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
Higgly Town Heroes!
Finally I found a little episode of this children series online. This series is called “higgly town heroes”. I worked as a animator on this series, when I was working in jadoo works. This is not the episode that I worked on, mine had a librarian as a higgly town hero. I would love to find that one too.
Neways, had a blast working on this. Loads of sweat went into producing this. This was my first professional job in animation and so, this will have a special place in my heart.
Too bad any of us overseas guys get credits. We worked our butt off on this one with really hard quotas. Much of the props and bg elements were created right here in India in jadoo works. But I guess the production politics and outsourcing policies deny us our name on the little screen. I wish I could be credited on future projects.
We used Maya, flash and photoshop to create this stuff. We had a guy from wildbrain, USA come to India for a first level of approval of our shots. Then the stuff used to go up to Wildbrain and we used to get another level of critiques and corrections from there. Once that is done, they would render this stuff out and have a final pass of lipsync and eyes on it (as they looked different in final render to what we had in Maya). Once thats done, then the show is called done.
We were provided with storyboards and animatic. we had to go through it with our animation supervisor and create the animation. Once our supervisor called it done, then we had to show it to Bala, a very talented animation director. Once he approves, this overseas guy from Wild Brain sees it, suggests corrections and hookups with bg and stuff.. Once corrections are made then it is uploaded to wild brain. For all this, for each episode of 11 mins, we had about 1 month to get it done. But due to so many levels of approval, we usually ended up with a deadline one and half months from start time.
Neways.. After all the hard work put into it and surviving all the office politics, the final product makes me proud. I know, its not the best animated thing in the world, it might not be so strong on story either, but all said and done, it looks good enough for a production time of 1 and half months with 11 guys working on it. It looks damn good for the budget given and the deadlines. Besides, even a pig loves her ugly piglet.. so why not we? We created it, and with all its loopholes, we love it. Its our baby.
enjoy!
dj
Cat did come back!
guys.. check this out!
really funny little short film.. I love the animation and the style. lovely piece of animation. This is the type of animation that gets me really inspired.
dj
Sai Master Speeches! Must listen for every one!
These are very few of those speeches by my Guru given in English that were recorded. I think they are a must listen for every one. It feels to me that English language itself has its purpose fullfilled by coming through His mouth into those wonderful words.
http://www.saibharadwaja.org/Media/Media01.html
Your life will be touched by hearing those. Its like nectar, nay, elixir itself to your ears! Its the medicine needed to clear up the ailments of the mind. Here them and feel blessed!
dj
Muppets Ahoy!
My mentor Michelle loves muppets. She showed us one muppet shot from you tube (The swedish chef one) and the piano one and talked through it about its staging and timing and the great acting those guys do with that limited stuff. She was trying to convince us that even though we have flappy mouths for our rigs for this assignment, if we do it well we can do it well. I didnt buy it tho. I always believe that given a PIXAR rig and the pixar computers and disney peoples animation tables and their pencils and glen keane’s fingernails, i could create another toy story. But .. alas.. they wont give me those. I got to make do with my computer, my pencils and so on.. and ofcourse, bear with the AM rigs and other free rigs. You might say “but other AM students are creating awsome stuff with the AM rigs!”.. I tell ya.. the secret must be in their computers, or their tables.. or some fengshui or somethign.. some of them create impossibly great animations and you tell me that they could do it on their own? u got to be kidding!
To cheer myself up in this miserable predicament.. Heres something!
enjoy!
DJ Animator 