It's been a long time

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.

Return to Traditional

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.

Dialog is done

Jilted Dialog - 3D from Matt Long on Vimeo.

Here is the final pass.

Dialog test update

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

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.

Little Update

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.