Double Take

As promised a Double Take using the Norman Rig in Maya. It took me most of Sunday afternoon to do this!

This is done with the Norman Rig:

I'm quite happy with it but think that the timing needs changing a little, the beats are to linear. you can almost tap the rhythm very evenly (which is bad) Live and learn I guess!

Next week I am going to make a cartoony walk cycle using the squirrely rig!

Animation Test

Hey so its been a while! Ive been working hard and enjoying the summer, I did some animation tests way back in Feb/March and totally forgot to upload them.
So here goes:

This is done with the Moom Rig and was my first test:

The rest of these are done with the Norman Rig:

Doing these gave me a crash course in Maya which im starting to like using more than Max!

Next up I want to do a Double take, a throwing example and a walk cycle, I also want to finish the 11secClub entry for April that I started so watch this space!

Cartoon Jump

Having learnt from my Bouncing Ball Posts I have looped this a few times before uploading ;-)

It took me a few weekends to get it this far but I would still like to work on the arms more, there's to much twinning going on!

Crysis 2!

It was announced a while ago but I want to add a cool link to the Crysis 2 nanosuit.

This is the offical website: http://www.crynetsystems.com/


Working on this project is amazing and I cant wait to play it already!
I cant say anymore but i can say that its gonna be a kick ass game!

Bouncing Balls

Ok so like I said I am going to start at the beginning...the bouncing ball!

This is my first attempt at this as I seemed to have skipped this stage when I started learning about animation a few years ago, anyway I made a few:

I still consider them WIP as I would like to change a few things but I learnt alot about mass when making these. I want to make a ball rig for future anims so I can rotate and scale the ball over time using separate controllers which should make it a little easier to work with.

Games!

Working in the games industry is great, and since I love playing games aswell then I'm very happy indeed!

A while ago we all got given an awesome plaque and a copy of Crysis Maximum Edition from Crytek:

Then we got given a gift from our publishers EA! (so I chose Brutal Legend)

Plus I've also just bought Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Batman Arkham Asylum and will be ordering Assassins Creed 2 soon. The last game I bought was Bioshock about 4 months ago so this is a big week for me! Im really looking forward to doing some serious gaming and checking out the competition!

Reading list

I haven't posted anything on this blog for nearly 6 months! Oops!

Im still going ahead with my animation plan and will post up my work asap but in the mean time I want to let you know what ive been up to.

I recently bought loads of books after reading Carlos Baena's animation resources page: http://www.carlosbaena.com/resource/resource_books.html

I ended up getting these plus a few more:

"Timing for Animation" - Harold Whitaker & John Halas

"Peoplewatching" - Desmond Morris

"Cartoon animation" - Preston Blair

"Impro: Improvisation and the Theater" - Keith Johnstone

"A Practical handbook For the Actor" - Bruder et al

"Body Language: How to read other's thoughts by their gestures" - Allan Pease

"The Visual Story (Second Edition): Creating the Visual Structure of Film, TV and Digital Media" - Bruce Block

So that's what I have been doing and will be doing until xmas! (along with the weekly checking of tons of bookmarked animation pages and working etc...)