Mery Rig - One Week Animation Project Pt 4

Hello hello, so my weekend was spent planning and getting ready for my big move to Australia so the animation had to wait for the week. (Don't worry, I bought a new sketch book for the 4 months of travel...yes i'm thinking of the essentials).

Yesterday I turned on the splines and started working on separate body parts. On this rig (as if I don't praise it enough...it's free too...go get it from here) you can make only certain elements viable which means its a great way of getting those curves smooth in the spline.
I am struggling with the dance, I altered it to try and find a bit more variation and comedy so it's a few stages behind the rest of it. Once again, the face is not even slightly done. apart from vague poses left over from the blocking stage. So ignore those horrible face...if you can.
I hope you like it and please forward on any critiques. I'd love to hear your opinions.

Mery Rig - One Week Animation Project Pt 3

Another day and another pass on the animation. Not much has changed since I only had a little time today but the dance is a little more settled.

Mery Rig - One Week Animation Project Pt 2 (blocking)

So I've had a few hours free and I've managed to fill in a few more inbetweens on my animation. It's such a long clip but i'm gonna stick with it and spline it tomorrow.

There are still some poses in there I want to change but it's getting there.

Mery Rig - One Week Animation Project Pt 1 (block)

A week ago my laptop broke. I had been waiting for it to happen for a while but it doesn't mean I wasn't heart broken when the I.T guy said the dreaded words 'it's the mother board'. Poor little laptop.
So I had to bite the bullet and get a new one. Apart from having a new arch nemesis in the shape of windows 8 , it has been great. I am editing my showreel and ready to put everything in order but I couldn't have a new super fast laptop and not try some animation. So here is a little trial acting piece I'm working on. As i've mentioned many times before...I LOVE ACTING SHOTS. So I tracked down a fantastic rig called Mery (here) which is probably the best rig i've ever animated with.
Here is a little block that i've done so far. I'm only a day or two into it so i've got a lot left to do. Also please ignore the face since after I finished the key poses I decided to leave it for later. Now it looks a bit insane.
I love blocking (as i've banged on about on here before) but i'm just about to add some more anticipations and settles before I go into spline.

If you have any feedback...it is always welcome :)

How to tell you're an old animator

There are certain events that make you sit back and realise that you have changed, things that make you aware that there has been a significant passage of time. At the moment I am creating my showreel and cv for job hunting in Australia. I can't tell you how excited I am to apply to work in Australia. The whole reason to come to Korea was to save enough money to animate in countries such as Australia and Canada so this is a big step but it's easy to still think of yourself as a graduate when in fact my CV tells a very different story. Here are just a few things that have dawned on me lately to make me realise that I am no longer a 'fresh out of the box' animator and maybe those 7 years I've been animating in the industry make me an actual animator now.

CV's

Creating your CV when you leave uni is a experiment of words. How can I make the part time job I had in the toy shop at 15 sound like it's relevant to a studio environment? But as soon as you have some jobs on that CV it actually becomes more like a game of Tetris. What to leave off? What should I leave in ? How can I make that really ,really cool thing I did jump off the page? This week I faced a new problem that made me step back and take a breath...'I think I may be old!?' I had to get rid of my A-levels from my CV. Squashing a life time into two pages can prove hard but at 28 I've finally reached the stage where A-levels are such a distant memory that they no longer seem relevant on my CV. That's some scary stuff. I realise in the big scheme of things this is just silly but it's nice/weird as hell to be at an age where something so momentous from my past has well....been sent to the bench.

Rigs

I paid for a rig, yes I know! As a student animator living on cup-a-soups and 'chicken' cola , the idea of paying for a rig was insane. I could use the free ones to my hearts content why would anyone ever buy a rig? Then at some point I crossed that line where I realised how 1. insanely hard rigging is and how I should give them all my money 2. How much time it takes to make a good rig. I still use the incredible Malcom rig and I even still use the morphus (old habits die hard) but when I saw the Body Mechanics set of rigs by Joe Daniels (here) I had thrown money at them before I had my first coffee. Was it worth it? YES. I love them. You definitely get what you pay for and I can now animate things I've always wanted to try such as lady walks and baby walks. It may be age (or laziness) but I've crossed the line where I'm an animator through and through so spending money to be one doesn't seem strange, after all I've been spending every penny I've made on animation books for so long that moving house means I need to hire the world's stoniest man to move my boxes, at least rigs fit on a hard drive.

Remakes

This isn't an important point but the other day I caught some kids in my class reminiscing about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...it took me far to long to realise they were reminiscing about the new modern version. I've become so old that I've started reminiscing about reminiscing.
And there you have it...in conclusion I'm old, and there is nothing wrong with that. Bring on the next stage of animation because something tells me it's gonna be a lot of fun.

Laptop

My laptop broke....ten minutes later I was online looking at how to buy a new fancy one. This isn't so much me since I think all animators would buy a laptop no matter what age but my lovely boyfriend heard my laptop had broken and he went as white as I felt. 'How will you animate?' was the first question that passed his lips. He gets it....so this either means a. I'm annoyingly obsessed 2. He doesn't question I'm an animator. I think there is definitely a tendency in our industry to idolise everyone with experience and I still do, in fact everything I've ever learnt from animation has been a lesson taught to me buy another animator or actor but it's strange to see that the people around you don't doubt that you are an animator too. I feel I've come a long way from my first animation job where i'd go to the toilet just to dance because I was so excited....nahh that's a lie. I'll still be doing that on my first day in every animation job.

Learning to Model: Day 6/7

Day 6/7

These two days have blurred into each other. I realised as soon as I started skinning that I’ve made a mistake and put the arm bones the wrong way up so I needed to go back and re-rig but it was very satisfying to have learnt enough over the last few days that I could just fix it myself.

The skinning process is normally something I do in the paint tool but I’ve really started to enjoy skinning purely in the component editor. I think it’s the way forward for me as I understand where I’m headed with it. I can clearly grab a very that’s bugging me and read what’s influencing it. It’s a little bit of trial and error but it makes more sense to me the more I am doing.

I have almost finished skinning now. I just have arms and feet to go (which is still a lot in hindsight)                     

I have unfortunately had a bout of food poisoning from some live squids I was forced to eat at a work function (yuck!) but I have dragged myself onto the computer to get as much done as I possibly can but its been a slow two days.

Let’s hope the rest of the week is more productive and I can start animating soon.

I think I’ll do a quick walk or run test with him to see how everything is working and then start building my next character.

It is so satisfying to be this far into the process. I think its very easy to have big ideas but never do anything about them. Now that I’ve forced myself to do this I think it will be a lot easier in the future to keep pushing forward. Well that’s the general idea anyway.                  

High Res Reel link

Hi guys,
I know the showreel below is quite low res so here is a link to my Vimeo high res version :) enjoy x

http://vimeo.com/marshmallowpenguin