Don't Ever Call Me Stupid

This is one of the refining passes on my latest assignment. I'm really excited because this is my first dialog piece ever.

Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes

My boss listens to National Public Radio (NPR) all the time and he told me about a show called "Talk of the Nation" that was going to be discussing Hip Hop artists and the image they portray to the world.
Listen to it here

The guest for the show was a film maker by the name of Byron Hurt who's documentary "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" will be debuting on PBS tonight. He went around and asked many prominent artists about their content and what they thought of the many ways "hip Hop" can be viewed as destructive. It sounds like Mr. Hurt was pretty much confronting these guys in front of a camera. I believe the film has interviews with Fat Joe, Busta Rhymes, Jada Kiss, and a host of other artists in the lime light.

I think Mr. Hurt is doing great work. I also think he's doing exactly what many of us in the underground have been doing- transforming Hip Hop in order to prayerfully transform individuals.

Check it out tonight on PBS, and support. Peace.

B. Hurt's Myspace

Ballie's Final Turn

I tweaked the splining on Ballie's turn around for what will most likely be the last time. This animation is nowhere near the polished stage that I want, but it'll have to do. I'm moving on to other animations and projects. Farewell Ballie.

Purple and Brown

Aardman studios has really gone back to their roots with a series of shorts called Purple and Brown. The animations are simple and very well done. Below are some of my favorites, but they've posted a lot more on this youtube channel.

This Is War Tour Videos

Enoch "Who" Live


Jupiter 7 with B.I.G.P, Heavensake, and J Werley on the turntables


B.I.G.P. "Something Must Be Done" Live


Chef "Get Down" Live


Insomniaddicts "Fear and Self Loathing In San Francisco" Live

Linear Pass For Ballie's Turn

SketchCrawl #12!!!

Time for another world wide SketchCrawl! If you're in the Northern California Bay Area, we'd love to have you sketch with us. If you're not in our area, go to SketchCrawl.com and search the forums for a Crawl near you. (Don't worry. We have groups all over the globe)

Creature Comforts

Aardman Animations Ltd (Wallace & Grommit, Chicken Run, and Flushed Away) sent AnimationMentor.com some previews to their series entitled "Creature Comforts." They gave us permission to share them with the public so I posted them on youtube.com here. Keep your eye open for these animations on CBS in 2007. Below is one of my favorites.

Scary Mary Trailer

I don't know about you, but I have a lot of fond memories of Disney's "Mary Poppins." As a child there was nothing more entertaining than watching a witch haunt little Brittish children in the London fog.

Week 10

Look. Ballie's fat and happy!

Week 9: My first successful walk cycle

AnimationMentor.com beats out any training that I've recieved from my other schools by far. But in regards to training in animating the dreaded walk cycle, AM has completly obliterated their competition.
At the Academy of Art in San Francisco they showed me the "skating technique" in my 3D classes. This included a 10 minute demo before they threw us to the wolves. Things like weight, hip movement, overlapping motion, and timing weren't even discussed. (with exception to my intro to 2D animation class at the Academy taugh by the Awesome Cora Craig)

Anyway, here's my first successful walk cycle. It's a little weak in the knees still, but I'll be polishing it up in the weeks to come.


This is the second assignment. We had to pose STU in a concerned gesture.

Week 8 Pose

They wanted STU to show some power this week, so this is what I came up with. I kind of added a bit of a feminine spin on this one because I realized I haven't really created any feminine poses. Hey, I'm an equal opportunity animator alright?

Week 7 Revision

This is an animation demonstrating overlapping motion with the tail. It might seem boring now, but just you wait till I incorporate all of these principles in a scene. Yeah, then you won't complain...

Week 5

So I turned in my week 5 assignments a few days ago. I thought I'd post them up in an attempt to stay consistant for once in my life.

The pose assignment was to make the STU character look devestated. So without further ado here's STU winning an emmy for best performance...
















The next part of the assignment was to bounce a ball through an obstacle course they gave us. (I cheated and modified the course a little) This assignment was exciting despite it's bland appearances because this marks the first time they allowed us to use squash and stretch on the ball. Check out the Path of Action sketch I used to plan the animation first. The animation will be below it.

I need a new video host

This photobucket video hosting thing isn't working. It won't play my videos on a loop, and it seems to be playing them slightly too fast. Maybe I'll break down and buy QuickTime Pro.

Weighted Ball Test

It needs a few slow outs on the drops of the lighter ball, but you get the idea...

A Cryptic Visit

Monday October 16th Chris and I visited Cryptic Studios in Los Gatos, CA. If you don't know already, Cryptic Studios made one of the most popular online MMO's on the market today "City Of Heroes." The follow-up "City Of Villains," has also done very well, and boasts one of the largest fan followings in the online gaming industry. Cryptic is currently working on "Marvel Universe Online." An MMO based on the popular Marvel comic book universe.

One of my fellow classmates at Animation Mentor is Stephen Stacy. He's an animator at Cryptic, and he was gracious enough to invite the local students to his place of work for a tour.

I have to say our visit was great from start to finish. Everyone at Cryptic was friendly, and more than willing to answer any questions we had about their company and the industry. Stephen was gracious enough to even give us a few pointers on how to build a successful demo reel for a game company such as theirs.

We were wined and dined, not to mention both their art director Shayne Herrera, and CEO/President Michael Lewis took the time to stop by and field a few of our questions.

I was thouroughly impressed not only with how we were treated, but also with their mentality and working environment. Cryptic usually has a 40 hour work week which is pretty good considering most studios ask atleast 50 hours/week. That's not to say they don't have crunch times, but they are a family oriented company, and it shows by the number of employees who are actually very awake.

Probably the most impressive point of the day was learning that City Of Heros was their first game, and it was a smash hit. This has allowed them to be in the position of already obtaining large properties and franchises for their next games and they are in the process of tripling the size of their company in the next year. Needless to say things are looking up for Cryptic, and I know i'm going to be submitting my demo reel once it comes time. Why not? I've already been invited to do so by their staffing manager.

Animation Mentor Week 3

STU is excited this week...

Sketches

















Final pose in Maya


















My bouncing ball excersise

Animation Mentor Week 2

I'm in week 2 of my first class at AnimationMentor.com We just had our first assignment where we were to go somewhere public and do quick observational drawings of people as they passed by. Not being a noob to the whole drawing unsuspecting victims in public game I chose the mall's food court and sat down facing the mall with my back to the court. This way I could at least capture people's various walks. Many people made the mistake of sitting in Starbuck's where everyone's sitting, and there's no room for people to get up and do anything interesting. That's ok, I made the same mistake when I started.

Here's a page of gestures I captured that evening.





















Here's the sketch that I chose to finalize





















and here's the pose in Maya
















The theory behind assignments like this one is that animation is just a long series of poses. Learning how to build a successful pose with concepts like: line of action, asymmetry, and silhouette is a darn good place to start learning the craft.

I can't tell you how much better Animation Mentor is than my previous alma maders. The environment is so comfortable and everyone wants to help you. This is real character animation instruction created by animators for animators. I wouldn't recommend anywhere else over this beautiful institution.

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