Cartoony Baseball Swing

For the last two weeks, the 11secondclub.com have held a mini-challenge based on the theme ‘Sport’s Swing’. Since I’ve just purchased the fantastic Kenny Roy lecture on ‘Cartoony Animation’  I decided to try something in a ‘Cartoony’ approach. (Kenny’s lecture was full of those fantastic ‘Ah-ha!’ moments, and his delivery was really clear – I highly advise you guys check out his tutorials).

I began looking around for some inspiration, and found a pretty lovely short by Goofy called ‘How to play Baseball’. It was full of great little gems, so I decided to use him as my inspiration for my shot:

http://vimeo.com/26918115

I’m quite happy with how he turned out. I tried to really push the Norman rig as much as I could (Mod by F.C. Kiral – Cool Sports Norman), by really pushing the poses, but there’s a few poses here and there that I think, looking at it now, I’ve pushed a little bit too much, so I will go back and address them. It was a good exercise, and I learned a great deal, also getting some really great feedback from the folks on the forum.

As for the render – still trying to get my head around it. Been reading up on some great tutorials, and it’s starting to make some sense. For Normal, I’ve faked the back lighting, and used the Illuminati script for the Global Illumination effect.

If you want to see my ‘Work in Progress’ on this, you can check out the different stages of the animation click this link:  11 Second Club, Mini Challenge Thread

Here’s the Challenge Blogpost on the 11secondclub Blog: Give it some Swing

I shall post an update when I’ve corrected some Issues I have with the piece.

I submitted this animation for the awesome folks at Anim Dalies for some feedback, and they’ve just given me some awesome review of my shot, which I’ll be addressing over the next few days. To read the feedback, check it out here: Iestyn Roberts – Cartoony Baseball Swing, Anim Dailies

Walkcycle

I’m starting to render out a few of my shots, while working on my demo reel. Since rendering is something that I’m relatively new at, I’ve started small, and rendered out my simple walk cycle:

I followed a couple of tutorials to get the rendering effect, mainly Georgi Zahariev’s and Ciaran Dempsey – faking the Rim light by using the ramp node, and Sampler Info node – really lovely results, with minimal rendering times. As for the light, I simply used the Illuminati  rig, which I’m quite happy with – due to my current lack of Rendering knowledge. So hopefully, the next render will be a bit more ambitious! Learning is fun!

The Backwater Gospel

Whenever something new come out the Animation Workshop, you’re always in for a good short. I was pointed in the direction of quite possibly one of the best shorts I’ve ever seen, The Backwater Gospel.

The Hobo

The film is visually amazing, the style reminds me of Luis Cook’s ‘The Pearce Sisters’ that came out a few years ago, but this has taken it to a new level. It’s a nice fresh look, beautifully stylised, all the characters are textured in a way that makes the movie look like an illustration, and they’ve kept things simple, in terms of the mouth shapes, which adds a lot to the appeal. They’ve also used Flash to animate some things, such as the blood, and some major animation, such as the crowd fighting at the end – and the way they’ve managed to compile it all together is simply awesome. Check it out:

Their blog has a lof of their artwork on it, but also kicking around on Vimeo, there’s a couple of ‘Making Of’ videos, and it very interesting to see how they’ve managed to do some of the stuff (the way the Hobo was modelled really impressed me). Check out the blog here -:

http://backwatergospel.blogspot.com/.

Ninja – An animated test

Hello.

How to Cheat in Maya 2010

I’d just like to share, that I’ve recently bought myself the awesome ‘How to Cheat in Maya 2010‘ book by Eric Luhta – and I’d have to say, that it’s simply awesome. He’s got some pretty kick ass work flow methods in there, and some bad ass tips ‘n tricks. If you get yourself a chance to buy it – or want to improve on your animating workflow, I highly recommend it. I was quite happy with my ‘old’ workflow, thinking that I would never change it, but Eric’s book has opened my eyes to a simpler – yet more effective way of animating, and I think it’s already improved how I approach a shot, and the quality of the animation. He uses tweenMachine to create the inbetweens etc – but I’m much happier using FunHouses’ TradigiTools – as it’s incredibly easy to use, and I know the guys behind it :) (If you don’t use either – check them out – great plug-ins.)

So! With this new knowledge – I decided to follow one of Eric’s tutorials on a short animation, of a Ninja doing flips and some subtle acting. It’s been an awesome experience working on it, and so far I’m very happy with the way it’s turning out. Here’s my current version:

(The Ninja and House was already on the DVD)

My next pass will be cleaning up some bits here and there, and perhaps a quick render – but I’m really happy with how things are turning out so far.

Here also – is a compiled video of my animation progress – from Blocking in Stepped mode, through to adding more inbetweens, copied pairs, then splining – with the refining pass at the end. I hope you enjoy the progress – and check out the book!

CGSociety – My CGPortfolio

Hello.

Today, I went ahead and updated my Gallery on CGSociety. Right now, all I have on there is my Term 1 Animation Mentor Poses that we had to do. Those were super fun exercises, that I’m going to bring back into my workflow. I never felt more inspired back then, so as a part of getting myself more into animation, it’s something that I really want to do.

My Gallery on CGSociety

Feel free to view the stills on my page – Iestyn Roberts on CGPortfolio – and leave some feedback.

I plan on getting out a lot more with my sketchbook, so there will be a new pose added to the Blog, and perhaps the Gallery weekly.

Caveman – a Runcycle

Hello.

I’m currently in the process of working on my demo reel, everything will be new, a fresh start. Today I played around with the awesome Morpheus rig by Josh Burton, and came up with a nice little scene that I can test the rig out, and possibly animate a quadruped. Here’s a quick screen grab of what it looks like so far:

I’m going for a cartoony animation on this one, very stylised, as you can see from the arms and legs, so I’m pushing the rig as far as I can. I’ll be updating all week! Stay tuned for more folks!

Mynydd Mawr Project (test video)

Hello.

Here’s a very short video clip I’ve created, of a test footage on my project that I’ve been planning now for a few months.

In it, I try to combine my hobbies, Mountains, Photography and Animation. I think the test came out ok. There’s a few mistakes in it, that I can clearly see, such as the quick zoom in about half way through the video, and other minor stuff, but overall I’m quite happy with it.

The project will take a long time to complete I imagine. I’m going to keep it a secret until I finish it, but it’s nice to see that the test came out as I kinda imagined.

For this, I pointed my camera towards Mynydd Mawr, located the centre marker at the summit, and took a photo. All the settings were on automatic (P) – so that needs to be adjusted for my next run. I then paced out 10m, and shot the next photo. This was done all through the ridge from Trum y Ddysgl towards Y Garn on Nantlle Ridge, about 1km:

The ridge from where I took the images