Lost Pencil Blog

Ping!

August 1, 2008 – 7:45 am

I’m still here! Nothing much to report or comment on (at least that I’m allowed!), but I thought it might be a good idea to post at least something! I have been debating on whether or not to take advantage of the XSI offer to move from Essentials to Advanced (since Essentials is going away). I’m not too happy with Autodesk and the direction that Maya has taken in the last few iterations. I’m still on 7.0 as a result. Maya seems to be a dead end, but I sure love it’s character animation workflow and Final Render for Maya is a dream to work with…but maybe it’s time to switch (which of course means more learning curves to tackle - Mental Ray and XSI). I have till the end of the month to decide.

I would be posting more images/work in progress, but the orphan bill is still up in the air so I’ll just wait it out to see what happens (I think it is currently on hold). Then, depending on how it unravels I will decide on what direction to take on posting images/samples on the internet. Thanks for stopping by!

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The Animator’s Survival Kit - Animated

June 9, 2008 – 9:02 pm

Richard Williams, animator extraordinaire, has now released his Master Class on 16 DVDs. I attended Richard’s class back in 2000. I had to drive to Los Angeles (about 25 hours from where I live) and pay a small wheelbarrow-full of cash, but it was one of those classes that was a ‘eureka’ moment in my animation career. I believe that his master class allowed me to move on to the ‘next level’ in my animation.

After I attended the class my head felt like it was going to explode, so much information in so little time - and all I had for reference were my notes and drawings from the class. I was certain that 1/2 of the class leaked out of my ears before they could make an impact (or even reach the notebook). During the class Richard taunted us by waving a stack of papers around which he claimed was going to be published. One year later he did exactly that and “The Animator’s Survival Kit” was born. For me, this book is an indispensible reference and, next to the “Illusion of Life”, one of the best animation books published.

Only one thing was missing, to be able to replay the master class. Even if it was 6 months later - how I wish I could have simply rewound a tape and watched it over again. For me, repetition is king. I need a pile driver to get it through my thick skull, and repetition is a good pile driver. Now, with the release of this set, that wish comes true! I can’t believe what an amazing resource this is… Dick is the link between some of the best animators in history and he’s passing that information on to us. It doesn’t get much better than that.

This DVD series is the master class and then some. It includes animations that explain the principles he expounds. The set is expensive, but so is/was going to the master class. As far as I am concerned it is well worth the cost. Even though I took the class, I have still ordered a copy - remember, repetition (and now with examples!).

Some people on CGTalk have been complaining about the cost. I guess it depends on how badly you want to learn from a master animator. There is no way you can get this kind of training from your local animation college (unless they buy a special group copy!). The internet is a wonderful thing, but unfortunately it seems to be breeding an attitude of ‘give it to me for free (or real cheap)’. This can easily devalue people’s work and achievements. So is it expensive? Yes, and so are many other things of value.

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Training Material Update

June 4, 2008 – 11:58 am

Ok, I am going to upload the training material to Vimeo… it has much better quality!

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Just Animate - Wheels

June 3, 2008 – 10:57 am

I have about 8 parts to this tutorial so check my YouTube page for all the parts as I won’t be posting all the links here. You can find my page here. Happy animating!

Edit: You can download the source files for the training here. That should make it easier to follow the compressed YouTube clips.

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Just Animate - Wheels (part 3)

May 31, 2008 – 6:30 am

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Just Animate - Wheels (part 2)

May 31, 2008 – 5:59 am

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Just Animate - Wheels (part 1)

May 28, 2008 – 7:50 am

I have a number of training video tutorials (11 DVDs worth) in the archives that deal with everything from modeling, to scripting to character animation using Maya, Max and Lightwave. I’m going to slowly make this material available for download via YouTube. Please contact me if you are interested in purchasing a higher resolution version of the training material. The training material is:

Just Animate - Wheels! (Maya)
Just Animate - Games! (Lightwave)
Just Animate - Walk Cycles (Lightwave)
Just Animate - Walk Cycles for 3ds Max
Just Animate - Facial Expressions and Body Language (Lightwave)
Just Animate - Lip Sync (Lightwave)
Concept Art - digital painting
Model&Rig in a Day (Lightwave)
Just Animate - Workflow (Maya)
Animator’s Gym (General, with Maya specifics)
Special Project - Spinebot (Lightwave)
Special Project - SuperJet (Lightwave)
Special Project - Colliding Galaxies (Maya)
3D Apprenticeship - Max (Model, rig, texture, animate horse)
3D Apprenticeship - Maya (Model, rig, texture, animate elephant)

Here is Part 1 of the Just Animate - Wheels training for Maya. It covers how to automatically rotate wheels using expressions in Maya. It was originally created using Maya 4.5, but it is, I believe, still applicable in any version of Maya. Happy animating!

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Happy Birthday to me (belated)!

May 11, 2008 – 11:09 am

A few days ago was my birthday (and the next day was my wife’s birthday - how cool is that!), and I received some pretty cool presents. Presents I definitely have to blog about.

The first, I got from my most awesomest daughters (all four pitched in to get it):

“Too Funny For Words, Disney’s Greatest Sight Gags” This is a book by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, two of my favorite ‘Nine Old Men’ who worked (played?) at Disney. It gives visual examples of the 8 different types of gags that were common categories of gags in the Disney Studio. Very interesting, informative and full of great art! The extra cool thing about this copy is that it’s a signed copy by Frank and Ollie!! Woot!

My second present, just as cool:

Bambi “Walt Disney’s Bambi, The Story and The Film” Another awesome book by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. This was a gift from my amazing wife! This was a brand new copy (sealed in original wrap) full of great art and film background, it comes with a little flip book. A flip book (in case you don’t know) contains consecutive images that when flipped create the illusion of motion (you know, like drawing little pictures in the corner of your textbook at school and then quickly flipping it to see it move). The flip book has an animated young Bambi, older Bambi, Thumper, and Friend Owl. The most amazing, to me, is Thumper rolling around laughing - it was animated by Frank Thomas. Amazing… simply amazing - I think I’m going to wear out this flip book watching it over and over. Maybe I’ll scan it in so I can view it on my laptop.

Oh, I got some other cool presents, but those two were definitely the highlights!! The other present worth blogging about is the Nintendo DS lite! It has minimal graphics (not as good quality, me thinks, as the PSP), but good enough to run a bunch of fun games and, get this, a paint program! I have it on order so I’ll have to see how it runs once I have it all installed. The DS is cool in that it has a stylus and pressure sensitive screen - that will, hopefully, make it a great mini mobile sketchbook! Boy am I spoiled rotten! Happy birthday to me… happy birthday to me…

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