Stairs and a Jump

Yesterday we had to make Skippy go up a few steps and jump off.  Nothing to difficult just a little time consuming.  Heres the link =)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5G8k3AouVmY&feature=youtu.be

T-Shirt Design

This isn't anything we're learning in class or anything, just a little contest the school is holding to design a new t-shirt for the school.  This is my entry.  Ohh and the prize, a free t-shirt and two weeks drive on access to the school (closer parking).

Personality Walks

This week we are continuing with the walk cycles, however this time we have to pick 2/5 personalities from a list and portray them in the walk.

Sad Walk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOk33DCE6Zo&feature=youtu.be

Angry Walk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_u0jVOLej4&feature=youtu.be

Quick Tip =)

Hey one more quick thing, you can enlarge the images by clicking on them.. some people didnt know this.  The images just look a little better when they're bigger.  Plus you can see more!

Rigging and Walking

Instead of trying to explain everything I thought I could just show you.  So, I made a little one minute clip of me moving this little guy around.  His names Skippy by the way.  Now, I didn't model him but I did give him all of his bones and controllers to make it able to move him around.  Putting these bones in and making sure that everything works the way it should is called rigging.  There's a lot more to it than it seems though.  Its not just throwing in these things and having it work, no.  You have to tell which bones can control which points of the skin (Ill post a cool picture of the this process, called "painting weights") , what bone controls what bone, and then you get into things like IK (Inverse Kinematics), and so on..  Its not really all that hard, just a little time consuming is all. 

Below is a picture of a process called "painting weights".  In the first image the bone connecting the shoulder to the elbow is selected.  The color represents what skin that bone will effect.  The "hotter" the color the more it will effect when moved and the "cooler" the color the less it will effect when moved.  The second image has the bone that connects the elbow to the hand.  You can see that it effects some of the area that the other bone effects.  They overlap a little.  This results in a smooth bend.  And of course all the black is the unaffected area.

And finally the link to the short clip I made.



Youtube Link

Youtube

I ended up making youtube account so that I could post higher resolution videos.  This a link to the Youtube channel that I made that has all the videos from block two.  For the later posts I will post individual links to the videos.  There is a short discription below each video as well so be sure to read that. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnbW_GviwN2K3JIVeyB1Vow?feature=mhee

Week Two

Week two is going great. There is still not too, too much work being assigned but enough to keep me busy. I’m happy I have some extra time because it gives me a chance to get some personal projects done.

This week we talked about character animation. Posing a character in such a way that it is easy to understand quickly and easily. One of the most stressed things that our teacher, whose name is Dave West by the way, is that you should be able to see a silhouette of the character and understand what is going on. There is a picture below as an example.

He had us pose a simple character in 6 different positions and also gave us 6 different emotions that we would have to make the character act out. Now the character doesn’t have any facial features so we can only sure the body and its parts; legs, arms, hands, fingers, head, etc.

Here are a few shots that I did. The silhouette is on the left and the shaded on the right. See if you can guess what it is... anger, and a gymnast.



 

Car Stunts

As the large project for week one we had to make a car do some stunts.  Weave between some cones, jump some busses, go on two wheels, and last intereact with an extra cone in any way you want (I did a dounut around it).  Heres the final product.  (Im trying to figure out why im not able to post full size videos here, I'll try to get them up as soon as I figure it out =)

 



Block Two - Animation

I’m back from winter break, the longest break I get in my year here at The DAVE School. It was great to see family and friends but now it’s time to get back to work.
I’m almost done with the first week already and have learned quite a bit in animation. We have had three mini-assignments and one larger. That makes four assignments and the weekly quiz (every Friday). Even though we have had so many assignments I don’t feel as stressed as I did in Block One. Now maybe this is because I’m used to the work schedule, but I really think it’s just that animation, as of now, seems to be a little easier then modeling.
I’ve always had things like this come to me pretty easy, modeling, animation, computers etc., ever since I was little so I’m lucky in that way but it also gives me the chance to help my classmates which only enforces what I’m learning. Anyways.
This is 3D animation, but a lot of the things we are learning are based on 2D animation. The reason I’m telling you is because the first few projects look simple but in reality they are quiet difficult. We had to do, (1) The Ball Bounce, make a ball bounce and have a squash and stretch effect (2) The Bounce Room, make two balls bounce into a room with the physics that they might have in real life (3) Logo Animation, Animate a logo in a conservative perspective (slow and easy on the eyes) and finally (4) Story, Tell a story using only a cube, sphere, and cone. These objects cannot be textured (have to be a single color) and can only be squashed and stretched.
Below I have the animations that I made, along with a rendered animation that I made for the Ball Bounce. Speaking of that, when we hand these projects in we are actually handing in something called a playblast and without going into detail it’s basically a very simple, rough video of the animation, where as something like the rendered out Ball Bounce I have is high in detail, lighting and texturing. These playblast take seconds where as a higher detailed animation would take upwards of hours.

 

Ball Bounce
Playblast - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8iJSVnUM7KIWWlQcnpoS3lyeDQ/edit
Render - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8iJSVnUM7KIR2N1QkZQNzRhc2c/edit

Bounce Room - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8iJSVnUM7KISmVlRlNyRzVpdjA/edit

DAVE School Logo - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8iJSVnUM7KIcks4Qkk0LWxZNEk/edit

Story - https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B8iJSVnUM7KIYl9kWTRNczBwcXM/edit