Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Lazy Blogger...

OK, so starting a blog sounds like fun when you are unemployed and not that busy, but when life gets interesting, blogs die... which has happened to mine... so here are some updates!

I started work full time at Torus Games some months ago, which has been busy. I am working with my mate Aidan from my Iloura days. Really friendly studio, great animation team. I am getting to do some TD stuff as well, which is cool.

I have started at Animation Mentor this week, which I am very excited about... not too much to report thus far, we haven't recieved any assignments yet, it is just the settling in period, but it seems promising... gonna be HARD WORK i think... Dimos is my mentor, I think he's gonna be great. Crazy Greek-Canadian chappy...

I am collaborating with an ex-colleague, Michael Elder, on a free xsi rig for animators (as the ones out there aren't that fash). Progress is slow ATM, but with god as my witness, I will get it done before I shuffle off this planet...

I also got to do some traveling to Brisbane and the Solomon Islands before I started at Torus, both of which are beautiful places. The Solomons is awesome, I can highly recomend it for people who are into adventurous, no frills holidays. I stayed with my mate who has been living there for 3 years. I have never seen so many fish in my life. Historic battlegrounds and beautiful people... I had a blast.

So thats a brief summary. My cancer is staying away too, so almost at the 2 year mark... things are looking promising! Roll on summer... and I will hopefully post a bit more regular like, as AM rolls on...

Chris

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Organize or Perish!

I am finding that as I go along rigging it can all become rather shambolic i.e. No clear systems or conventions to unify my rigging ideas. So, I have sat down, thought about structure and have come up with this. It is a set of naming conventions, and blueprint/template for my character setups.It will hopefully make things;

a) Easier to browse a large Model Hierarchies
b) Make quick batch changes easier
c) Make all models cleaner and more unified as a collection

The document will be updated as I go along, I am throwing it up here for reference.

Rigging_Legend.PDF v1.1 27/05/08

Thursday, March 13, 2008

Articulation

With enough training, the human body can make some amazing shapes. I guess the main challenge is to make sure that your character has sufficiently flexible articulation to get to those poses as quickly and cleanly as possible.

The girl in the following clip has an AMAZING range of motion, almost superhuman. I am using it as inspiration...

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Quick Sync test

Just a fast LipSync test slapping down default phenome poses from the control panel. Not too shabby for 10 mins work and no tweaking. I like the transitions between poses, fells so much less linear than shapes. (ignore the crappy tongue btw :) ).


Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Inter-Face!



My rig now has an interface. It has been a great learning tool for scripting in the context of a productive project, much better than just learning by exercises. Good fun!

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Deform Test

I am working on a new facial rig that is deform/controller based rather than Shape-animation based. Here are some deformation tests. Squash,Stretch, Eee and Ooo extremes...


Monday, January 21, 2008

Welcome y'all!

Hello World,

I have just finished up on a project and so am unemployed. A perfect time to jump on the blog bandwagon. I aim to put up thoughts, musings and links; mostly of an animation related nature. I hope you enjoy...

Chris :)