A new journey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.