Low budgets? what can they do, when I can do THIS!
Being from India, one big thing that always comes up here, when talking about quality of animation/story/effects/almost anything is the concept of low budgets. I know first hand about how limiting low budgets are. Both money wise and time wise. But here’s something VFX related that shows that good skill takes you a long way, even with limited budgets..
Work hard! Play harder! All in all, enjoy!!
DJ
My Shortfilm Work in Progress
Hi guys,
This is the shortfilm I did for AM final quarter. Had Kevin Koch (www.synchrolux.com) as my mentor and it was a blessing. Learnt so much from him that I cannot thank him enough for being such an awesome awesome mentor.
This is currently seriously in the WIP stage. Still needs polishing on the shots. one of the shots needs animation. Then there is texturing, lighting and rendering and so on. But for 3 months of work, I am really proud of where it is. I am going to work on it and bring it to fruition in the very near future. As always, any comments and crits are welcome. The story called for a lot of internal thought, and I went the subtlety route as I wanted to learn that super uber acting that pixar guys do. So, i went the super subtle style of animation in this short, and i feel that there are glimpses of “life” here and there in it. Im gonna try and improve it as a whole by adding and pushing things a lil bit, but im not going to change the structure much as I like it the way it is. The flashback shot is in blocking. I need to work on the last shot where he throws the fake smile away, that part is still in blocking. I have music selected. will add music to this too, which really adds to the mood of it. Anyways, here you go! And oh.. the photographs you see on the mirror in the shortfilm, all of them will be different from each other.. so never mind all of them looking same.
I asked my Class 6 Mentor Kevin Koch some questions on his blog regarding shortfilms and sincerity and clarity and other stuff. He was kind enough to answer each of my questions. Check out his blog
and the post :
http://www.synchrolux.com/?p=23
Here is my shortfilm SMILE :
And here is a cut with tentative music.. the animation in this is slightly older version, but its edited to music. The title card and credits are temporary.
Cheers! And happy New year!
DJ
A lil flour sack fun in plastic animation paper!!
Hi guys!
Just recieved my intuos 3, brand new!! And here I am working out a lil floursack test!
Lemme know how it looks!!
DJ
4 PM Shortfilm by Mark Oftedal
Awesome Awesome shortfilm, especially for animation. Terrific hand poses.
enjoy.
DJ
Just for giggles.
Hi everyone!
Its been a while since i posted. Just wanna start again. Nothing animation related now.. but just to start, heres something to laugh out loud. This one I find so funny that I had to post.
I am coming towards the end of my course at AM. 6 more weeks to go to finish my shortfilm. It is coming along nicely, although it is really challenging. I bit into something (again) more than I can chew, this time I bit into subtle facial animation for a serious piece of story. I will start posting animation stuff once i finish my shortfilm.
Here you go..
Cheers!
DJ
Week 5 – didnt do much … :(
Hi Keith, gang,
When I thought we were having two weeks to work, I was very happy and I wanted to do a lot of animation. But unfortunately, I had a lot of travelling to do in the first week and dude to excessive travels, I caught fever and cold and am down since last monday when I returned. Fever and cold sucks man.. felt very weak, head ache and body aches were severe, temperature was high and add to that a running nose and sneezes and caugh. Couldnt work at all. Cant even look at the monitor now… it hurts watching anything bright due to head ache.
Neways, enuff excuses.
I was able to do some corrections to the “bonking” animation and the hop.. here they are. Keith asked me to do another animation of the sack trying to catch a high baseball. Have some ideas on how to do it.. like the sack runs way off into the screen where it appears really small and then runs towards the screen and all and in the end misses the ball.. but I couldnt do it. Hope to get well soon and get back on track this week. I think some one was jealous with my animations and did voodooo on me… naaah..just kidding..
neways, here are the animations.
bonking :
cam hop :
DJ
Won the CG Tantra Challenge!!
Hi guys!
Good news!
I won the CG Tantra animation challenge 7 (www.cgtantra.com). It was a body mechanics excersize. A simple one. No acting needed. Just jump and try to catch something hanging up there.
I thought that working on this felt really good. It was a nice break from floursacks and I could apply what Ive learnt to a biped. Only 6 of us participated, but it was good. Loved working on it.. And you know what I won? I won a badge on the forums! Here its what it looks like..
Nothing like a badge and bragging rights.. right?
Check out the animation I did. I worked on it for about two and half hours. Enjoyed every second of it. Crit and Comment away!
DJ
Week 4
Hi guys!
Finally calling it done for this week. The “bonking” animation has really exhausted me. I could get what I wanted with the “bonking” sack, but I didnt have the time and energy to really go about nailing the “bonked” sack. ya.. ya.. You can say that I favour the agressor or what ever… but remember, the agressor rules!! ofcourse, only among floursacks that is.. not humans.
Anyways, I also applied some of the corrections that keith gave and polished the previous work.. I made silly mistakes last week.. like not polishing the dive board and so on.. Keith pointed them out… So, polished files.. here you go!
Rope catch Polish :
Dive board Polish:
Hop towards Cam polish:
Bonking phase 1 :
Bonking phase 2:
There you go guys!
As always… any comments and critiques for my animations are more than welcome.
DJ
Week 3.. Polishing
This week is polish time for my flour sack. Went about doing it the Graph editor way, but because of poor rig management during the blocking, it was easier to do it by hand. I placed all the breakdowns by hand for these three shots.
The shot with flour sack jumping up on to the box had a lot of things to be redone. I started redoing it, but it didnt come along as long as it should for me to show it to keith. So, I am delivering only three shots, fully polished IMO.
How are they?
Here you go..
Board Dive :
DJ
Week 2 Assignments!
Hi guys!
This week has been great. I am learning a lot. A lot of trials and errors makes for better understanding, IMO. This is what happened to me with the file that the sack hops towards the cam. Initially, I did each hop for 5 frames, but it felt slow.. That made me do it in 4 frames and it seems fine now. But I am not too satisfied with it.. I dont know, but something feels amiss. This is what I look forward to see what keith would say.
Anyhooooo… heres the files..
The dive board :
The cam hop :
Couldnt find time to do the corrections to last week’s shots. Hope to do that this week. Anyways… thanks for the cool crits last week! Looking forward for more!
DJ
DJ Animator 