Final update on acting shot

This might be the very last opdate on this animation.
It's due till sunday, but I only have tomorrow to work on it as well, and with a render time added on, I don't think I'll change anything.

I learned a couple of "dos" and a hell of alot of "don'ts"!

Anyways, check it out, and hopefully you like it.

Finalizing acting shot

I think I'm getting fairly close to finishing off this shot.
I still have some tweaking to do here and there, but it's getting closer... and so is the deadline... damn you deadline!




Cheers

speed sketch

Another digital drawing, done in photoshop.
It's drawn for a speed sketch contest at cgtalk.com.
The timeframe was 45 minutes, and I used every second of those :)
The theme was "The Passenger".

Check it out.














Cheers

2 environment drawing

Okay, I'm still seaching heavily for a story to build a short animated film upon, and a big part of this search, is sketching and drawing random stuff. There is a big chance it leads to nothing, but maybe it sparks another idear, that leads to another one, and suddently it's all there in front of me... naaah, I'm dreaming.
Anyways, here are to small environment drawings I did in photoshop. Very unclear, not even sure my self what's going on... lol

Horton and random drawing.

Today I strolled around the town of Viborg, and found Horton Hears a Who on DVD.
I remember I watched in the theaters when it came out, and I absolutely loved it.

The dvd looks really great as well. It has a nice set of bonus features containing animation tests, blockings and stuff like that. Interesting stuff for sure.
If you pass by it, make sure you buy it. You wont be disappointed.




I also got a quick idea of drawing a cigarette, based on a thread at www.3dmaxer.dk about a cigarette as a character. It was drawn, scanned and colored very quickly (like 15 minutes all in all), so the quality is so-so, but figured I might as well show it here.

Spline Pass 2

Time for update, ehhh?
It worked some more on the spline pass. Still not really satisfied with it, but it's coming along okay.
I've tried to add some snappyness into it, and working on contrast, both in posing and in timing, all of which should help getting rid of the nasty floaty fealing, cg animations often have (mine at least!)

Check it out.
I guess the ending need some touches and probably some other parts as well.
Lip syncing will be the very last thing I do. It HAS to feel right with out it as well.
















The image above is a render test I did today. It's about 2:15 minutes to render, in a resolution of 640*360 which is what I will deliver in (640*480), so that is acceptable.
That's like a good 8-9 hours, which will be easy to do in time.
I don't want the light to be noticable, it should show the animation in a nice way, nothing more nothing less.

-Update will follow :)
Cheers

Spline pass 1

I got to a point, where I was pretty comfortable with my blocking.
This time around, I worked far more with the my blocking, and sat a lot more keys than I have done previously, which ment less work in the graph editor, when it's converted to splines.

I can still take my work with the keys a lot further, and it's something I will work more on in the future.
In the video below, you can see my first spline pass. The body is pretty much like I want it, but it still need some changes and refining.
The face and hans comes in, when the body works exactly like it should. Lip syncing very last.
It is supposed to work entirely without lip sync, so I think it'll be a good test, to wait with that.

Blocking phase 1

I spend a quite a lot of today (thank god for rainy sundays!) blocking in the animation.
There a still some things I'm not happy with.
It does seem a little unclear in some parts, and the whole "throw over the shoulder" act is not working like it should.

I'll spend the next couple of days, getting it all to work, and adding more keys.
Here it is so far:




Cheers

Animation planning

Okay, on to a new and exciting project.
This will be animation over a sound track (speak), which is something I havn't done in a year - last time was march, 2008 - so it's about time to start on that again. Plus it'll be a nice update to a future animation reel.
The animation will be created, for a contest at www.11secondclub.com and the soundtrack is delivered by them. It can be heard here: Soundtrack.

I have a month to do it, say I'll be taking my time, and take all the necessary steps.
First up is the planning and idea phase.
I have recorded some reference video, and sketched out some poses and thoughts.
It's always nice to get the ideas out of that place in your head, where everything sounds cool, and into reality where it might not hold up.

Anyways, here it is so far. I think it is a fairly solid base but I'll things usually change for me, when I block it out in maya.

Anyways, I can't wait to start block it in. I have a lot of ideas of motion in my head, so hopefully I can transfer it onto the actual animation.

This time I've got have more patience in the blocking, than I usually have.
I always ends up, going on to splined interpolation, with a half finished blocking, which leads to lots of fixing, and hazzle in the Graph editor. I've got to spend more time with blocking, working almost 2d like.
I'm up for the challenge, for sure.

Cheers

Spiderman walkcycle

Spiderman Walkcycle from Christoffer Andersen on Vimeo.

Not a lot to say. A standart walkcycle.

Next up is a animation for the 11 second club contest - yay!