Congrats... Team Mocap!

I'm sure many of you have heard of FJORG at SIGGRAPH this year. A good friend of mine, W. Jacob Gardner, and his team Mocap with two other members, Tomas Jech and Jim Levasseur, went on to win the FJORG competition. They were awarded 1st place for their short titled “Switch.”! Also check out their FJORG animation, this FJORG Documentary. Cool!
Do visit Jacob's site, Spline Doctors (interviewed by Andrew Gordon), and Keith Lango's site to read more about this. Keith has got a really cool interview on his site, do check it out!

Congratulations guys and of course, Jacob. I really enjoyed every part of your animation. You guys rock, and inspire me to the hilt! I'm sure that you guys will soon be animating for some big shot studio! Keep up the great work. :)

-A

Doodling : Elfyy the Wizard

I was feeling sick and tired after cleaning up the f-curves jungle of my push/pull animation. I decided to doodle something to rejuvenate myself. Meet Elfyy!

My Push and Pull : Rendered

Okay, I call this final. I know its not perfect. I had fun making it and learned loads from this exercise. Yeah, there is a lot of room for improvement and you guys are all welcome to critique it, as hard as you can. I'm prepared for all your harsh and ruthless comments, heh!.... They will definitely help me for my next animation. I really can't afford to spend anymore time on this one.

Yep, its spline and all cleaned up. I've tried my best to keep that 2D look intact. I hope it looks okay.

Thanks!

-A

I'm Back!

Hey guys!

I'm back and working again on my push/pull. I'm glad that I'm feeling a lot better today and with almost full of energy. I can still feel some weakness sometimes, but that okay. That shouldn't stop me from working. heh
Thank ya all for replying to my previous post and making me feel better... you all are really nice. :)

Thanks!
-A

The greatest wealth is health!

Look to your health; and if you have it, praise God and value it next to conscience; for health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing money can't buy.

I'm suffering from cold, soar throat, headache and some mild fever. It feels really terrible. I'm sorry guys for the delay. I'm not able to work on my animation right now. I hope I get well soon and finish my push/pull animation as soon as possible. Right now, I'm feeling well enough to write this post. heheh....
I know a lot of you guys/friends visit my blog just so see my animation WIPs and read my thoughts. I promise that I'll be back soon with something good to show you all.

Right now, I'm taking rest and doing almost nothing. I'll be back soon!

See ya! :)

-A

Final linear stage...taking my time

I'm in the final stages of my linear cleanup and I'm taking my time. This is the part where I finish about 99% of my animation and fix the last 1% in spline. In spline, I don't animate at all. I just delete the redundant keys and I may push a few keys up or down in the graph editor to make things look better, and thats all I do. Spline will be tackled quickly as compared to linear. Linear is quite a challenge, because this is the part where I refine every action; add moving holds, add micro anticipations which are hardly visible @ 24 fps, add extra overlap/drag, adjust my timing, cross check my arcs, etc. So, linear stage is all about fixing and refining. I'm working hard on those curves too to make them look pretty in Graph Editor and at the same time fixing my every move. As Keith says about curves in Graph Editor; "If they look good in linear, they will look great in spline! You may have to fix those tangents a bit to make the f-curves flow nicely and you're done.."
Also, I'm trying my best to keep that 2D/cartoony feel. I'm not much interested in that super polished, shining, CG feel. Yeah of course, it should look clean and nice. So, working on it. I hope the final linear animation looks pretty good and cartoony. Keep visiting!

-A

Push and Pull (WIP) : Cleaning up linear

Nope! I said NO.... No updates to show you guys right now. I'm in linear tangents and cleaning up the mess. You know, in stepped it doesn't look like a mess, but once you interpolate it starts becoming a mess. Thats the reason I wanted to keep this animation in stepped. I like the 2d feel of stepped tangents. Yeah I know, I'm inspired by Keith and his two second animation, which is a final animation in stepped. Its really cool and 2d-ish.
Honestly speaking, I hate this 'fixing graph' business. And after reading keith's posts, I've started to hate them even more (now don't get me wrong, he is not telling people to hate them!). It makes me feel sick, and this is the part of CG animation that I hate the most. Fixing those god damn f-curves is not-t-tt-ttt animation. I just don't consider that a part of this art, which we call 'animation'. Yeah of course you fix a lot of of stuff in there in the spaghetti box and refine the overall motion, but its REALLY boring (for me! and maybe for you too). It drives me insane. And the worst is yet to come - When I enter the spline mode; where I'll be found cleaning up those 'computer poop' in the GE. Clean up business takes forever and sometimes I really feel like blowing up my computer. Ah! yeah, yeah, I know that every CG animator has to do this and thats what I'm doing right now. And yes, I'll just clean up the important parts of the character body and a few important attributes, and will leave the rest as it is.
Keep visiting! I'll post an update soon!

-A

p.s. And if I feel really bored and sick, I'll just finalize the animation in stepped and enjoy my cool 2d feel... but I don't think I'll do that! Lets see.. ;) Right now, I'm tired and I haven't finished reading my Harry Potter book. So for now, I'll be reading that! (relief....) HAHAHA.... Wow!Now I'm noticing.. I've written this LONG post just to tell you guys how much I hate working in the Graph Editor. LOL... How silly am I...

Update # 6 : Push and Pull

Okay here's an update. ;)

-A

A little home cooking : keithlango

Check out Keith's new animation. Yes, its Ramtin's Moom rig and it looks really great. Its so much different from the typical CG style. Its kinda like 2D. I'm really inspired by this style! And yes, there are no CG inbetweens in this animation. The final animation is in Stepped Tangents. Cool.. eh?

-A

Update # 5 : Push and Pull

Here's an update number 5. Wow! Five updates already. Cool!
This one has an improved silhouette and I've fixed a couple of elbow pops. I've also added some motion blur using After Effects. I was just playing around to see if it looks good, so its not permanent. I love to experiment with my animations you know. heh..

I haven't yet worked on Jacob's points. Wait for the next update! ;)

-A