Animation Mentor weeks 4 and 5.

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

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

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

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.