walk into run and other things

So I just finished up my walk into a run transition. I am OK with it, I think it works, I don't love it to death or anything but its hard to love a transition animation you know? Anyway I have enough time to do one more shot for my reel I think. The problem is that I don't know what that shot is going to be. I hadn't really thought about it yet and I need to figure out what I am going to do and then do some reference for it as soon as possible so that I can get to work on this new shot. It needs to be something physical and I really want it to either be funny or just really cool. I have an idea for a chase scene including a dinosaur the only problem with that is the dinosaur rig I have is pretty weak. Its alright but there are a couple of key functionality things that I really would like it to have that it doesn't. Also I could see doing a creature animation like that taking a lot longer to do since I have never really delved into creature stuff yet. Oh well we shall see what I come up with. This post is really about this new addition to my reel which I think should help me out quite a bit. Anyway till next time you guys have a good one!

Game reel stuff - Death animation

So I am working on my game reel right now trying to get it done before I start ianimate.net in early september. I just finished up the render on it so here is the video. If you see any problems let me know please and also let me know if you think the colors are working. I may have to go tweak them because they are quite vibrant. Anyway I am on to my other couple animations I need to get finished in the next week or so. continued later....

So instead of adding a new post I am going to add to this one. I had a grand idea of what my "game reel should be" it was leaning heavily on cycles and the like. I got an email from a guy I know who is pretty cool and he is a game animator and he was nice enough to throw me some pointers. he basically said game animation isnt all cycles. He said a lot of things but the big thing for me was the idea that it wasnt about making a character move in a cycle but what you can do with a cycle that counts. That kind of made me think about my approach in general. I have been for a long time been working on my stuff thinking that if it was technically good then there ya go end of story I should land a job with that. That obviously isnt the case at this point. I see guys getting jobs out there with reels that arent technically as polished as my own but I will admit that their reels are more ENTERTAINING! I can have the the most polished reel on the planet but when it comes time to remember who's reel had the most impact who are you going to care about more? The guy that made you go "oh that is technically well done" or the guy that made you laugh? I think the answer is obvious. But to push that idea farther what if you got the laugh and it was well animated? That is where I need to be. So I scrapped a couple of ideas I had for shots I was going to do and have come up with different ones that should be more interesting and entertaining overall. The death animation is going to stay though cause I think its alright and the feedback I have gotten so far has been pretty minimal so I am feeling good about that.

run cycle mayhem!

this is my new run cycle looking for crits!

Note I have been getting a lot of really good crits lately so soon I should have a good solid finished version of this done and then I can move onto doing a transition between a run into a walk. Since my walk is already done I got a lot of the components under way.