Lots of shtuff!

Well here I am. The final week of the Worm project. I am animating and rendering all at the same time. My teachers have been pouring the homeowrk on me like sand from a giant hand above my head and I am actually still surviving. The whole team has been great especially my wife who pretty much knows everything there is to know about 3D even though she has never actually done any 3D in her life. I cant imagine that...carrying around a chair that you cant sit on. For me thats a big part of the fun...being able to actually do the stuff...she has to watch us monkeys jump around and bang our hands on the keyboards while she tries to make sense of it all. One thing is for certain...I have learned a great deal about story telling. It is simply incredible how much work goes into this stuff...a minute and a half and thats it...people will go "hmmm...that was cute"...and walk away. LOL! Too funny. I know it seems like a small project to some but for me this has been a very genuine moment in my life....after all of the agony of a first short film I can honestly say that this is what I am supposed to be doing in my life. All the late nights in front of the monitor yelling outloud at software, sloppy sketches of worms and apples scattered throughout the house, piles and piles of reference...all of that chaos but in the end I still smile. Its a pretty powerful feeling seeing your first film coming to life as each little frame of EVERY pass of EVERY shot shows up in the folder...but I will say this...all jokes aside, this truly is the moment of truth. I cant help but wonder if all of that research and meticulous planning of compositions/staging and other "invisible" elements has paid off or will I just look like some crazy bastard wasting alot of technology. LOL! Its a little frustrating/scary since I am still learning animation, storytelling, and...well...everything that was required to make this happen but hey...its fun to try and ride a bike before you can walk right?! LOL! I am sure I will look back and cringe but thats life...we all have to have some way of tracking our progress (or degradation...ouch). Anyways, the film is due for upload to the Siggraph servers on friday so you know what I will be doing this week...thats right...juggling cats and chainsaws.

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...

Quicktime Player 320x240 (3.9 MB)

Quicktime Player 320x240 (2.9 MB)

Quicktime Player 320x240 (2.7 MB)

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).