Hope everybody has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Sorry for the bad digital photo, 16-field paper is too big for my scanner.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2008-11-27T09:58:00.000-08:00

Started a new animation

2008-11-26T10:41:00.000-08:00

Princess Animation from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Well it was fun to post something in color, but now it's back to the good ol' graphite on paper. This is part of a new animation I started at my internship at July Films. There will be 3 characters in the scene. The context of the scene is they'll be seeing something that they've all been waiting for and become excited by the reveal. This is Princess with popsicle in hand. This is just the first pass and I was pretty happy with how it turned out, so I'll be starting to refine it and making adjustments to it as I work out the two boys in the scene to make sure they all work well together.
One of the things Mike saw in my animation was as I phrase out my animation I usually work from one idea then another and then another. I don't transition from one to the other smoothly, it's too sudden. So when I go over it again I'll be working on that, getting her excitement to build up a bit in the walk before the hopping. Something that seems simple and obvious but somehow eludes me still. Also the skirt reacts too much to the hop, it needs to be scaled back a bit and she should maintain a little more control over her popsicle hand. I'm also trying to figure out a way to make her move a bit more feminine to differentiate her movement from the boys.

Here are my thumbnails for the whole scene. The two who are hopping move right to left, and the other left to right.

Color!

2008-11-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

Here's something out of the ordinary for this blog, I did something in color and not just col-erase pencils either! This was for a flier I did for a person at work for a Christmas themed charity event coming up in early December where people tour decorated homes. I created it on a PowerMac in Photoshop but when I look on my desktop monitor the colors look way off, much too bright, not sure which monitor is more accurate but I tried to correct it as much as possible. I was inspired by John K's posts about Mel Crawford and experimented a bit with colors, still a long way to go but I had fun and learned a few things along the way. Some of those being I'm way too slow when it comes to color and I always feel like I've run out of color choice so I end up with too many similar colors near one another. Oh well, hope you enjoy it since it will be back to the good ol' black and white for awhile.

I ran out of time and didn't get around to indicating the slanted ceiling which is causing the tree to bend and the chimney to get cut off at an angle, but I think it's obvious enough that it isn't necessary. As for the dog, it seems everybody I talk to these days has or is getting a Maltese or a Shitsu or a mix of some other similar breed as can be seen here, so I put one in rather than the cat I had originally planned on.

2008-10-27T23:38:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the delay in posts, been busy the last couple of weekends so I don't have much to post tonight but here is the final combined composition of the sack hopping boys. Time to move on to something new.

Sack Hop Race from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Also I'm in a sort of grieving period right now, my 2nd Xbox 360 has died within 1 year. How's that for quality control eh Microsoft? Error code 74. The first one died within a week of getting it for Christmas last year, so I returned it and got a black Elite system which is supposed to be built with newer more stable parts. And I just got a new game too, if you haven't played Fable 2 and have a 360 check it out, it's really cool as far as I can tell from the couple of days I had it before my system flipped out.

Another animation clip and some thumbs

2008-10-11T01:03:00.000-07:00

Run and Hop Animation from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here's the 3rd of the last set of boys hopping. This one is taking off from a run and into the hop. There's not much to the rest of the hop so I'm just showing the first part. Some minor things to change but overall this conveys what I wanted. I originally did the whole thing and it looked horrible, so I erased it all and started over, some of the old one can still be seen on this as a ghost image. This is all on 1's done straight ahead.

I had these thumbs lying around and figured I would share them, this is the first set that I did above. Not much analysis or anything being done here. The very first tests I posted on my blog of the hops were following this.

I went back and watched some videos, further acted out some hops, and broke everything down into the basic mechanics and did this sheet of thumbnails. The animation I posted above is a mix of the 3rd line here and the line drawn on the back that you can see showing through lightly on the bottom.

I call this one "My Little Land of the Lost" my take on Mike's My Little World. During a break from doing the hops after the first pass failed I sketched this really quick on the side of some scratch paper, just a random drawing that I thought was fun. I learned I shouldn't draw dinosaurs from memory.

Just a little teaser, I'm animating something in my spare time at home, above are some quick lunch-time studies for it from stills of Disney's "Wonderful World of Color" with Ludwig Von Drake. So stay tuned for some stuff from that in the next few weeks if it's worth posting.

More Straight Ahead Animation

2008-09-30T20:28:00.000-07:00

Sack Hop Race Animation from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here's what I've done recently. As you can see these two have a bit more personality than the last ones and are breaking away from their patterns a bit. It helps add a lot of life and interest when you break the cycles, which is something Mike has been trying to get me to break away from. I have a tendency of finding something that works and sticking with it, and it gets repetitious and boring, so that's my next step in this journey.

One of the things I've noticed is I'm getting much looser with my drawings and speeding up quite a bit but am still able to maintain and even increase the quality of animation. I think because of this I'm able to keep my thoughts and feelings within the first pass more than before where I'd get new ideas mid way through and start losing the essence of the animation. With the first boy I wanted him to think he can get ahead with a larger bounding leap only to find it takes time to recover from and ultimately doesn't pay off. The 2nd boy I wanted him to lose his hold on the bag and then regain it while for the most part maintaining much of his momentum. Hopefully it comes across clearly.

So that's all for now, also if you didn't know Vimeo lets you download the original video file (you may need to register) if you want to frame-by-frame any of these recent animations. I like it much better than Youtube for that.

Soccer kids animation

2008-09-23T15:27:00.000-07:00

Soccer boys animation from Mlong128ir on Vimeo.

This animation pretty much speaks for itself. It was the first animation I did at July Films not for any production, just for my own practice under Mike's guidance and took seemingly forever. I re-did so many parts of it and made many dumb decisions. For one, I didn't plan it out too well and it started to snowball out of control, luckily I found a way to wrap it up in the end. I also analyzed my movement when acting things out and animated that rather than finding the force and animating the feeling I felt acting it out, so it came out mechanical. I learned so much from this animation about what not to do as well as made some discoveries that will help in the future. If you watch it you'll notice it loosens up as the animation progresses towards the end with the runs, this is because I didn't work the whole thing all at once and refine it but instead worked on it in sections from beginning to end. So the last part with the runs was animated much later than the beginning when I started to loosen up and get a feel for the characters. Not a very good thing to do as it makes everything seem disjointed and ruins the pacing.

Sack Hop Animation 2nd Pass

2008-09-09T14:13:00.000-07:00

Sack Hop Animation 2nd pass from Mlong128ir on Vimeo.

So here is my 2nd pass at this particular sack hop animation, I made some minor changes to it after this like some things with the hands, but overall this is pretty much the final version. Mike went over my last one with me as mentioned in my previous post and gave a great critique and sat down and animated over my drawings to really emphasize the points he was making. The major thing was to push the delayed parts to allow the drawings to breathe more naturally, to create overlap. I've always tried delaying parts, but when Mike sat down and showed me on my own animation it all just clicked. I wasn't delaying enough, he was really able to push things (check out the drawing below of the 1st squash on contact) and just by seeing the still drawing it feels like it's in motion. I naturally tend to try to move everything all at once so texturing the timing of separate parts of the body has to be a conscious effort for now, I just didn't know by how much it should be done. Hopefully it will become more and more a natural tendency.

Another thing he had mentioned was in some of my drawings while the boy is in the air, I jump from the beginning to the end poses and shapes too quickly leaving myself nowhere to go for the follow up drawings. That's why in my original a lot of the drawings are very similar, they're just advancing forward in space. So to counteract that he had me change the sleeve to a ball form while in the air for a frame to give a transition from the concave to the convex sleeve shape so the change is more pleasant. Edit: Here's a simple diagram I did to clarify this.

He also had me push the curve of the torso in the ascending part of the jump so that it can have somewhere to go while in the air by reversing direction. Also he reminded me to add change between the drawings by making sure the angles in the pose, in this case the torso/upper legs/lower legs and sometimes the bag increase or decrease in succession rather than just having a squash, a stretch, and then another squash that last several frames into another stretch. Seems like an obvious concept, but it's so easy to get sidetracked when focusing on the other things. Here's Mike's quick diagram from when he was telling me, so simple but it drives the point home.

Finally Mike really pushed the head and neck out to give it that urgent strain that somebody in a potato sack race would have, which he then delayed way more than I had. He also really pushed the contact squash more than I had which gives it a bit more spring and personality. Here are all of Mike's drawings in sequence that demonstrate everything I mentioned up to now.

And here I my originals below so you can compare, they look really stiff and lifeless in comparison.

Mike now wants me to animate more kids hopping, this time giving them all different approaches to the hop that display their personalities. From hitch steps, to small quick hobble-y strides to stutter steps and large leaps, anything that will break it up and make the scene breathe.

Sack Hop continued

2008-08-26T12:45:00.000-07:00

Sack Hop Animation from Mlong128ir on Vimeo.

Here is my latest version of the sack hop taking into consideration many of the notes Mike gave me on the last two. This one actually is about the 5th version of this particular hop if you take into account all those eraser marks you can see at the beginning. Right now I feel it's just "good enough"mechanically but can be better overall, Mike had a few notes on this one as well and felt the bottom portion was working fine, but the upper body can use some work. The way he put it was, "You have the technical aspects down, now it's time to work on the emotional." He said next week after the holiday he will sit down with me and draw over my drawings to demonstrate exactly how he goes about doing that. I know I'll have many "A-Ha!" moments when I see him plus-ing my work as is always the case when I see him demoing. Stay tuned for the results from that in a couple weeks.

Also this time around I tried out Vimeo, I think it preserves the video quality better than Youtube. Hopefully you can all see it.

Sack hops

2008-08-19T13:50:00.000-07:00

For those of you who visit my blog (anybody left?) that may not know, I've been fortunate enough to be allowed to hang out around July Films www.julyfilms.com a few hours a week and learning some things about animation from Mike Nguyen www.rainplace.net okay learning A LOT of things. It's been a great experience and I can see the growth in my work and confidence in animation. Staring at a blank page before getting started is no longer as scary and intimidating as it once was.

Above are two quick animations I did last night at July overlayed into the same video. Both share the same first two drawings, and both need work. The ghost images that appear are due to this being done on old pieces of animation paper, it pays to recycle. Just thought I'd share since I thought this place could use an update.

Another FX post

2008-07-02T19:23:00.000-07:00

Here's an explosion I animated a little while back, just trying some new things. It was fun to do.

Just a little something

2008-06-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since I last updated, and some people have been giving me a hard time about it. Maybe I'll begin updating it more often to silence them all.

Here's a flame FX animation loop I did the other week really quick, my first time trying to animate fire. It's not looping very well though.

More pictures of the gallery

2007-03-20T09:16:00.000-07:00

This is my fiancee' Miyuki's sketch wall, she included her wonderful life drawings in hers, and most of the flip books are hers as well.

Here's my sketch wall, including my Herobear maquette and my Shere Khan maquette which is still very much a work-in-progress.

Another closer view.

Successful Gallery Opening!

2007-03-20T09:02:00.001-07:00

I would like to thank everybody who was able to make it to Miyuki and my gallery opening this last Saturday night at Cal State Fullerton's Exit Gallery, we had a good time and hope you all enjoyed our work. Miyuki will be opening it this week until we take everything down Thursday evening, so feel free to drop by and take a look if you have not already.

We have sketches, flip books, our pitch we made for Nickelodeon for last year's competition (made it past the first round of eliminations but not the second), as well as some of my early childhood drawings to contrast with my current work, and a TV playing our animation that we have done in school. Here are some pictures I took after everything was finally put up.

This is the wall of animation, we have flip books to flip through as well as some of the drawings posted above for a better look.

This is a small portion of my sketch wall.

My Herobear maquette is also on display, poor guy still needs his cape.

Another portion of my sketch wall.

Little Update

2007-03-15T02:05:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody, since my blog was posted in the PMC newsletter, I'll throw something up here. These are some thumbnail sketches for a dialog test I was hoping to finish by the gallery, each about an inch and a half tall. The dialog is a clip of Joan Cusack getting a bit angry at the person she's become. I don't think I'll be able to finish this in time, maybe just the keys and a couple of breakdowns. Anyway, enjoy the sloppy mess. Maybe someday I'll post some finished work on here.

Update, Annie Awards, Gallery

2007-02-12T17:54:00.000-08:00

I know I know...It's been months since I've last updated this blog. But I've been running around all over the place, from going to Indonesia for our friends' wedding, to going to Hawaii, to going to the same friends' 2nd reception in CA. I've also been running around Cartoon Network a lot lately since I'm working there part time as an assistant to the recording manager. But now I can get back to working on my own stuff.

Miyuki and I went to the Annie Awards last night. They were a lot of fun, ran into some people I have not seen in awhile, and got to take a picture with a personal hero of mine, Andreas Deja.

I was also going to try to get my picture taken with John Lasseter, but he was surrounded by other animation directors, and I just couldn't come up with the courage to ask for a photo, with any of them.

Miyuki also got speak to and take a picture with Frank Gladstone, he seemed so kind, he even tried speaking to her in Japanese, he said "ohayo gozaimasu" which means "good morning." I thought it was funny, but I didn't laugh, I have trouble with Japanese too, and I didn't want to offend him.Overall it was a fun evening, I suggest anybody involved with animation should go at least once.

Also for anybody who hasn't already seen the flier, Miyuki and I are having a gallery showing at Cal State Fullerton from Saturday March 17th to the 23rd. The opening reception is at 6pm Saturday March 17th. Hope to see you there.

I know, I'm slow.

2006-09-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Well, it's better late than never right? Well I've started a new traditional animation test, something for me to work on when Maya beats down my will to animate. Also I hope to actually take it to completion this time. So I'm revisiting my character Ciro, the seafaring reluctant hero. (Not a pirate, but close) So I started to sketch him again a little, try to improve some of my earlier drawings of him, I still have some work to do, James Lopez's crits of him made it look so easy.
I also did some preliminary thumbs of how to stage the animation, some of the possible poses and what sort of business he does in the scene. I'll thumbnail more in the next few days to figure out my key poses, right now it's just exploration.

This test is similar to the first one I had started but this time without all the walking in 3/4 in perspective, and a bit more fun. He's going to jump down into the cargo hold of a large ship, motion for a crew member to toss him down a sack of some heavy material, flour or grain perhaps. And then he'll place it on top of a barrel. It'll slide off the barrel, being tired of it Ciro leaves it, and returns up to the deck of the ship. I'm thinking about 30 seconds total.

Started my first blog

2006-08-27T00:47:00.000-07:00

Well I decided to start a blog after many people recommended I do so. Well, here it is, look forward to some posts containing some artwork soon. That is if anyone is reading this.