Dragons

Some line-less colouring study done in Corel Painter - with dragons, because dragons are awesome...

Parkour escape (2-shot)

First assignment using the Norman rig. He's alright... The assignment required the implementation of a referenced parkour movement, along with some acting constistent with the back-story of the chase-scene...
This young man has been wrongly accused of theft and is now running from the police. The police in his town is notoriously brutal and so he fears for his life...




I'm very happy with how the two shots hook up. Needs few more frames and less exaggeration on the stopping-recoil; it looks a bit silly right now.

Seven faces and a lift

6 faces showing basic emotions, plus an seventh of any choice... Please enjoy my flirty DreamWorks-face...
This was my first test with the Morpheus rig, who, by default, has this Jimmy Neutron hairstyle. This rig can be morphed into pretty much any shape needed, so it's great for many different kinds of characters and body-types...

And here's my desperate attempt at animating constraints... The weight of the box is questionable at best. I regret not using Morpheus for this assignment, since I couldn't switch between IK and FK mid-animation with Hogan here... Poor planning will be punished.

4 more Maya assignments

Here are the next Maya assignments (playblasts):
1. a bow (with a backstory and fitting acting)
The story here being a young man wanting to present a flower to the girl he likes. Unfortunately she's known for having a violent temper and he's caught her at a bad time - so he is cautious, but also hopeful his gesture will appease her, rather than give her a reason to beat him up.
2. a generic walk-cycle
3. a character walk-cycle (here a cartoony sneak)
4. a run-cycle

Trying to emulate weight-physics in 3D is surprisingly fun.

Gesture collection

A little collection of sketches from morning gesture-drawings.

I could definitely feel it had been a while, felt all rusty in the far croquis-corners of my brain...

Early rig practise

Continuing where we left off after the Luxo-lamp rig - explorations and assignments featuring more rigs provided by the school: a floursack and a simplified, but well-rigged human character called Hogan. 

• A sack drop
• Sack hop-cycle (which I regret looks like a bunny)
• Hogan; 7 still poses to fit assigned moods
• Hogan weight-shift
• Hogan doing a tennis serve (no wonder these players injure their elbows so often)
• Nico, early facial rig test

That last rig is a freeware download for non-commercial use, called Nico. It's an incredibly well-rigged quadroped model that I've started to play around with for personal practise. As of now, he is still too complicated for me, but it won't be long before I'm doing stuff with this guy. Right now I'm just having fun getting to know the facial-controls.

The Nico rig can be downloaded here for free, for anyone who makes an account (which is also free).

Introduction to Maya assignments

The very basics - we have returned to the infamous bouncing balls.

And some practice with a simple Pixar Luxo Jr. lamp character. I loved acting with this guy. Pole vector was a bit glitchy, but this is only the beginning.

Fair warning, the last part of this clip has balls performing to music. Also, these are just playblasts - we're not in this for the rendering...

I'm really starting to like Maya and it's technical approach and its many different possible ways of doing thing; it IS an acquired taste.
Physics become harder to portray properly and convincingly, but at least the model is consistent by itself now.

These two weeks have been very fun, even if a bit frightening. Maya is not the most intuitive thing - but it IS very powerful and versatile.