Adventures in Modeling

After two years of animating in Maya I am finally taking an intro course in Modeling. Our first assignment was to create a falling Jenga tower.

Painting in South San Jose

A plein air painting I did this summer in watercolor.

Dog Lady In progress...

 I really wish this one didn't turn out so dark. So here is another animation that may or may not make it into the game I've had the pleasure of working on this summer. You may notice that the animation is somewhat even, but this was on purpose to show the director what the character can do and it is up to him how long he wants the character to cycle in any of those poses. This, like all the other animations I have worked on for the game, will be on repeat creating chaos in the game. Once the game is done I will show you what it looks like in the final product.

Hungry Hungry Hipster

This character is supposed to be sitting upstairs in the cafe when she gets hungry and notices a half eaten something on the table next to her, no longer able to hide her hunger she reaches for the food devouring it, only to still be hungry for more. I am proud to say that I was able to pump out this animation in less than two days, it was another great design by Katherine Lynn Heckey, that was passed down to me from another animator who was not able to do it before summers end. The original animator was Danny Men, and although I was not able to use any of his ruff animation for the character I was inspired by some of his ideations of what the character might do; and it helped the process immensely! The interesting thing about these characters is that they change so much throughout the proccess of making the game that the animation can change over and over until the director knows what he wants his characters to be doing. The ruff animation I received from Danny Men started with her eating salad, he described her as a new hipster/vegetarian, one that wasn't really into it, a poser. That really helped me figure out the personality of her character, then I just made her into a hungry, hungry, hipster.

Unfinished work

I am sorry to say that with deadlines approaching and school right around the corner it looks like I wont be able to finish this character. This character was supposed to be reading poetry in the cafe to a girl that was so overwhelmed with lust over his poetry that she was going to grab him from across the table and kiss him causing him to kick his legs into the air, that being the obstacle that would get in your way in the game. There was just so much to fix with this animation that it will most likely not make it into the game but I still wanted to post it. 

The Smoker

Here you are only able to see the top half of this character, his bottom half wont be animated, and even though you cant see it he will be flicking a cigarette at the player. The main problem with this character was making the action of lighting, smoking, putting away the lighter, inhaling, then exhaling, then flicking the cigarette at you fast enough for it to be an obstacle. This project also forced me to work with limited animation only providing the bare minimum frames, getting me to push the poses a lot, as well as throw in a lot of motion blur's.

Kid Boss

After watching this one you may be wondering why the jump looks so strange. Well the character is meant to be placed on a 2D plane that will be moved around in a 3D environment. So I had to make a character jump to the right in place. I really liked the challenge of this character, and hope that his fast jumping and stepping are enough of a boss to prove worthy of the last obstacle in the Cafe game.

Fat guy and Stairs

This lovely looking gentlemen was drawn by Katherine Lynn Heckey, and I am so glad that this guy worked out but I was wishing the whole time that he had longer legs. This character was fun because when I got him no one knew how we were going to get him to walk down the stairs in a rude manner that would make it hard for the player to get past, but still work with a 2D character moving down 3D stairway. I suggested maybe he could hop, or skip down the stairs, and they liked the idea enough to let me try it. I added a blink, and a snort just because I couldn't help it. I hope for this character to be a difficult and comical obstacle for the game.

Barista

Here is the first animation I did for the Cafe Game I have been working on. This is just the pencil test, but most of the animations I post for the game will be in this format until the game is finished and the characters are fully cleaned up and colored.

Near Summer's End...

Hey everyone, I know I haven't been able to keep up with my blog this summer, but I have been working on some cool stuff for an Indie game my friends are putting together. Once the game is finished I will be sure to put up some screen caps of my animations in game as well as a link to the game itself. It will most likely be downloadable on smart phones for free.