Jeff Baker: Character Animator

The System is down

Jeff Baker — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 23:09:46 +0000

Got an email from my web host that they had to disable a PHP script that was bringing the server down. I got that straightened out and the blog is back up. I’m sure you were all sad…

In other news, I’ve been doing some work on the side with UDK and have been developing some custom characters to start animating for the engine. I’ll post some screen shots of the characters as they are right now some time later.

WhereHyena: Stand1

Jeff Baker — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 19:42:02 +0000

I kind of miss labeled the animation “Idle” below this one. It’s more of an animation to break up the standard idle animation (this one). Looking over Blizzard’s naming scheme for World of Warcraft I’m now calling this one “Stand1″ and the other will be “Stand2″.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

I got some great feedback from Kiel Figgins about the run and “idle” animations that I’ll be taking into account and going back over those two and tighten them up. I need to make a really solid reel if I want to get some serious responses from the studios.

WereHyena: Run

Jeff Baker — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 03:53:13 +0000

Finished the run. Now we start on an attack animation, and possible a death animation.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Werehyena: Idle

Jeff Baker — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 17:26:21 +0000

Finally got around to animating this guy. Going to work on a run and attack after this.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

WereHyena

Jeff Baker — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 07:23:19 +0000

Just finished working on this guy. I’m really happy with the texture paint on this one. Here is a crap load of images to look at!

Hyena Attack!

Bind Pose

Layout

Crow Shaman – Rig complete

Jeff Baker — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 22:18:13 +0000

Finished the rig with weighting today. Now it’s time to decide what kind of animation I want to start with him.

Crow Shaman – revisited

Jeff Baker — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:51:37 +0000

Finally got around to finishing this Crow Shaman character I’ve had sitting around. I completely redid the body mesh and I much happier with it. Also spent last week doing the textures for everything. I didn’t worry about trying to make a super condensed “game” version with all the UVs on one map. I’m just having fun with this guy and wanted something cool to animate next.

Geek Run – Update

Jeff Baker — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:28:56 +0000

I showed this one around a bit and one comment rang out about the character needing more up and down. Now, I was following the Richard Williams method of runs in that they generally do not have as much up and down as a walk. I applied that principle to this run, but something funny happened, it lost the weight. It drove home the point that there are just guidelines, not rules to animation. There may not be much up and down in a standard run, but with this very cartoony character it needed that large up and down to sell the weight presented in the rest of the body.

Well, I must say adding that larger disparity in the Y-Axis really accomplished that feeling I was going for. Thanks go out to Eric Cerda and Brendan Body for their keen eye for motion.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Geek Run

Jeff Baker — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 06:00:42 +0000

There are a couple of bits of my current reel that I want to replace so I’m working on some new stuff. This is me trying to get more acting into my animation. I’m going for a kind of awkward geek run.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

I wanted to show you the back because I really like the secondary motion on the backpack. Which there was a lot of that on this particular character so it made it a lot of fun to do. Which all of that brings a lot of life to this little guy. Thanks to Keil Figgins for providing free rigs for us animators to use.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Work Stuff – Green Armor Samurai

Jeff Baker — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:50:22 +0000

Myme Green Armor