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
APT restarts!
Woohoo!
This is my first week’s assignment for APT2! Floursacks running wild!
Hi guys!
Keith gave me four assignments for this week.
1. floursack trying to jump up on to a box but the box moves.
2. floursack trying to catch something on the end of a hanging rope but failing.
3. floursack running towards the camera, falling, but getting up and continuing.
4. floursack and a jumping board into a swiming pool.
I was only able to do the first two. This rig, although good, has its glitches. I found it hard to get the legs to work and to get good action lines with just the two controls. I would have loved to have one more control in the middle allowing me to shape the spine..
being out of rigging mode for four years now, I didnt even think of digging into the rig until today.. after a serious frustration yesterday to finish the box jump. I finally found some clusters that I created handles for and now I know it allows me better action lines.. but I didnt have enough time to work them into the poses.
So, all I did this week is two assignments blocked in. had a huge festival in my house, had to format my system and to reinstall Maya, redo corrupted .mb files (now I have .ma) took a lot of time and so did the lack of familiarity with this rig.
I hope to finish the other two next week and get the breakdowns and spines done.
I tried to be cartoonistic, but I was breaking the rig more often than ever and so, my thumnails look very different from what I have in 3d. So, for next week, I plan to do PAP test and show them so that Keith would be able to better understand where I fail most in trying to charicature. This week’s submission is not satisfactory to me myself.. but surely has been very very fun to work and educational. I am learning a lot!!
Awsome assignments!!
So here you go.. rope catch jump cut!!
Version 1:
version2 with delay before drop and some other changes…
And here is blocking for the box jump..
DJ
Its Floursack Time!
After a long one month of no animation, I am back on track!
My APT with Keith Lango started again! Me and Keith are going to work more on cartoony timing and physics which is what I love in animation. I always felt that cartoonistic animations is more fun to me that the polished more real “Acting” stuff. Cartoonistic style of animation is just plain fun to watch, with black and white emotions and funny poses. Not that I dont enjoy subtle stuff tho.. I like that too.. but what I want to be able to do is to create “original” caricatures of situations.
Tex avery and the older guys, they were able to do such great caricature of situations in their animations. Utterly original stuff! Funny and clear. If the fox is annoyed, you would know its annoyed and the very pose he stands in to show that annoyance is funny! Thats what I want to learn. How did they boil down the essense of the emotional states? How did the charicature the gestures so well?
To learn this, I need a keen understanding of how to exaggerate “NORMAL” into “CARTOONY”. This happens, broadly, at three levels.
Exaggeration of Emotions.
Exaggeration of Poses.
Exaggeration of Timing.
So, in leu with that goal, I got some assignments to animate a floursack. Floursack is an excellent tool for practising animation. The rig i got is from Tim Oberlander (Google His name.. First link is the link to his website and the rig) is excellent. I crib a bit for the lack of a “straight” knee joint depiction which is necessary to show the Push of the weight.
I just did this little jump to test the rig. Pretty neat rig. Simple stuff. But good squash and stretch shapes and great chance to get good action lines going on. As I mentioned, i couldnt find a “Straight leg” pose with this guy that would give the “pushing” when jumping up.
Here is the first quick version i did in 20 mins. Basic stuff. All stepped and on 2s.
Then I felt that the sack needs to hang in the air a bit more to be true to cartoonistic instincts. So I added 4 more frames of hangtime and heres what I got.
Still stepped and on 2s.
Comments are always welcome!
DJ
Thumbnailing and simple drawing for animation
Hi guys!
I put up a quick little “Build” tut for simple quick sketching of characters for pose tests for animation. Please bear with me and my “searching-for-words” speak in the tut. Its pretty hard to draw and talk at the same time at 3 AM without a couple of days’ sleep before doing so. I think its more of the right side and leftside brain activities at the same time. Its pretty hard to do that!!
Neways… check this out! Any suggessions on how I can improve my own drawing skills and any other simple methods for doing this? If so, just comment! I really need all the learning I can get!
Disclaimer : I am no way responsible if this video totally upsets you or makes you crazy or makes you loose all your drawing skills or makes you pull your hair out.. I must be credited, though, if it helps you.. 
Now that the disclaimer is away… here we go!
Vimeo:
my method for drawing simple pose tests for animation on Vimeo
I am not a great artist by any stretch of imagination.. but this is just me trying to be of some help to the animation friends of mine. If this helps you.. great! If it was just a waste of your time, forget that you ever seen it…
Cool Videos to learn Drawing!!
Hi guys,
Today I found this site and its simply awsome!!
Nice tutorials to learn anatomy and thumbnailing!
http://advanceconcepts.blogspot.com/
http://figuresketching.blogspot.com/
http://the-structure-of-man.blogspot.com/
Thanks to Riven Pheonix for the awsome tutorials!! And they are Free!!
178 videos on anatomy, 12 videos on gesture drawing and thumbnails.. All for free! What more can you ask for? Now theres no excuse for poor anatomy drawing..
enjoy the videos, learn a lot, pray to God and be good!
DJ
my time in paradise is over!! :(
hmm..
sad news..
I have been expelled from AM. I recieved an email saying that my enrollment has been terminated cuz ive violated some rules of AM. Well, they have a 10 percent reason to do so.. but i dont agree. what happened is that one of my students, hemendra, did some animations with AM like rigs that he built. He did it cuz he was so inspired by AM’s works. AM thinks I gave him their rigs. But I havent. Ive emailed bobby with the rigs that he used, but to no avail. All in all, I didnt give him the rigs. So, I aint guilty. So, I aint worried. I take it as a blessing of God in disguise. Lets see what this does to me…
Neways. Its been wonderful being in AM, being part of the community. Met some great friends. Awsome mentors. Learnt a lot. I wont be able to ever repay them for the animation knowledge they imparted. I understand their concerns. As always, I accept it as part of my Karma. No big deal. Ive many other important things to do other than animation in life. Animation is just one way of earning my bread, which I can do even now. I still have APT of keith lango, which is as good as AM if not better. All I have to do now is to put efforts to learn with keith, and lo, i will be a good animator!
Neways, this means that you wont be seeing any more AM tests from me (not that i have posted many of them) but you will see more of my animation tests.
Still looking forward for the light at the end of the tunnel,
DJ
Hit it! Operation phase – 3!
Hi guys!
Finished this animation long time ago, but was out of station so i couldnt upload it. Anyways, after the super Keith suggessions, i ended up with this one. I suspect there will be a couple of corrections still in it when keith sees it.. but so far, im happy with it.
I am also playing with cam shake in this one. It will look better with some bg to clearly see the cam shake, but you can still see the ground shaking right now.
Neways.. it was refreshing to do something somewhat cartoony. Here it is..
On retrospect, i would want to do this slightly faster, but i feel that im too far into this to change it now. Im planning on some more excersizes.. so keep visiting back!
thanks and please C and C.
dj
