Pencil & Paper

Having been in front of a computer using software like Maya and Photoshop for so long, it's easy to forget about life drawing. For the past few weeks I've been attending my school's Saturday figure drawing sessions. My gesture drawings really need work; I'd forgotten how difficult it is to draw a figure in 2 min or less.

Here are some 10 min drawings from a couple weeks ago:

The Art of Rigging

Above: Me attempting to learn how to rig today.

Today I spent the better part of my morning and afternoon following an excellent tutorial that takes you step-by-step through the entire production pipeline in order to create a transforming robot. While much of the pipeline, especially the concept art and modeling stages, greatly interest me, I've felt for a while now that, as an animator, one of the most valuable skill-sets I can learn to compliment my focus is rigging.

For anyone who doesn't know, rigging is a highly structured process that involves creating a skeleton out of joints, creating controls that drive these joints, skinning a mesh (3d model) to the skeleton, painting the skin weights (how the skin deforms when flexed, relaxed, or tensed), and a whole other host of additional processes (dynamics, skin clusters, GUIs, etc.).

I have always wanted to create my own character for my animation reel, namely one of my Cactoid creatures some of you may have seen. While this is a large reason for my desire to learn this new skill-set, there is much more to it than that.

Whereas animation is a somewhat structured, but mostly free-flowing and pure form of art, rigging is rigid, unforgiving, and requires a whole different mentality when approached compared to animation. One could say that animation is like water-bending, while rigging is akin to earth-bending (by the way, I'm an "Avatard" if you didn't already know). A great advantage to being an animator and rigger is that you know exactly what sorts of tools you want and how to lay them out intuitively for other animators.

What I hope to get out of rigging is an improved ability to think more technically when problem-solving and recognize where I can use clever tricks and techniques to speed up my workflow in animation. Forcing myself to try and understand the more of the technical aspects of Maya will be a challenge, but the reward will be sweet.

Cactoid sketches!

Some sketches I drew of my Cactoid creature recently. I've been playing around with a few ideas, like what they look like as they get older (beards made of spines), how a forked tongue might look, and how they decompose when nearing death. The bats, which live alongside the Cactoids for life and pollinate their female partners, clearly don't mind feeding on the last remaining nutrients of their Cactoid buddies' decomposing body. The circle of life sure is morbid.

Demo Reel Update

Crank that baby up to 1080p!

Squid Shot Comped!

The squid I animated has now been composited by director Joe Daniels, amplifying its awesome-ness levels ten-fold. 





All Starfish Ninja work is copyrighted by Joseph Daniels. I do not own any of the characters, assets, or story.

Demo Reel Update: Squid Shot

Here's an animation update on the squid shot from my demo reel. The director had told me there wasn't enough weight behind the squid in the previous version, so I ended up deleting a bunch of keys and redoing most of it. The first time around took me about 1 1/2 weeks, whereas this took me about 5 days. It feels good to see the speed of my workflow steadily rising.

Old version:


New version:


Update 2/15: After repositioning the tentacles, adding more offset and overlap to tentacles, adjusting the beak, mantle, and fins, and fine-tuning the timing all around, this shot has finally been approved!



Man this squid was a pain in the neck, but I learned a lot from it. Creatures are no easy task, but with the help of Joe Daniels, the director, I was able to really push my animation farther. With that said, I hope I never have to work with tentacles again.

All Starfish Ninja work is copyrighted by Joseph Daniels. I do not own any of the characters, assets, or story.

Graduation

First post of the new year. Can't believe how long it has been since my last one. I'll definitely try to remember to update more often this year.

Well, I finally graduated from Expression College for Digital Arts this last Thursday. After 2 1/2 years being in the same place, around the same friends every day, it sort of feels surreal knowing I am done with school for what is hopefully the rest of my life. The only way to get better is to keep practicing your craft, so my primary goal right now is to simply stay busy. With Starfish Ninja, the Cinemagic "Olympics" project, personal work, and an upcoming interview, it seems I'll be doing just that.