Countfrogula's Animschool Blog

Basic Walk Cycle Assignment

2012-02-23T21:42:00.000-05:00

We had two weeks to do a basic walk cycle with the Mr. Legs Character. After many revisions this is what I ended up with:

I am pretty happy how he came out. It is just a basic walk cycle. Not really a lot of character to it at this point. I am more concerned with getting the basic mechanics of the walk down first. Next assignment is a character doing a turn. I'll try to infuse more character into that.

Assignment 4 / Follow Through

2012-02-08T19:14:00.000-05:00

This assignment was to demonstrate follow through on a spaceship with a tow chain. I tried to keep it simple and glad I did because it was a pretty difficult one to tackle. This animation got featured on Animschool's facebook page. Next Up after this is walk cycle.

2012-01-28T14:14:00.000-05:00

This is my class 3 assignment, a ball with character. We had to get more creative than just the bouncing ball on this one. We added internal forces to the ball so he behaves like a thinking character. I made the pointy cog wheel thing and steps and added them to the scene. This one went through many revisions to get to where it is now. I may have some more revisions to go, not sure yet. I gotta start the 4th assignment though now. Must keep moving forward :)

First and Second Assignments

2012-01-18T08:49:00.000-05:00

It has been a while since I wrote anything here. I took some time before Christmas to clear my head of old bad habits so I come into school fresh. I am just finishing up the second assignment. The first assignment was to have a ball bounce like a basketball. My first pass at this was pretty poor. My spacing and arcs were terrible. But with some good instruction and work I think I got it pretty good:

The second assignment was to do varying ball weights. We did a bowling ball, a basketball, and a ping pong ball. My first pass wasn't as bad as the first pass on my first assignment, but still needed a lot of revision after reviews.

I am seeing how the school works and am very pleased with it. It is a solid curriculum that really takes the time to teach the principles of animation and beyond so they really take hold. I feel I have a greater understanding of the basic principles we have covered so far and how to put them to use.

More Froggy A Jumpin

2011-12-18T07:26:00.000-05:00

I had a review of my frog jump from Dave from Animschool. Did quite a bit of revision on this. My arcs on the center of gravity needed work as did my posing and timing.

School starts in a few weeks and I am mucho excited. Stay tuned for a new and improved animator Dennis :)

Froggy Goes A Jumping

2011-11-30T07:43:00.000-05:00

So, I didn't want to wait to learn to build my own rigs to get this frog moving. I got the setup machine from Anzovin studios. You set up widgets over the character and hit rig button and you got a rig. I needed to just adjust the weight painting a bit after rigging especially since he's an odd shape, but the auto weight painting did a decent job to start off with. I did this little jumping animation to see how the rig holds up. I am pretty pleased with the rig. I am hoping to get some feedback on the jump to improve it.

My New Frog Model

2011-11-22T03:54:00.000-05:00

I had a few days off work, so I decided to model a new frog. I modeled him in the program Hexagon, textured him in 3dcoat, then imported to Maya. I applied a SSS shader in hypershade. I am quite pleased with the result. It gives his skin a nice sheen. I still don't know how to rig in Maya, so he will be sitting on my hard drive a while until I learn. Anyway, I think he is my best frog so far :)

Monty Gets Dynamic

2011-11-16T18:47:00.002-05:00

So I have been working with Monty a while now on this walk. I did not know the upper part of him bent so it always looked to much or too little in the hip movement. Well today I realized his upper body bends so I was able to create some more dynamic posing with him. So when his hip goes up his upper body bends the opposite way. There was no general review today as Animschool staff attends CTN, so I will see what David thinks of it next week.

Monty Goes For A Walk

2011-11-10T13:13:00.000-05:00

Been working on a walk with the Monty character found on Creative Crash. Got some feedback from David of Animschool on this yesterday and reworked it this morning. I was just having too hard a time with boneApart right now. I bit off more than I can chew trying a walk with him at this point before school starts me thinks. Even a simple ball with legs is challenging to do a walk cycle with. I'll see what David thinks of it next week.

Revisited 2 Balls and the Return of BoneApart

2011-11-05T12:54:00.001-04:00

I did some work on the 2 balls. Reduced some of the arcs lengths and had to readjust the scene a little to compensate:

Then went back to BoneApart and did some more work based on what I learned with bouncing balls:

Pre-School 2 Ball Bounce

2011-11-01T06:10:00.000-04:00

Hello Folks. I put together a scene of two balls bouncing and interacting. Spent all day on this yesterday, more challenging than I imagined. Thanks to my buddies Pengy300 and Eago for advice on my arcs and physics. I haven't had it reviewed yet so there will most likely be changes to it when it is reviewed. Unfortunately I can not make it to the general review this week, I will be at work, so no review til next week. I'll see what I can do to make it better by then though. The bigger ball is meant to be like a regular rubber ball and the smaller ball like a rubber superball. Thanks for looking.

Revised Pre-School Bounce... Again

2011-10-29T09:12:00.002-04:00

I had a review of this now. I worked on my arcs and spacing. Much Better now I think.

Another Pre-School Bounce

2011-10-23T17:07:00.000-04:00

Did another ball bounce. Started this one with a straight up and down, then moved on the z axis and rotated. It took a while to get my straight up and down looking good. I showed Dave from Animschool it on Wednesday and he showed me how to do the acceleration correctly with spacing as the ball dropped. Also I originally had some crazy squash and stretch on the ball which I toned down a bunch. I'll show Dave this again this coming Wednesday, I posted it on the Animschool forums already too. My pal Richard showed me a few things with the rotation as well in this one.

boneApart Walk With Hair

2011-10-16T18:03:00.000-04:00

I spent today learning about Maya hair. It's really cool and easier to use than I thought it would be. Here is boneApart walking with his new hairdo. I just had to apply some UV's to the model, then just painted the hair right on his head. Took some messing with the settings afterward to get it how I wanted, but I have a pretty good idea what they do now, and I got his hair pretty close to what I wanted to do.

Revised boneApart Walk

2011-10-10T07:42:00.001-04:00

Did much more to this walk. I think it is better but he seems to have lost his swagger. I gotta find the balance I guess. That's why I am going to school :)

Pre-School boneApart Walk

2011-10-05T14:22:00.000-04:00

Trying out a simple walk with the boneApart character supplied by Animschool. I used the Animator's Survival Kit for reference. I been messing with boneApart for about a week now but this is my first animation with him.

Pre-School Sneak Walk

2011-09-30T11:12:00.000-04:00

Trying my hand at a sneak walk using the Morpheous rig.

New Webcam

2011-09-29T21:41:00.000-04:00

Picked up the Microsoft Lifecam HD-5000 today. It is a totally rockin cam. Very impressed with it.

Also worked on my bounce a bit more with Gilles suggestions. I eased up on the squash and stretch quite a bit. I tried to improve the arcs somemore, but it still looks linear to me. Not sure why, I'll have to keep at it.

Some Pre-School Maya Ball Bounces

2011-09-29T14:35:00.000-04:00

I have been starting to learn Maya a little before school starts. Here are a couple of ball bounces I did.

My Old Work

2011-09-28T21:36:00.001-04:00

This is my work prior to attending Animschool. Watch me grow!

Early New Student Orientation Today For Me

2011-09-28T21:26:00.000-04:00

Today I attended the Animschool New Student Orientation. It was really for the fall semester students but I was invited to attend anyway even though I am enrolled for winter term 2012. Which I greatly appreciated. It was fantastic to get into adobe connect and see how it works in a group setting and get to know more about the school.

I found out my webcam was pretty bad while viewing the others webcams. Mine is old and cheap and very low res. I wanna pick up a good HD one soon. Adobe connect worked very well, some said they had issues with the connection speed, but probably due to their internet provider I would imagine. I hope they can get it sorted before their classes. Mine was very fast.

It started out with us all viewing each other, Brady Bunch style, on screen and saying hello and getting our settings for audio and video correct. Then Dave Gallagher, the owner of Animschool, gave a run down of the Animschool site and how all the functions work. This was followed by a QnA. We went quite a bit past the hour allotted for the session which was very nice of Dave.

The whole session left me very optimistic and good about the school. I am confident it will be a great experience and well worth the money. I wish this school existed years ago. I have been struggling to learn animation mainly on my own a long time now. Now I will study with the pros! And the classmates seem great and I look forward to it.

That's all for now.