Quick Test - Emotion Change

Look Test Final from AFighting Panda on Vimeo.

So this is just me playing around and quickly doing something with the new Zoey rig from ianiamte. I decided I wanted to focus on the face and do some basic facial acting. So, I just came up with this. Spent a couple days on it, so not too bad time wise but I know I can do better.

Rio Comparison and some General News

Password is: education

I found this video over at the 11 second club so I am sure a few of you have already seen it. However it is worth posting again since it is great to be able to see the reference and thought process that goes into making these great, great shots. I would like to thank Jeff Gabor for posting this video because it is going to really get the animation community fired up, I know I am.

Update about whats going on with me.

So, workshop 5 of ianimate ended this week. It was a pretty amazing workshop I must say. I had Mike Walling, who is an amazing guy and a great animator. I wound up doing an old clip I found months and months ago which fit the bill for the workshop. It was actually a clip that was in my "must animate pile" so that was really great. I had a really clear vision as far as the emotions and the beats I wanted to hit and the shots are coming along. I have a lot left to do on my shots before they are finished. I would say I am 60 percent done. I know I am not going to be able to finish everything over this 3 week break but I figure I will get as much as I can done. After I get the shots all splined out and cleaned up I am thinking I am going to post up some videos from along the process. The video reference, The blocking, and the final animation. I think I may even toss the layout in as an extra, so you can look forward to that. As far as next workshop I am going into the final workshop at ianimate, which is pretty exciting. I am going to be working on my reel. I will be polishing up some old work and making a new shot to fill in the gaps that my reel currently has. All in all, I had a great time this workshop and hopefully I have just as much fun the next workshop. As far as the blog goes. I have 2-3 different ideas for the next pandas animation tricks video I just need to sit down and make it. Sadly I have been having technical problems with my recording software so I will have to figure that out before I can add any new videos, so it may be a little while, we shall see. Anyway guys thank you for reading, I really appreciate the support. Reading the great comments I get really makes making my videos worth while so thanks a lot for that.

One of these things is not like the other.

Even though I never draw I got into the mood today and did some bird drawings....and a squirrel. I just thought it might be fun to share some of my sketches since I almost never do that. As for other stuff. ianimate workshop4 is over but I have a ton of work to do on my shots. I have a to do list which is a mile long but what else is new? As for next workshop I have 3 weeks to settle on the piece I am going to be slaving over for 14 weeks. I have a clip which I really love but I figure I might snoop around a bit and see if I cant find something that speaks to me more. It is an unlikely outcome but you never know. Sometimes these things just scream ANIMATE ME! Anyway I am going to try to finish up these workshop 4 shots in the next couple of weeks and do a really nice render for each shot. At that point I will make a video of my shots and post it up for all to see.

The Work! The Work!

So I have finished my first workshop at ianiamte! Woot! Actually I finished it about 3 weeks ago and I am just now getting to posting this stuff up. I think it is time for a bit of a recap (since its been so long). My experience at ianimate so far has been pretty positive, I must say. I had Tal Shwarzman as my instructor and he was awesome. He was strait to the point and called us all out on any bull we were trying to skate by with, and I loved that. It was tough though, I gotta say my second shot especially was a rocky, rocky road. I only just got it to a point where I feel like I should be sharing it. I still got a couple tweaks to do that will be hard to notice once implemented. At least for the non animation savvy. I have met a ton of really cool people at ianimate and some just amazing talent. Really top notch guys at this place and I have a feeling most are going to be pretty successful in the animation world eventually. As for the site it was a bit of a rough start but the kinks are pretty much worked out now and everyone is settling in. We are starting to get a lot of neat rigs now which is great. Having access to some top notch, user friendly rigs is just an amazing resource. I just Started Workshop 4 last week which is full body acting. That is going to be interesting I have to say. My instructor David Hubert seems like a pretty cool guy and I hope to learn a lot form him. I don't have much to say about him yet just because we have only had a couple classes. Needless to say I have high hopes for my next couple of shots I will be working on and since I have already started my block of my next piece that enthusiasm is definitely needed. I am going to try to post more often than I did this last Workshop. That way I wont have to do a gigantic post like this again....

About my shots for workshop 3....

In workshop 3 we do two shots which are close up acting shots. We can do whatever we want and use whatever rig we want. It basically splits into two shots at 7 weeks each to complete them. Now this was pretty rough on me because of two things 1. I am a very very weak actor. I have been studying more and more into acting than I ever have before. I am very comfortable now with physical motion so acting is the next stage of my animation learning. 2. I am weak with facial expressions. I have a really hard time posing out nice appealing natural looking facial expressions. When you are doing close up facial acting those two areas are kind of important. Needless to say it was pretty rough. But I learned a ton on both shots. The second shot most of all. Probably because it was a female character and I have done so few of them up to this point. Also the whole issue of me not being a female makes it hard to really dig into that mind set. It was an uphill battle the entire time. But I think both shots are OK. Neither are ground breaking in any sense but both are fairly solid and I am proud of a lot of the work I did. Anyway I will stop blabbing. Please enjoy my shots and if you have any comments or questions please feel free to share.

Hey everyone just putting up a post because I am excited to announce I am now a student at ianimate.net the new online animation school created by Jason Ryan. Its an online school that is much cheaper than animation mentor with an interesting program. It gives you one on one time with actual animators that are in the industry right now (mostly dream works guys) and they are going to be giving us specially built rigs and stuff which is cool. This is basically going to burn a hole in my butt though because I now have to get a part time job to cover the monthly payments needed to cover the course. I think though given the people involved it will be worth it. I had been telling myself that after I get a job as a game animator somewhere I can go ahead and go to animation mentor because I can afford it at that point. I decided to go with ianimate.net because I can afford it NOW and it will allow me to add things to my reel which will help me get a job sooner. That also means that I have to finish my game reel by the end of this month. That is kind of a tight deadline but hell I have done more with less time so lets do this thing! Oh and the classes start on the 16 of September I think so after that I am going to start having a lot more updates on my blog. it might actually turn into something people will want to read!