Who wants to see some of my Animation???

This is pretty cool. As you may or may not know I had the super awesometastic opportunity to work on "How to Train Your Dragon". Slash film has a clip from the film and it has a whole set of my shots in it, which is pretty cool considering the film isn't even out yet.
From about 0:27 to 0:33 is all me baby!!!
These were actually my first shots on the film.
click here

Face Animation

So I haven't posted in a while because I really haven't had anything worth while to put up. But I think I do now. Lately I have been in sort of an Animation slump at work. My stuff seems stale and stiff. Among other things my face animationwas suffering a bit. There was no fleshy feeling in any of it. The great Jason Schleifer suggested that I take some time and just do some really simple tests and refresh what I know. This was SOOO helpful. These tests aren't feature quality by any means but they sure helped me to see things clear.
I took some notes along the way and Ill share those too. The first is just a simple change up to see how fleshy I could make the face feel. Again the animation isn't very good but it helped me to see what I could do to really make the face feel connected. The second is taking that idea and applying it to more change ups with some minor upper body animation.

NOTES!

Face Animation Notes
-use lid sculpt controls to keep the lids connected to the brows and cheeks.
-at the brows extreme the nose flesh will move up with them
-Arc the corners of the mouth
-Maybe a little squash and stretch in the eyes to exaggerate expression change
-Squash and stretch in the jaw and how that pulls the flesh in the cheeks and eyes and

nose.
-Have eyes react first most of the time.
-Group low face controls to offset timing from up face.
-James Baxter says that face muscles move in "fits and starts".
-Most movements in the face will be a direct result of emotion. Some will be residual
movement from those emotive moves. i.e. Brows go up out of surprise (emotion) but also the
corners of the eyes might go up because the eye brows will pull them up (residual). This
may not really happen on real people but it can add a nice fleshy feel to an animated
character. Should be used minimally.
-Sometimes its not the mouth move that is wrong, its the jaw.
-Arc the inside of the brows.
-Its animation, shape what you can to strengthen your idea.

Eye Check list
_ Brow and Lid connectivity
_ Lid and eye connectivity
_ lid sculpt
_ Eye squash and stretch.
_ eye shape Asymmetry

Brow Check list
_ Brow Lid connectivity
_ Brow to Brow connectivity.
_ Brow Muscles, Forehead and bridge of the nose.
_ Brow arcs
_ Brow lead and Overlap

Mouth Check list
_ Mouth lids connectivity
_ Mouth Nose connectivity
_ cheek connectivity
_ Jaw mouth offset
_ Jaw squash and stretch
_ lip sculpt
_ Mouth asymmetry
_ Mouth corners arcs
_ mouth up down left right
_ Jaw drag

Remember the power of a good break down.

Use mini expressions!

Screen Credit

I'm getting my first screen credit!!!!!!!!
I wasn't expecting it, but I'll take it! The film is super fun and I couldn't be more proud to have been a part of the amazing animation team.
Everyone go see Madagascar 2!!!!!!!

PDI Rocks!!

Today was my first day at PDI and it was awesome!! Everyone is super friendly and helpful. I loved every second of it!! But now I am tired and its time for sleep.

Ps Go see Kung Fu Panda this weekend. It going to be awesome. Skadoush!!!

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!