Class 5 Finished: Vacation Begins

Wheeeeew... Class 5 has wrapped! I am currently taking a vacation for the holidays in NYC! It is nice to get away from Flint, MI for a while and my computer. We are going to the Hamptons (swankey) this holiday season to rub elbows with the rich and famous as well as our relatives. I have to admit I feel a little like the Beverly Hill Billies going out to the Hamptons-an interesting juxtapostion. I will be posting pics of our vacation on here soon.

More Layout Pics...

Layout Pics...

It's getting CRAMPED IN HERE!

With animatics due, finals to take, and web design to be done... The already small work space that I have is getting ever smaller. My drawing desk has become a mixing console and keyboard rest. My computer has become a drawing desk/catch all... The process of recording foley and scoring music for my thesis has turned my life upside down. Stress and deadlines makes for a busy work area when your doing everything!

More Updates Soon To Come...

More posts soon to come... I have been super busy with finals at school as well as modeling and texturing my set that I haven't been able to post updates. I promise that soon I will have some rendered scenes of what the set looks like as well as a new fully 3D animatic by this weekend. Bare with me.

3D Animatic Started!!!

I have the first half of my layout DONE! I have positioned the camera angels in Maya and have done some rigging for the desk chair and desk. I still have to model my characters plant and somehow make blend shapes and animated textures for the burning leaves! Yikes this is going to be a couple of tough weeks ahead...can't wait to get all of the layout and blocking done and get into the animation. I still have to clean up all of my old animation tests from before and get my reel ready for job hunting. Here is some of the layout for the film that I did...Enjoy.

New and Revised Animatic....Again (Sigh)

Okay... So I am a week behind schedule here. I will admit, going between AM.com, school, extra curricular activities, and a full time girl friend is wearing on me! Not to mention that recently I have been asked to be a committee member of the Flint Film Festival. They have seen the web site I created for local Flint filmmakers, www.flintfilmforum.net and want me to apply my knowledge to their cause. While this is all well and good, I am stressed! So enough of my rambling...here is the latest revision of my animatic. I plan on adding my layout shots by this weekend. Hopefully I will have the first 2/3 done by Sunday evening.

Thumbs...

Kind of working backwards here... I haven't posted in a while so here are my preliminary thumbnail sketches for my story...

Finnished Animatic!!!

HOORAY!!!! (As I wipe the sweat from my forehead...) Finally finished my animatic! Still have to ad sounds and minor things...Might have to tweak the timing a little bit too! This was a lot of work. I have done a few animatics in the past at Ringling School of Art and Design for some traditional animations but this was by the far most involved and intensive! I feel really happy right now that this is done!

Updated Animatic

Heres an updated version of my animatic with a little slice of a walk cycle test of one of my characters on the end...

More reference poses...boards to finnish...feeling the crunch as deadlines loom!

Here is a screen shot of one of my characters... I posed him out for use with my boards in my animatic. Still working on the last half of the story as well as doing a walk cycle with my main character. Have to have all of this stuff in by this Sunday at 3:00 PM...CRUNCH TIME!

Story Pitch: "Office Guy"

Here is the story pitch for my short film idea. Chris made some good suggestions about the tempo and words I used to tell the story. Even after the corrections were made...I still feel like a rookie.

Reference Photos & Character Reference

Here are a few photos and stills I used for character, lighting, and composition reference:

More Images From Animatic

Animatic Stills

Below are a few key stills from my animatic. One of the coolest things that I learned from this project was forced 3 point perspective...Check it out:

Class 5 In Session!

Hey everyone,
This is my first post in my Animation Mentor.com Class 5 Blog. Here I will be documenting my progress all the way through until my final film in Class 6. After choosing from 5 different stories I have decided to go with a story called "Office Guy." This story is about a disgruntled hippie who is trapped in his office day job. To make office guy's life even worse he has a Nazi boss who is a cross between George Castanza and Rambo! He yearns to be with his beloved marijuana plant "Spud." Office guy plans his escape to freedom. This is the first act in this 3 act comedic short.

Video: