Just wanted to share this.. some really cool animation. Its not the finesse nor the sophistication of these animations that is attractive, but the creativity and simplicity. Enjoy!

More on their channel!

DJ

http://hand-drawn-animation.blogspot.com/

And this too …

http://rainplace.net/

Check them out, even if you have already seen them.

DJ

Some of my ex-students asked me to put this stuff up here. Its a small planning animation I did in PAP (plastic animation paper – its free, and a pro version is available free now online.. grab it while you can) for a contest in animation forums long long long long time ago. Never got to 3d in that, but hopefully I might get there soon.

I like the animation, but there could be more squash and stretch in there. I like the energy in it, and the heavy feel of the hammer. Enjoy..

Another simple test : (from long back, trying out PAP and my wacom)

Cheers

DJ

Hi guys,

With Nature academy and all, I started to become more and more comfortable with blender. And, as always, since I love character animation, thats what I am thinking about again and again. Watching the pslman rig (video below) started making me feel more like animating for a while now.  And then the rednelb (by pepeland) character almost did me in. Its a great rig. Even if you are not into blender, you should still check out the video below and also the video on this rednelb page :

http://www.daniel3d.com/pepeland/misc/3dstuff/blender/rig/red-nelb/red-nelb.htm

psl man multi rig video (simply awesome by pepeland.com Daniel Martinez lara)

That got me into  searching for rigs, especially cartoony ones. And I went to  www.blendswap.com and downloaded all those toony ones, roboty ones, that  I found appealing.  After going through all those, i found out that in functionality, for a cartoony character, I found that my own DJ_long_guy rig suited ME best. (but red nelb is still a better, far better rig). That said, there are great rigs out there, and if not for my own ‘maya-rig-like’ habbit, some of them would be great. But most of them are not done up to par (probably because those who did them did not intend to) in terms of functionality. For example, in many rigs, the moment you move hips down, toes start going under the ground, etc.

So, although still ginger about it, i think i am getting more and more ready for blender again.

Hopefully, i will get to animate in it, and get comfortable with it, and create rock-star quality animation.

Cheers,

DJ

P.S. ALL THAT SAID, I MISS A FLOUR SACK RIG FOR BLENDER. And I still dont know (not figured out yet) how to do it on my own.. :/

being  a lover of opensource and a hater of patents, its natural for me to like blender. But in the paste ( before 2.5) it was way too different and way too hard to adjust to, which made me stay away from it. But now, i am using it ready. Just to show it out, here is a little vid, all done in blender.

check out www.blenderguru.com

cheers!

DJ

I know its been a long long long long time since i posted something.. well, here’s some news. I found some time, and joined thenatureacademy over at www.blenderguru.com, just to learn how to make nature in blender. And guess what, its been a week and i learned so much!! here is something ive created in blender!

Not following the tutorials to the T is really important (especially after you have followed it to the T and learnt something) to learn anything in depth. Thats exactly what i did and created this grassy scene..

Just wanted to share.. Oh, by the way, the focus is on grass and not on rocks.. will have better rocks after this week… woohoo!

Please dont steal the image guys.. credit if you use it!

Thanks for watching! Will be uploading stuff every week (hopefully).

And by the way, Happy Guru Poornima! May the Guru Bless us all!!

Cheers!

DJ

I know no body is reading this blog anymore.. its been a long long long long while since i posted anything. I have my excuses, but I dont want to bore you. But for those who care, i have been virtually out of ‘animation’ for all this time. Since the last two years, I have been taking care of the one thing that is most closest to me. Spreading (or trying to spread) the wonderful, all-encompassing teachings of my Master E. Bharadwaja. I have been helping to run a magazine, and two social service organizations, what not!

And so, other than helping out a few students of mine in their animation, I have not been doing ANYTHING in animation on my own. Until the last couple of weeks, i havent even gone to any animation websites even. I logged on to AM alumni site a few days ago.

Anyhow, there are a bunch of us at www.cgtantra.com who want to do some little animation tests for this month’s (August) animation session. I kinda have a bit of time (3 or 4 days actually) this month during which I want to do some serious animation. And, in the process, I thought I would try my hand at,… , you guessed it! BLENDER!!

And what ever I have seen so far, BLENDER 2.5  is AWESOME! I love it! Its free, powerful, and now, with customizable interface and hotkeys, I finally jumped into it (with MAYA presets)! I wanted to try out animating in blender for this august animation session over at cgtantra. And I was in a hunt for characters. There are many cool characters, but most of them are for versions 4.x, which is a bummer, cuz they might/might not work in 2.5 . And the few there are for 2.5 are either too complex or I dont like their appearance appealing.

Mancandy, for eg. is a great rig, but without cloths like in elephant’s dream, his body is kinda weird, atleast for me. May be its just me. But I didnt find other rigs that are out there. Some are overkill for my purpose. (with face and all). So, I set about trying to rig one myself. (now dont laugh).

Spent two days watching tutorials upon tutorials, and thanks to the wonderful tutorials on youtube and blendercookie.com websites, I was able to get a hang of it. And watching blenderguru.com videos, i kinda understood how things are in blender, when compared to Maya. That enabled me to just go ahead and try.

And after a week of on and off work, tadaaa.. DJ_long is born.

Here he is.

Now, thats an unappealing pose, I agree. looks ugly, that pose. But the character itself is quite cool.

Another pose.

.

Yet another :

Rig features include :

ALL IK (no IK/FK switching)

Stretchy head. Detatchable head.

Bendy limbs.

Cool design.

Here is the blend file if any one wants to have a crack at it. All the bones are in layer 1, geometry in layer 2. (layer 3 just has widget shapes). And the ‘animation’ bones are in layer 2 of the armature, while the rest of the skeleton is in layer 1.

Anyways, here is the file.

DJ_long

And if anyone wants my keyboard setup, which is like Maya, you have :

my keyboard map

Just open the version Blender 2.5 Alpha 2 build (30441) available at www.graphicall.org and select ‘Maya’ in the splash screen where it says ‘presets’ and then, once you are inside blender, select File>User Preferences and in that window, select input and then click on ‘import keyboard map’ and select the python file above. And you ‘should’ be set.. (fingers crossed).

And for the first timers, the keys are like in maya, however, some cool keys in blender are :

‘a’ key for select all or deselect all.

alt + g = reset all location (translate) values of selected objects

alt + r = reset all rotation of selected objects

alt + s = reset all scale values of selected objects.

Make sure you are in ‘pose mode’ to animate the rig.

CHEERS!

DJ

Seems like these days Im not writing much of my own stuff, but only pointing to others. If you feel robbed of time for coming here, im sorry, but honestly, i think the stuff that I gave links to is GOLD. Today is no more different, however, I do plan to write a little TUT/WORKFLOW thing for a head turn very soon. But until then, to keep your animation eyes satisfied, I’ve got some great stuff for you.

First, as usual, its Kevin Koch at synchrolux.com with an awesome post containing pencil tests of James Baxter from the movie sinbad. Funny how it is Sin-Bad in the west, where as it is SINDH-Baad here in terms of pronunciation. Well, any hoo, here is the link to the awesome animations :

Baxter tests on Synchrolux

And now, the workflow article from FLIP blog :

WORKFLOW GOLD

I am not going to write about it. Go and read for yourself. Its too awesome a post to write about. But before doing that, do check this out :

Quite violent, but terrific terrific animation. i didnt have the stomach for watching it though, too damn cruel for my tastes, so didnt watch it too many times. But if you are fine with FPS games, you will enjoy it, i guess. But animation wise, really really awesome. Check it out. The workflow tutorial link above is for these shots.

Be good, be non-violent, learn, enjoy!!

DJ

just wanna let every one know of the new article over at synchrolux.com by Kevin Koch regarding spacing. Spacing is one key concept, that starts with bouncing balls and stays with you till the end. It is the step-sister of timing. If this goes astray, almost all go astray.

Check out the article at :

http://www.synchrolux.com/?p=37

Enjoy!

DJ

Today has been a swell day. India won a test match (cricket) in Perth australia. Then I had a great time trying to teach kids about spirituality and meditation and avoiding dogma and the importance of science and how science supports spiritual truths explained by the Great Sages of our world, across religions. Had a great time playing memory game with them, teaching them fast reading, how to look up from a dictionary and introducing them to philosophical thinking. I was ready to retire for the day. And then, casually after checking my email, I looked up Kevin Koch’s blog. And there is a great post and a great link!

Read the full post at :

synchrolux.com

The link he provided is this :

A link to a few drips of animation ambrosia.

http://www.cataroo.com/jcbooks.html

Read, Learn, Create, Enjoy!

DJ