Benjamin’s excellent site has been redesigned, with a beautiful portfolio, and a weblog you should subscribe to and be reading every day: all of the above.
120 frames of Tailor, jumping from step to step. It’s a lot better than it was, thanks to polishing and fixing the tail to ensure it does a better job of following the line of action.
So I’ve begun Animation Mentor, and just three weeks in I can tell that it’s going to make a huge impact on my understanding of animation, and be a really transformative experience. I’ve been pulling out all sorts of books for reference and inspiration, including the one above, signed for me by Ed Catmull at Siggraph last year!
I can also tell that my free time is rapidly going to diminish down to exactly zero, which is tough right now given the several unfinished little hobby projects I’m tinkering with. But in a way, I’m looking forward to just devoting every waking minute to animating, and I can tell the rewards from all the work will be awesome. First term is Basic Foundations, and my mentor is the amazing Anthony Wong.
At the moment, feed readers and fancy personalized pages are just aggravating me, so I quickly put together a start page with links to things I want quick access to. I’ve put it online, so when I’m at work with a spare moment, I can just pick a link to catch up on. Visited links are darker so I can see where I’ve been each day.
Reading content casually in the context of its original site is preferable to me right now over bulk feed aggregation, and I’m picky about how a start page looks and feels so this is the best solution for me.
Just saw Baz Luhrmann’s Australia, which I really enjoyed. Visually stunning, more intelligent than it appears from the outside, and of course very entertaining. It’s quite long, but not necessarily in a bad way, and despite a few little moments I would question, on the whole is a really great film. And although there’s been talk of studio disagreements over the ending, and of Luhrmann shooting multiple versions, I felt the last 20 minutes was some of the best stuff in the film.
It inspired me to post the above photograph from a hiking trip in the MacDonnell Ranges – an amazing place that I would love to return to.
Check out the Australia trailer, or the interesting Set to Screen podcast series from Baz Luhrmann.
Something from way back, but still a favourite of mine. This and other works like it are on cheap canvas, and done with permanent marker, which don’t always fare well over time. I hope they’re doing okay, stored away in Australia somewhere…
Being sick at home, though miserable and not very productive, has brought me back to my industry environment project. Just some modeling progress above (larger version), slowly adding detail and today I made a nice fairly high-poly tree. Also, below is a quickly sketched color exploration, though now I feel it’s way over-saturated and not really the look I’m going for.
An afternoon of exploring the industrial streets in Greenpoint today- I took a bunch of photos, mainly the different textures and surfaces, and just absorbed the architecture and atmosphere. Above is a rough concept, (larger version) inspired by what I saw, for an environment I’m planning to build as a 3D exercise.
I’ve been doing some general 3D work in Maya, mostly just to keep learning and stay focused. This image of a tree (larger version) was an exercise mainly in UV mapping and texture painting, and was also a bit of an exploration of Mental Ray’s shading, lighting, and rendering.
To conclude four frustrating days at home with the flu, I decided to do something slightly productive. Taking advantage of my newly refreshed computer with nice new software, and my sadly underused Wacom, I painted this night scene with a cabin in a forest. Definitely rough, and a sign of my inexperience with the proper use of brushes and techniques, but it’s a start. It’s also an exercise for me in posting rough work, which usually I like to keep hidden away! Here’s a larger version.
