The Door

In Concept Development class this semester we're going to be doing a series of short, about 30 seconds long, animatics. The first one we did was called "The Door," in which we have a character find a door and interact with it. The purpose of this wasn't so much about the door, but rather the emotion and the action points.

In fact, Ringling has a connection with FST (Florida Studio Theathre) in Sarasota. Once for every Concept project we do our entire class drives down there and we act out our stories. If it's possible, sometimes professional actors will act them out too.

Here's a link to a collage of the reference video I got at FST for my story: Door Reference

Make sure the sound is on, it makes the story even more awesome!




My story is about a young mermaid, Cindy, so stumbles upon a door while out exploring one day. When she gets to it, she's in complete awe and tries to open it, but the handle won't budge. A bit frustrated, she shoulder rams it, it swooshes open, and she falls through.... landing with a slap and a splash on hard ground. We see that she has fallen in a butcher shop, just in time to see a fish murdered. When she looks up she sees Dave, and he's dreeeeamy. They make goo-goo eyes and she bats her lashes to lure him to her, at which she pulls out her own cleaver.

Waiting . . .

So this was probably the most fun thing I've worked on so far this semester. We had to come up with a scenario where Artie is waiting for someone or something. I decided to make him a girl, Emily, and have her waiting for the results of a pregnancy test. Enough said :)




I do have a few problems though, mostly about the pregnancy test in her hands being a bit jittery. This is also a rendered version I did real quick, instead of a quick playblast like the Silhouette or Walk Cycle, so the lighting isn't the best it could be.

Silhouette

This was our second animation exercise for the semester, and we were give a week and a half in order to finish it. Basically, we were given a list of six words to choose from; we were to then choose from three of those six words and create a story. I came up with a story about Artie being bored at a bar when all of a sudden he sees a pretty lady and tries to flirt with her. She ends up slapping him and he's completely bewildered. The main purpose of this assignment was to work on poses and to make a clear silhouette.

It's OKAY, not my best. I definitely ran out of time on this one, not to mention my homework in my other classes was piling on.

Finding Hidden Characters

In my DFA (Drawing for Animators) class we've been spending the last month using different methods in order to create original characters, unique characters. Ultimately, we're supposed to end the project with a design for a character for the Push/Pull assignment, which we will animate in our CA class the rest of the semester.

The first technique that Jon, my DFA teacher, had us do was draw random silhouettes. Just use the tablet and draw them in Adobe Photoshop or Corel Painter, not trying to make any recognizable thing.

After doing that, we had to pick a few of our favorite shapes and do three variations for each using the same silhouette. As you can see from the drawing below, I got some pretty funky-looking things from the same shape.

Then, we pick our two favorite and create a final design. At this point we're allowed to "break" from the silhouette shape if it's needed to make a more appealing character, etc. Here are my final silhouettes:

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The second technique we used were to collect photographs, from online and taking some ourselves, of textures. Just anything where we see a design hidden inside. The first image is just a collage of some of the textures I found, the ones on the right being from online and the ones on the left ones I took with my phone.

Then we had to draw over a few of the textures to see any designs we could

We were supposed to then choose two of the designs we came up with to make into final characters, but I didn't really like anything that I came up with so I did a few more extra ones. I came up with these two designs in the end.












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The final technique we used was to draw doodles, just use the tablet and scribble around.

We basically did the exact same thing as before then, drawing over our doodles.

I only really like my camel so I chose that as one of my two to finalize. The other one I also did extra, like in the textures. Here's what I came up with:

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Here are my finals all put together :)

The last part of this assignment was to pick one of your final character designs for your Push/Pull character. Since we're going to be animating them, it had to be a biped character, which only really left two of my designs to choose from. I ended up picking both of them ;) I used the body shape from my cat-like character, and put some of the design from the little guy in the bottom left corner on him.

Here's my Push/Pull final character! :D

TADA! And it only took a little over a month...

Another School Year

It's been six weeks since the 2010-2011 school year started, and I'm already exhausted. I was lucky enough that this year I'm living in the Bayou Village apartments with my three roommates; Erica, Tarrah, and Kayla. It's been fun living with them, not to mention having a kitchen is AWESOME! I don't have to eat microwavable foods now if I don't want to :D

Here are some photos of my apartment and my room.

Movin-in process

Finished room

Walk Cycle

So our first CA (computer animation) assignment was to do a walk cycle that portrays a personality, and we were given one week to do it. The character's name is Artie, and he was given to us by our teacher to use for the first three assignments. I just went in and gave him a different look by turning him into a mime (I redid the textures and modeled a pie and hat).

It was a bit odd working in Maya again after so many months away, so it took me a bit to get re-accustomed, but I think I managed okay. I'm fairly happy with my walk, but I wish it was more "snappy" instead of being so evenly timed. The hand is a little too fluid too lol