This is what I completed for work. This is a medium armor set that a player would gain. I didn’t want it to be too crazy over the top, that will be held off for the full Samurai gear.
Samurai In Armor
Medium Samurai Armor
06/30/2009
06/22/2009
A side project
While I’ve been working on these Alien animations I’ve been having this idea brewing to do a fun Captain American drawing. I love Ultimate Captain America and wanted to try my hand at drawing a cartoony version of him. I did this in about an hour a half (including the thumbnails to find the right proportions). I think it came out a lot like what I had in mind.
Captain America
Its also brewing in my mind to model, rig, and animate this character. I’ve always enjoyed the entire process, and will be fun for this guy I believe. I’ll keep you all updated with the progress.
06/18/2009
Our Power Combined
Just wanted to put this together to see how the two wold transition together. Man I love the Trax editor in Maya!
Modeling credits go to Jason Elliot
Rig credits go to Malcolm Thomas Gustave
I did edit it slightly by removing the long tail.
06/17/2009
Alien Run
Now we have our Run cycle. I’m having fun with the scythe’s and how they react to the body movement. The hands are giving me some trouble. The rig didn’t come with pole vectors for the elbows and I tried to retro fit them in but it wasn’t working. Overall I’m happy with how this came out. My next step is going to be putting this and the walk together.
Modeling credits go to Jason Elliot
Rig credits go to Malcolm Thomas Gustave
I did edit it slightly by removing the long tail.
06/16/2009
Alien Walk
Time to put these principles to use. I wanted to start with some familiar, but change it up. So here is a walk cycle of an Alien/Demon thing. The goal here was to get away from the standard walk cycle. This creature gave me a good opportunity to do that. The scythe arms give a chance for great overlapping action and secondary motion, and I kept the arms in real tight to give it an odd appearance as it walks.
Modeling credits go to Jason Elliot
Rig credits go to Malcolm Thomas Gustave
I did edit it slightly by removing the long tail.
06/11/2009
Arcs! The Pitch
Finally finished my Principle test on ‘Arcs’! I redid this multiple times and even switched to a different rig because the Blue Man just wasn’t cutting it. I’m pretty happy with this one. Has a good story to it and the challenge was huge! I’m glad I worked through it and kept pushing myself to get it done.
As always, here is the definition of Arcs.
All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow. Think of natural movements in the terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm movement, head turns and even eye movements are executed on an arcs.
I tired to catch as many areas where there are Arcs as possible, while still keeping up with the Principles that had come before. Squash and Stretch, Overlapping Action, Follow Through, and Anticipation. This one had it all! I look forward to hearing your thoughts.
06/01/2009
Anticipation Edits
Watching the tail I wanted to make a few edits to get a better sense that the up and down motion of the ball was causing the tail to move. Here is the edited version.
Anticipation, Follow Through, and Overlapping Action
I set out to work on Anticipation and ended up adding in Follow Through and Overlapping Action. A ball with a tail really makes use of these principles while still holding onto the first principles of Squash and Stretch. Lots of fun stuff going on with this one. I learned a lot with this tail and got a great wave motion on it on the second jump.
Again, some paraphrasing from the “Illusion of Life”.
Anticipation
This movement prepares the audience for a major action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation. A comic effect can be done by not using anticipation after a series of gags that used anticipation. Almost all real action has major or minor anticipation such as a pitcher’s wind-up or a golfers’ back swing. Feature animation is often less broad than short animation unless a scene requires it to develop a characters personality.
Follow Through and Overlapping Action
When the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing, coat tails or a dress, floppy ears or a long tail (these follow the path of action). Nothing stops all at once. This is follow through. Overlapping action is when the character changes direction while his clothes or hair continues forward. The character is going in a new direction, to be followed, a number of frames later, by his clothes in the new direction. “DRAG,” in animation, for example, would be when Goofy starts to run, but his head, ears, upper body, and clothes do not keep up with his legs. In features, this type of action is done more subtly. Example: When Snow White starts to dance, her dress does not begin to move with her immediately but catches up a few frames later. Long hair and animal tail will also be handled in the same manner. Timing becomes critical to the effectiveness of drag and the overlapping action.