Recycled Post

Again this is a response to a Spline Dr.'s post. I know that its lame to repost tings but I felt that it was a thought worthy enough to be reused here. The original post on Spline Dr.'s was about shape changes and my thoughts are really a complete tangent but they were interesting to me none the less. Here are the youtube videos i am talking about.






this is the Spline Dr.'s post here

And these is my crazy thoughts about it. . . .
"Ok so I had some interesting thoughts about the second and third one. I know that this might be getting a little off topic because this post is about shape changes but I thought I would share this anyway. At first I thought that it would be cool to animate this contoring and robot dancing stuff, but then I realized that it wouldn't be entertaining at all. My reasoning for this is some what of a paradox. We are amazed and entertained by that stuff because we know that they are real people and its out of this world what they can do with their bodies. Its the audience's disbelief that enthrals them with the fact that people can actually do that stuff. You can probably see were I am going with this. As animators we function in this realm of "the suspension of disbelief" which is very fragile. When an animated character moves or contorts like that the audience is no longer willing to suspend their disbelief and, by default, they think "oh is just a cartoon and that's why it can do that". Even though it is entirely possible the audience wont believe it. Think about it, if you were to show footage of a real person contorting or an animated character, which would get the bigger reaction? Another tangent that I was thinking about was; the thing that makes David Elsewhere so cool is that he moves so unnatural. It then occurred to me that he does in real life exactly what we try to fight against in animation. Locks off parts of the body while moving others, he pops and has no fallow through on movements, seems to have no weight as he floats across the stage, no overlap or cushion, But then at other points he is super fluid and and has excessive amounts of overlap and fallow through. And his forces seem so random and illogical. It takes him really great body and muscle control to achieve in real life what it take us to do in Animation out of carelessness. Granted, he has great timing and it is all composed in a very interesting way but would that be enough if it was an animated character?. I don't know if all that makes any sense to anyone else but I thought I would throw it out there . . . wow this is long"

Golf Shot

We went golfing today and my buddy Jules took these freakin sweet pictures. They were so awesome I had to throw them up here. There was fog in the morning but when it started burning off it made some awesome atmospheric perspective. We look like pros!

W.I.P. Dialog test

Done a little more with the monster but it still needs a bunch of work

Venom Maquette

This is my first attempt at making a Maquette. A buddy of mine (you can see him in the back ground of some of the pictures) had the idea while we were playing Marvel vs. Capcom. He said "Dude, wouldn't it be awesome to sculpt Venom" and I was Like "Yeah" and so we did it. Here they are!
Mine:




his:

Ainmation Mentor Open House

Some Shrunken heads are now going to Animation Mentor and they took me along to the open house up in Emeryville. It was really cool and Bobby "BOOM" Beck is a super cool guy. I got to sit in his chair and he took a group picture with us. Here are the pics.

W.I.P. New Dialog Test

I am really excited about this new test. I think it is turning out to be one of my strongest. The little monster is just blocked in so far .. .

This is a walk test that i did in the middle of last semester. I have since gotten feedback from a good friend and animator, Jules Jamal. This is my progress so far. I am having trouble wrestling with counter animation of the upper torso and the motion of the arms. They seem to be really fighting against any sort of pleasing arcs. Sigh.....