Siggraph

We are taking the animatic to Siggraph, and to Dreamworks and Nickelodeon. Wish us luck, and get ready to work extra hard when we get back so we can finish!

Good Animation Example

I need to be showing off some of the great animation that is being done on Lizard and the Ladder. Hopefully the animators wont mind. This was done by Sam, she is doing a great job getting Leonard to think. He also has good wait and anticipation.
Good Job!!

General To Specific

Just like this very simplistic illustration... In animation every thing goes from general to specific, from a lores model to a ZBrush polish, a rough texture, to the file details. A Key light to the small bounce lights to highlight a characters expression, a broad brush stroke to little speckles of paint, and finally from storyboard to polished animation. Before we all get caught up in making our work look perfect. We need to always remember to start general and then go specific.

I was reminded of this concept this week, when I got my Animation Mentor news letter. Each news letter includes a featured short. They also include there process at arriving to the final piece. There are about 4-7 steps including: story pitch , storyboard, animatic, layout, blocking 1, blocking 2, spline pass, and refining (just to name a few).

This post is from Anthony and myself reminding all the animators, that we are still on the animatic stage. I talked to some of you about fine tuning the work you have already done. We now need to stop and finish blocking out the entire short, then we can go back to fine tune. If some of you are in need of a new assignment let me or Anthony know.

Thanks

Cluck Cluck

This chicken is being modeled by Braxton. He is doing a great job, and is getting close to finishing. We will soon be in need of a rigger. Any one interested can let me know.

The chicken is blue because I was trying an image based lighting system, and so we are looking at what the blue sky contributed to the image.

Creative Planning

I wanted to show off this cool work from Troy. He is working on the cloth simulations at this moment. To help him plan out the look of the clothes, he took Leonard into Photoshop and did some sketching. This method of brainstorming is a billion times faster than building it all in Maya first.... Moral of the story?.... Never stop sketching and always plan with the hand before you grab a mouse. :)

7 Is Our Lucky Number

I came into the labs late today just to work on my laptop. When I got here Joe, our IT guy was just finishing up the new image install in the lab. When you all come to school on Monday you will have a smiling Window 7 greeting you! Logging in will be as easy as UVLink, they have the new Adobe CS5 package, Maya 2011, Mudbox, ZBrush and many many more. "It's not awesome... it's beyond awesome... it's be-awesome!"

The Lizard Rig

I thought today I would put Clayton's Portfolio Link so you can see what Leonard is rigged to do. Notice how his arms bend in the middle; they also do this on his legs and forearm.

On the Incredible's Blu-ray and possibly the DVD, there is an "animators" commentary. They are constantly referring to how convenient the new rigs were because they had the above mentioned control. They said it made the arcs look a lot smother, and their animation flowed better. Find those controls and give them a try. In Clayton's Demo reel he used them to the extreme, however they would also look great if used subtly.

Dailies

We had a great discussion with those of you that came yesterday morning. I'm confident we will get this done on time. Those of you that were there already know, but spread the word; we will be meeting Tuesday's at 9:00 am for our dailies. please come if you can, lots of collaboration is good, and it helps us all stay on track.

For this post today, I wanted to post Rango. If you haven't seen this trailer yet, you should! There is something very familiar about the character Rango, that I just cant put my finger on. ;)

trailers.apple.com/trailers.apple.com/trailers/paramount/rango/

Delivery Date

If you have seen the trailer, or the poster in the 3d lab, you've seen that this film will be ready "Fall 2010" We are going to be finished on the first day of that season. We have a lot to do, but I know it can be done!

Tuesday July 7th 2010

All those working on the Lizard and the Ladder come to the 3D lab tomorrow at 9:00 AM so we can talk about where we are going to go with the project next.

Home for our Lizard

I have created this blog, so UVU students can see the Progress on the Lizard and the Ladder project. Come here to see, new animation, renders, and discuss, the project.