Long time coming

So I have been neglecting my blog, I know.  But I've always been wanting to post.  I've just been too busy.  even now, I should really keep working on my projects but I figured I had too many animations done and not posted that I really should do a massive update this week.  And next week... FINALS!  So you will see the final products of all the things I've been working on.
Also, someone gave me the idea to put tutorials online for various techniques.  I might just do that, once I figure out what to post.
Regardless, let's start with my walk cycles.  Yes, 2 of them.  The first is just a basic study with a tail, which is designed to help us figure out secondary motion.  If anyone out there things the tail or whatnot is automatically scripted to move, think again.  While big production houses might be able to set that up, often these things are going to be hand done.  Especially with students.
So... first the tail walk cycle:

Next up is a walk cycle that uses attitude.  It can portray anything at all, be it excited or sad or whatever.  I decided  to do an animation for a tough cowboy.  But I'm not really into cowboys... unless their robot cowboys.  So... here's a robot cowboy:

Now I bring to you a full character animation.  Sure the last animation was a full body robot rig, but I bound his hands to his hips.  This next animation focuses on controlling a character more, and acting.  Here, we have to show a change of emotion, and a shift of weight.

Speaking of weight... the next animation is all about lifting them.  Honestly, this animation isn't finished, I want to add a joke at the end, however it did satisfy the requirements of the assignment, which is to show a sense of weight and balance in a character, and use acting to make something look heavy. More importantly, we learned how to make a character look like they are holding something. We do this with Ik handles and locators, which can "attach" an object to another when used properly.

[Right now there is an error on Youtube, so I will upload this in due time.]

More?!  Well yes, there is lots and lots more!!  I have a project I will be uploaded parts of soon that involves a robot, a girl, and a junkyard.  Right now I'm calling it Junk, and it is only 3 shots.  In fact, it isn't even that.  it is really only 1 fully animated shot and 2 shots still "in production".  This is on purpose as it is to help students figure out how long it takes to make an animation in preparation for the senior project.  I will be posting some of the work on this later, so please look forward to it.

Finally, I have a dialogue animation.  It is not done yet, so what you see now is merely a Work In Progress (WIP) which is only on the second animation pass.  This animation is going to be an entry in the 11 Second Club. This will be done and entered into the contest by the end of the month, which is coincidentally at the end of the quarter as well.  In other words, this is my final project in this class.  Here is my current WIP.

One last thing, I have been working on a new portfolio website, as well as a new portfolio, resume, demo reel, business cards, etc. for my other class, professional development.  You can find my new site at DHixon.com, and I will be posting some things on here as well.

Well that's all for now, I have tons more work to do!  I should have work from my finals up by next week.  Don't forget to follow me on the 11 Second Club (look for my entry in the forums, under the name WeaklyAnimated).

Ta ta!

GENERATE CHALLENGE

     All day Friday and into Saturday Morning, SCAD Atlanta hosted the GENERATE 24 hour challenge.  This is a sort of contest where they take each department (animation, sequential art, etc.) and split them into small groups of 3-5 people.  Each department has a company come in and host a challenge that has to be completed within 24 hours.  Each group is usually assigned a unique topic.  My group was the Patchwork Pirates (so named because of our hodgepodge of members), part of the animation department.  This year, Turner hosted our challenge, and the challenge was to create a series pitch within 24 hours.  The pitch had to consist of:

A 15-30 second animatic of the opening

A Treatment

A 15 second Elevator Pitch

3-5 Character design style sheets

A full color style frame

3 Merchandise ideas in 3D

And an outline for an entire season

     All this had to be completed within 24 hours of the start, which meant 10am Friday to 10am Saturday.  Each group within the department was assigned a different network to pitch the idea to, which meant we had to research demographics, etc.  We were the group everyone wish they could have been, because we had Adult Swim as our focus.

     We did have some trouble though.  First, our original idea was poopooed by one of the professors who was leading the event.  The problem was the story idea had (unknowingly to the rest of our group) been used before by one of our members for various projects/classes.  So we had to rework the idea, change some of the character designs, and make things more edgy.  When we had finished that, we pitched the idea to the head of Adult Swim (or was it Turner Animation?) who loved it!  The second problem was that the member with the most experience in 3D and animation left for a previous engagement.  Unfortunately, another member also had to leave due to medical reasons.  That left 3 of us to do a huge task, and none of us were very experienced.

     Somehow we managed to pull though.  With the help from a friend, we managed to complete everything with an hour to spare.  Personally, I still think the look was too "cutesy", but since I was dedicated to doing the animatic by myself, I couldn't keep rejecting images so I just worked with what I got and tried to make it work.  Adult Swim usually does cheap, simple, exaggerated, and over-the-top animations, which are edgy and stylized.  I think we should have really pushed this more, but we would have needed more members involved through the entire project to assure the look we wanted.  However, I think we still managed to pull out a very good project with the limitations and complications that arose.  Since we did all that work, I won't go into presenting all of it again from scratch.  However, I will post the final PDF of the project as well as the animatic here, so you can see what we did.  Enjoy!

The Patchwork Pirates are:

Karen Chesney

David Hixon

Alston Jones

Colin Wheeler

Whitney Wheeler (no relation)

Special Thanks to Jenna Zona

View the PDF here!

Weak 1 Animatic

Exciting news everyone!
I have finally finished the animatic for the Weak 1 project.  While it is currently under the working title, "Red light, Green light", it will have a final name before too long, but no rush.
This animatic is still a work in progress, and some tweaking will be needed, but I have uploaded what I have done so far to show you.  Most of this is black and white, poorly scanned, with very sketchy drawings.  It might be a little hard to understand right off, so please give me your feedback and tell me what you think.  The most important this here is timing and layout.
Does it go by to fast?  Is it too slow?  Is the scene confusing?
Do you like it?  Do you hate it?
Please let me know, and be helpful too.  I am always looking for ways to improve things, so please let me know what you think and how you think it could be better.
Well, without further ado, here it is!

Weak 1 Update part 2

Here I am with part 2 of this simple update.
If you haven't guessed by now, I am planning to call each project a "weak", so this is week 2 for weak 1.
I have finished scanning in all the cards for the storyboard, and I am starting the next phase or 2.  The next 2 phases involve drawing the actual images and scanning them in, and compiling all these storyboard cards into an animatic.
An animatic, for those who don't know, is a simple and dirty animation that uses the storyboard cards to show a basic idea of what the final scene should look like.  Often, there are many tests between the first animatic and the final product, and these are also sometimes called animatics, and sometimes just called test scenes.  I am not going to be doing any test scenes for this short, since it is very simple.  However, I will probably explore tis idea later for a future project.
For now, I am going to draw more of the images I know I am going to use, as well as putting together this animatic.
I will try to make the animatic by the weekend, so I have something animated to show.  This will let me feel better about myself, get a better sense of the timing and length, and also set up videos on this site (probably through youtube).

So now I am off to pick up my sketchbook, which was accidentally picked up by a friend and is still at her house.  I have a lot to do, and little time to do it in, but what else is new?

Next, I will post a review of Monsters Inc. on Blu-ray.

Project Update: Day 1

Well I am busy at work on the second day already, which is mostly going to comprise of drawing the various scenes and elements of the animation.  I will focus on getting the easiest parts done first, so I can finish the majority of the animation before I get to the more complicated animation (frame-by-frame) which will take longer.  Luckily there is not much of that in this animation, which is the point of making it a short film, and by short, I mean SHORT... like 30 seconds, which is about average for a commercial.
So here is a recap of what happened yesterday.

Alas, I did not get as far as I wanted yesterday, but that is mainly due to my own inherit laziness.  I have been focusing on chores and other activities (like my 60+ and growing unread emails) rather than focusing on the animation.  What I DID do was still very helpful to get a head start today and tomorrow with the drawings.
Essentially, I drew out the entire story board on a series of 3x5 index cards, which I will be scanning in later this week (when I start scanning the actual drawings, since my scanner is not hooked up at the moment), and I will post online as soon as I can.  It took about 40 cards, but a lot of those scenes will actually just use re-cycled animation to save on time.
I also researched the various elements in the animation that I will need to draw, to give me a good reference for a starting point.  I needed lots of pictures of cars, cop cars, old cars, insides of cars...  In all, I have collected the best ones (about a dozen) that best suits my needs (plus one really awesome concept car design just to look at :p) and will be using these (printed out) to get a start on these drawings with fairly accurate, or at least decent, depictions of what they are suppose to be.
I also started some of the drawings, but spent too much time on other tasks, that I didn't even finish the first one yet, so i am going to buckle down and spend the rest of the day today and tomorrow working on finishing up these drawings.

Onward I go, to victory!

It begins...

Well the first brainstorming session is complete.  We have fleshed out details, added some great new content, and gone over the details for every shot and animation styles.  I am even playing with how music and sound effects will be done.
I will start in the morning with story boards, simple and quick, which will be very sketchy but should be enough to get the idea.  I will probably post a few of them online, in low quality, by the end of the day.
I also planned out my week with a bit of a buffer in case it (inevitably) takes longer to complete than planned.
So far, this is how things for my week look:

Monday: Story boards, character designs, drawing.
Tuesday: Drawing.
Wednesday: Drawing, scanning, coloring, animating.
Thursday: Coloring, Animating.
Friday: Animating, Sound effects.
Saturday: Music, Sound effects, Graphics (titles, etc)
Sunday: Final tweaks, rendering, posting online, brainstorming for next week.

Granted, this is a LOOSE timeline, I hope to take LESS time per topic than I listed here to give me a better buffer at the end of the week.  Music also will probably only be a placeholder until actual music is created by the members of Tangent Artists, which may take a few weeks.  But until the animation is the important part, sound is merely a detail that can be dealt with at a later date if need be.

So expect some updates tomorrow, and perhaps some pictures as well.
Wish me luck!