Anniversary + Reference!
First things first, today my wife and I celebrate our 4th anniversary! Her and I went for a walk and grabbed a bottle of wine for tonite. Shes an incredible woman that is completely responsible for me studying animation and a handful of other wonderful things in my life...like the reference videos she helped me shoot last weekend. Thats right...reference. What can I say. Its golden. Before I continue I thinks its important to stress that I am by no means an animation ninja...I just wanted to take some time and share with all of you what has been helping me. I was just talking to a buddy of mine, Ben, (www.BensAnimation.com) who is also a reference finatic (check out his site for tons of footage of people). Anyways, I was saying how I used to think reference was helpful and how NOW I think its neccesary. Having said that, you obviously dont want to lean on it...using anything as a crutch will show in your work, however, I cant imagine just jumping into animation on anything without having generated thumbnails, acted it out, shot some reference, etc. In class the other night my teachers made a comment about how if you want to know how to animate a ping pong ball just listen to it. As simple as that may sound that was a breakthorugh for me, so, these videos come with audio which makes them a bit heftier in file size but belive me its worth it. I also painted a line around each ball to aid in tracking its rotation, converted each file to 24 fps to match the "common" frame rate for animation, and last but not least I added a frame counter at the bottom of each video (and ofcourse a link to my site *cough*). These are all now located in the resources section of my site but for all you lazy folk out there I included a link below...
Lastly, the WORM is chugging along. Its been hard to juggle that and my other classes but with the support of my wife, the WORM team (which also includes my wife), family, and friends....I think we just might make the deadline for Siggraph. Roger has been tearing up the F-16 for the AIRMAN (you didnt think I had forgotten about the AIRMAN did you?!) and Shannon has been cranking out the Oliphant (mumakil from Lord of The Rings)...check out his site for screenshots (www.ShanonThomas.info).
Lastly, the WORM is chugging along. Its been hard to juggle that and my other classes but with the support of my wife, the WORM team (which also includes my wife), family, and friends....I think we just might make the deadline for Siggraph. Roger has been tearing up the F-16 for the AIRMAN (you didnt think I had forgotten about the AIRMAN did you?!) and Shannon has been cranking out the Oliphant (mumakil from Lord of The Rings)...check out his site for screenshots (www.ShanonThomas.info).
3 Comments:
Oops, you know today was like the first day I haven't checked your site. Nice to see the updates. What do you mean the WORM "might" get done....It will get done, it has too, we've worked too hard thus far.
Thanks for the plug. And I'm still looking forward to getting started on some Airman models whenever ya need them.
Couldn't get the links to work man.
LOL. Yeah, I know it will get done...I meant it as a joke...basically...at this point it is the textbook definition of "by-the-skin-of-my-teeth", LOL! It really has been alot of work...I cannot even begin to explain how many man hours I have put into this thing...its border line disgusting! It will be worth it...in fact it already has been worth it considering all of the knowledge I have obtianed throughout the entire film making process. What things can and should be done, what works and what doesnt, etc.
Speaking of working, as for my video links not working, thanks for the heads up...I forgot to point to the files in my post...I fixed it. Now quit reading this and go knock out that mumakil!
Post a Comment
<< Home