Rigging, My current class

so this month I am taking Rigging. What rigging consists of is placing joints inside of a skeleton so that you can move the model around. With the picture I am showing, there is a skin layer outside of this skeleton but I have it hidden so that you can see the joints clearer. I am further along in this process so these pics aren't what you would start with but kind of in the middle before the advanced rig that i'm working on right now.


this is the skeleton just relaxed. You're most likely wondering why there are letters and arrows around the skeleton. The S stands for shoulders and it's the icon that an animator can select if he/she wishes to move the clavicle, scapula, arm bones, etc. when you click on the S, it makes all of these moveable at once. Just as the other icons which i will show in a minute to give you a better idea of how things work in rigging.

I just translated this up in the Y axis. if you notice the shoulders move along with the clavicle and scapula. The way that this works is that the rig is built up of an hierarchy chain. first the child, then the parent. so when you want something to drive something else or one to take dominance over the other, you use the hierarchy. Simple example is if you move your shoulder. If you watch it, what is moving along with it? your ulna, radius, hand, and your scapula and clavicle. so it makes sense why we would create a control that drives all of these. the shoulder bone is parented to the left clavicle IK handle. The IK is used for rotation. i'll keep it simple. (still following along?)

so what i did here is move the arrow icon. I parented the eyes to follow the icon, but however there is something else parented to the icon as well, these are called locators.


If you notice the highlighted objects, these are the locators. The eyes would be the child and the locators the parent. Hopefully that makes sense. So the locators are the child to the arrow icon, and the arrow icon the parent. That way I can either select the arrow icon and the locators will tag along due to being the child of the parent, or I can move the locators individually and the eyes will follow because they are the children to the locators....make sense? I hope so. It's really just logic if you think about it. Anatomy plays a role a little bit in helping figure out what should be the parent of what.

This is an example of what an IK does. The purple surface is where I attached the IK handle to.


As you can see it allows me to bend the arm in a certain fashion, but if you look at the V icon in the background, that is there to allow me to translate up or down in the y axis as well as constrain my elbow so my rig doesn't break....an example is that you can only twist your arm so far because it stops, adding a pole vector constraint to the arm keeps is from going crazy.

What I was thinking about doing for anyone who's interested is recording a little bit of me fiddling around with the rig so you can get the idea of what's going on. If you have read this far, please leave a comment letting me know if you would like to see a little youtube video of me moving the parts around and I will record and upload it. I'll record a 30 sec to a min clip just kind of explaining how things move around. Plus its a good refresher for me = )


that's all for now, back to studying.

Trip to Palm Beach

Yesterday I was invited by my friend to go to a drifting competition in palm beach. It was a pretty fun drive but the scenery was kind of boring. Nothing really to look at except the same countryside for 2 1/2 hrs. Once we got there it was pretty cool to see all of the different types of cars competing and they had a little section where they could practice drifting on the track. We were hoping for a little more excitement then what we got, but overall, it wasn't too bad. We ran into the owner that had sold my friend his car and since he runs most of the competition, we were able to go "backstage" (if you want to call it that, more on the other side of the fence) and take a look at some of the cars and meet the people driving them. Overall it was a good trip and I wound up driving his car for awhile back home since he was tired. If you didn't know he has a very nice car! well, as far as racing goes. We wanted to put his car into the drag competition, but decided against it because if it broke down, we have no ride home, lol. Here are some pics of the day. I will upload a video from my camera to youtube if anyone wanted to watch. I also wanted to thank lorena for the cool tripod = ) It's very useful. Before I left I came across a raccoon who was watching me, lol. He was scared so I didn't get too close but I setup my camera and got the best pic I could.



Jays Engine. His car is fast!!A racing car. Mazda Miata used for a racing school.


Here's the raccoon.

A 300zx on the practice track. If I had money, I would like to try it out. These people kill their tires since they're peeling out a lot. The whole place smelled like burned rubber! I think I still get faint smells of it!

Another racing car from the same school. I guess the school is sponsored by mazda.

Happy Valentine's Day

so happy valentine's day to everyone. especially lorena = ) I hope everyone is having a good day. I am happy today because I got a 100 on my test so i feel like things are going good in this class.

I can't remember how Valentine's day got started so I decided to look up the history of it and came across this. it's always nice to know how things got started and why we celebrate these days in our lives and history is cool (not the class though, lol).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentine%27s_Day

so anyways, no new stuff to post yet. I have maya 2008 on my mac laptop and am running bootcamp for my pc so ill try to get some screenshots taken then i can post my little duck script that I did for class.

Anyways, I want to take a moment and say thanks to the people who post comments on my blog. It really means a lot to know that people take the time to post, either just to say hi or talk about whatever. I know people are busy and have lots of things to do each day. so when they take the time to comment, I feel special, thanks!!

I hope everyone has a good day.

onto the next month!

HOORAY! I finally finished my 2 classes of mel scripting and production modeling. I have learned a great deal from both and hope that I will continue to remember everything that is taught to me. I just finished my final projects which i spent the last 3 days working 16 hrs each day to get them finished and/or working correctly! This month certainly has been an interesting one and definitely a tough one. I also am glad that it's over and i'm moving onto rigging (putting joints, bones inside of 3d models to make them move). It's the only class i'm taking this month because it's so in depth so I will have 17 lectures/labs. Normally ill have 2 classes per month 1 class is usually 10 lectures/labs, and the other class around 7-8 lectures/labs. Since I'm hoping to have a little more time this month, I decided to start working on my own individual studies to help keep me fresh and continue improving on what I want to do (which is animation). So today I was looking around for some pre-built rigs and found a couple of them that I liked so I downloaded them and posed a couple just to show you what i'll be working on.
B4 that though, let me show you one of my final projects. Since my code only works right now for the pc, i'll have to wait to show others the pictures of my duck, once i have that, then i'll post them along w/ the GUI. I do however have my head model I can show.

This is the side wireframe of me. We were required to build a bust of ourselves

this is the side view also without the wireframe so you can see the smoothness. Does it look like me?

here's the front view wireframe

here's the front view smooth. Does it still look like me? Maybe a little?

So onto the next part. Like I was saying before I'm going to keep building assets so that by the end of the year when it comes to demo reel time, I will have a whole library of animations that I had been working on and also a bunch of extra things to throw onto my demo reel. I'm excited to keep improving in animation. It certainly is a lot of fun to give a lifeless object life and character. Here are some of the rigs that I will be using for my individual studies = ) just so you know, since I was getting used to the rigs, I posed them and took a screen shot to make them more interesting.

A ball w/ legs and a tale? Is he starting the moonwalk? Eat your heart out Michael Jackson!

Since I can't touch my tongue to my big nose, I decided to have this guy do it for me = )


Scooby Scooby Doo!! I love this dog! It's going to be fun making this quadriped move. The only thing about the dog though is that its ears and face don't move = ( But at least i'll be able to make him wag and run and walk, sit, etc. And another bonus is that I don't have to feed him or clean up his poop!

Ruh Roh, he's getting ready to pounce!

I will definately post some animations of this dog once I get some fun things started with him. I'm excited to show others what I work on. I love to hear feedback and suggestions if any.

I hope that everyone's day has been good and I start my classes back up tomorrow so I hope to hear from anyone who reads this soon and look forward to posting more stuff!

KEEP MOVING FORWARD!

Bringing in the new year happy 2008!

So I was at the bookstore the other day and I was looking around and found a cool book. So me being me, I bought it = ) (cmon it was about the 80s and the toys and games I play w/...I had too)
Anyways, anyone who knows me always knows that I think the decade of the 80s was totally awesome because i was born in 80 and I feel that so many important changes happened during that time for society and I was lucky enough to grow up in the middle of it. Music was crazy, movies were awesome, people were exploring new realms that had never been explored before such as computer graphics, cellphones, creation of better toys, etc etc and which would lead into the 90s w/ internet etc. To me the 80s have always been an exciting time....weird, but exciting..I usually find myself laughing at the outrageous styles and the big bangs girls had....like my sister, lol...I love you Kell! don't get offended please. So anyways, I just finished reading the book and it was such a good and fun book to read. I love reading about the old games, and toys, etc that I used to play with friends and family. It's certainly endearing and meaningful. I still find myself listening to 80s music because of it's awesome keyboards and just the creation of the music as a whole (there are so many sounds mixed into each song and people were experimenting w/ new technology as well in music)! Who doesn't know Huey lewis and the News or Genesis or Phil Collins, Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Vanilla Ice or people such as Michael Jackson and Twisted sister....ok we can do without twisted sister, lol, but in all seriousness....who could say that the movies like The Goonies, Transformers, etc etc. were bad movies? No one I know. Well, maybe Lorena doesn't like the Transformers, but she's the exception ;P I remember crying when they killed optimus prime in the Transformers movie....they killed the main character...what movie did that at the time? None that I knew of.

I just remember so many great times. I would go to the mall with my mom and she would drop me off at Aladdin's Castle. The best arcade at the time, lol. Now there are no arcades = ( I eventually hope to open my own arcade one day w/ a bookstore and a store like starbucks attached to it. I will call it Cafe 80s (what's that from? Anyone, if you know...you just might like an 80s movie). But I think it would be cool to have a place like that. I've never seen one.

I'm sure if you made it this far, my blog might be somewhat entertaining so I though you should know that as I type this i'm watching Big Trouble in Little China and working on my .mel script for school and eating yogurt, and i'm as happy as can be, lol. These movies are so great and I feel like a lot of the newer movies that are coming out have been letting me down. I feel that they are putting so much stuff in the movie that the simple storylines and such are getting lost...either that or it could just be the movies i'm watching, lol. There was a good one recently..."Juno" I would suggest that to anyone.

My thoughts on the decade of 2000. I think the decade of 2000 is who can make something better which is good but not new, I mean the technological leaps and bounds that are being made every 5-6 months is amazing! But at times, its seems to me that it's like well we already have this stuff, let's just keep adding things onto it. So you buy a top of the line laptop for 2500 - 5k$ and then in 6 months it's outdated and you have to upgrade to play even the latest greatest games. As far as music goes, I feel that hip hop has been popular for the 2k decade. It's all about over-abusing hip hop to the point its not hip hop anymore, but garbage rapping about the stupidest things that I could create in the matter of a minute...I could just walk down the street and rap about what i'm wearing and how i'm walking and how cool i am for walking down the street....but who wants to hear that? not me!! What happened to the expiremental hip hop from the 80s? or the good gangsta' rap of the 90s? now its just about rapping about how much money you have and your image not talent....) Another thing I noticed that IS cool about this decade is that they are coming back w/ a lot of the 80s things, like toys, etc.

Although there are many changes in the past 5-6 years I think there should be something soon that will catapult us into a different age like futuristic cars, etc. We are already starting. I'm excited to see where things will go in 2010-2020.
I apologize to anyone who reads this and gets confused...i tend to type free flow and just let things out as they come to my head.
So I guess another thing I just realized too is that I'm almost 30......CRAZY! I don't feel like i'm 27 and I certainly don't act like i'm 27. I'm not disappointed in my silly attitude because that's just me, but I always think it's funny when I tell people i'm 27 and they're really surprised...they think i'm 21. Thanks! I remember when I was 16 being told I looked like I was 21 which I was proud of then too! Funny how things reverse. I'm still keeping my youthful looks....maybe its due to me always laughing...who knows! As stressful as being away from friends, family and loved ones while going to Full Sail, I still find time to laugh and goof around, either just making myself laugh while working on my projects (most likely because I have gone crazy from staring at the screen for so long) or just enjoying the company of my friends.

So I guess I will rap this up since the movie finished and I have to find another 80s movie to put in...maybe i'll watch the Wizard or TMNT. I hope that you enjoyed reading this somewhat and I will be posting some pics and such online soon. My schedule has been crazy this month and it's a lot of work...plus i've been procrastinating too which doesn't help, but I should be good to go for tomorrow = ) When i'm done w/ the class i'll post a screen shot of my duck and show you the amount of code it takes to create such a simple little duck. its crazy!

Well I hope everyone has a good day, don't be afraid to chat with me online or call whenever, if I don't answer, please leave a message. Take Care

Orlando Fog

So I went to school this morning and on my way out my door I noticed it was really foggy outside. I thought that it looked cool so I decided to take a couple of pictures to share with everyone. Since I live next to a lake, I thought it looked awesome how the fog covered up the houses across the lake and how it was so thick that it covered up the sun but you could still see a nice glowing outline of it. Nature is great!





This is the sun and I was trying to go for a good composition. I really love the contrast from light to dark. I feel that it really adds depth to this picture and even though the sun is so far away, it still looks like it's within reach of just grabbing it and pulling it from the sky.


Here's a little bit more of a closer shot. I was trying to make the sun a little bit bigger and more apparent.

This picture to me makes me feel calm for some reason. Maybe it could be due to the soft white from the sun and the silhouette of the trees. I really love how this one came out. I was thinking about doing some things in photoshop to see if I could enhance it. I might ask Lorena for some guidance since she's more experienced with photo-manipulation. I need to start educating myself on photo altering. The more that I have been painting in photoshop, the more i'm starting to understand how layers work, etc.

Anyways, I like the way all of these pictures came out so much that I might make one of them a background for my pc = )

I hope you guys like them!

2d animation projects

2d animation...staging

In our 2d animation class we were asked to do 6 different drawings throughout our 9 days of classes. We were asked to specifically set up a pose that shows what the subject was doing at the time. I will caption below each picture to tell you which project is titled what. We were only given a couple of minutes to draw each one, so these drawings are sketches and just trying to get basic lines of action and ideas down quickly. The teachers said that they do this at disney all the time to set up scenes and to make sure that a particular action is going to work for that scene. The objective is to have someone from the audience be able to understand what's going on in a scene without much thought. So our job as animators is to guide a person along without them having to think much, so stuff just makes sense. They say that "you can tell when there is good animation, when you can't tell its animation at all." So if you're watching an animated movie and you forget that you're watching drawings, computer graphics, etc, then the animator is doing his/her job = ) But, the downside to that is if they make a mistake, someone will point it out very quickly! My teachers tell me to "NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE AUDIENCE, people are smarter than they seem." Anyways, on with the pictures.


On this one, we were told to show "Interaction with an Animal" So since I hate cats!! I decided to show a person kicking its ass! Notice the extra emphasis on the big foot, lol. Will it land on its feet?...i hope not!

This project was to show "you're waiting in an elevator, but how are you waiting?" I decided to draw a crowded elevator with 2 fat people squishing me. I'm sure all of us have been there at some point in time where people are too close for your comfort....I have a zone people!! acknowledge it!


This is was "giving a gift" Now it's the spy vs. spy guy, but the only thing i'm kind of bummed about with this one is that I didn't draw the other guy to show him in a birthday hat, etc. waiting to accept the gift, so in my opinion, this one takes a little too long to think about. Well he's got a bomb behind his back...who's he going to give it to? is it a gift? you decide.



This one is "avoiding a puddle" Now this one I made very clear, so there's no confusion as to what's going on. The other thing with this one that the teacher's liked is that I had a secondary action...the umbrella. Animators like to show and have a secondary action. I was trying to keep the scene simple, yet interesting, I think I did that with this one. (I thought it would be funny and ironic if there were a car to come by and splash him since he's being so careful to avoid the puddle. maybe i'll draw something like that later on)

This is titled "helping an old person" I decided to show a guy giving a purse back to an old lady from the burglar who took it from her. it's an ok drawing, i'm sure I could have made it more interesting.

This is one I like also; "putting on a trenchcoat" I was trying to be humorous in this one, but i'm not sure if the trenchcoat I drew is necessarily a trenchcoat, this one could have been more interesting, or i guess, more understandable. Hopefully people get that he put his leg through the arm part of the coat because he's dumb. I tried to add extra emphasis w/ the question marks, but I think this might take someone too long to think about.


On a side note, I was at downtown Disney last night at the Virgin megastore and I came across this book: To Infinity and Beyond; The story of Pixar Animation Studios. I haven't put it on my wishlist, but this is definately a book that I would love to get.




So I hope this update was good enough for the time being, I have to pull some of my other projects off the school server so that I can get those uploaded on here. I thought I already had, but I looked around on my hard drives and they're not there, so expect those to show up here in a couple of days.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

Happy Thanksgiving. As you all know, I will be celebrating Thanksgiving by myself this year, but I hope that everyone has a great one.

Just for fun and for you to know a little history on my family, my great ancestors actually sailed across on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower compact and celebrated the first Thanksgiving. Here is a list of the names that signed the mayflower compact:

The Mayflower Compact

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, France and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc. having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation, and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and equall laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good of the Colonie unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape-Codd the 11. of November, in the year of the raigne of our sovereigne lord, King James, of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fiftie-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.

John Carver	Edward Tilley	Degory Priest
William Bradford	John Tilley	Thomas Williams
Edward Winslow	Francis Cooke	Gilbert Winslow
William Brewster	Thomas Rogers	Edmund Margeson
Issac Allerton	Thomas Tinker	Peter Browne
Myles Standish	John Rigdale	Richard Britteridge
John Alden	Edward Fuller	George Soule
Samuel Fuller	John Turner	Richard Clarke
Christopher Martin	Francis Eaton	Richard Gardiner
William Mullins	James Chilton	John Allerton
William White	John Crackston	Thomas English
Richard Warren	John Billington	Edward Dotey
John Howland	Moses Fletcher	Edward Leister
Stephen Hopkins	John Goodman

::My ancestors names are Samuel and Edward Fuller. I have always liked learning about my family and where I came from. I feel that it's important to know who your family is and what kind of challenges they faced during their time and where they traveled to. If you want to know more about your family and do some background research, The LDS Church offers free services to those who want to do some genealogy work on their family. Here is a site that will help:

http://www.ancestorhunt.com/mormon_church_records.htm

Lots of people from all over the world will travel to Utah (Mormon or not) and will do their genealogy work at the building downtown. There is a vast database of information that they have and it's cool to see other people who care about their family and want to know more history about them. Here is the website for the genealogy library and just a little paragraph about it:

http://www.utah.com/mormon/family_history.htm

"The Family History Library of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the largest genealogical library in the world with copies of millions of original records including the names of more than two billion deceased people. People come from literally all over the world to search the library's records and find information about their heritage. The library has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Salt Lake City."


So hopefully everyone has a good Turkey Day! Make sure you save a plate for me when I come back to town, lol.

Don't spill the beans!!

So last night me and my roommate were talking about cleaning up the fridge and moving stuff around, and he had mentioned that he still had this can of beans in there. Now this can of beans was bought from Sam's club when he first moved in, so it's been in the fridge for 6 months and he's only eating it a couple of times (he doesn't like to throw a lot of stuff out). So I told him we need to clean some crap out of it because he's never going to get around to eating it anyways. He didn't want to throw it out either that night because he states "he's lazy" but I told him we should and I would walk with him to the dumpster. So I go to my room to throw a shirt on and all of the sudden I hear this scream of horror and sudden disgusted laughter. I peak my head around the corner and was asking him what was wrong. He said to take a look at the can of beans......and this is what i saw:

You couldn't pay me a million dollars to eat that crap!!!

Here's the can of beans that was in the fridge for so long

Here's my crazy roommate....some of you know the stories....and yes, he plucks his eyebrows!

So anyways, I was obviously disgusted by the beans and we went and threw them out. I have a physics final to study for tonight and I hope that I do well on it tomorrow. I guess I better start complaining!! LOL

Hope all is well with everyone, don't be afraid to post comments either = ).

***side note*** still teaching myself how to encode the quicktime player into this blog so that way I can get my animation posted and you can loop it to watch it continuously....that's the best way to watch it. I will also have some more drawings from my animation class up tomorrow and some nice things to say about the class and the teachers.

peeling away the years

I got bored earlier and decided to put this peel off mask on. It was too funny though because I have never been able to peel off the mask and have everything still stay in tact. Luckily when I peeled it off, it stayed all together as 1 piece so I had to post it because its awesome.....look at all of those dead skin cells, lol.

physics update....1 more test to go

So I got into class yesterday and it was nice because it was a very short day (kind of pointless to go to class) but anyways, I got my grades for the last test. Before I had gotten the test back however, the teacher said "would the following people stand up"...he had called a couple of people, then he got to me and I stood up. He told everyone that the people who were standing up had scored a 90% or higher. I was very very happy! So if you're wanting to know what the score was on my test, it was a 100% = ) I feel relieved, but now there's 1 more test to go and we'll see if I can still pull possibly a B or a high C. I certainly don't want a D, that's for sure. So I will be finishing up my flipbook today (which is almost done) and then studying for the final and doing a couple of chores that I have to do.

I was up til 5:45 this morning working on my flipbook. I also talked to a good friend for awhile and it was nice to catch up. Thanks!

I tried to load the animations last night again, and the blogger uploads them, but then it never processes them....it just sits there and says processing for 1/2 an hour (annoying) I'm going to see if I can find a way to embed quicktime on here so that I don't have a problem anymore, I was doing some tests last night, but it's been weird w/ youtube and the blogspot video displayer. So you'll see the videos when I finally find a way to post them right!

That's all of the new news for today. KEEP MOVING FORWARD

The physucks tests!

I was trying to post my animation earlier, but the blogger video kept taking forever to do anything so I think they might be having a problem right now. I will try again tomorrow. However, I did do some extra credit for my physics class. My teacher said to just draw something physics related, so I decided to draw this. A little violent yes, but I hate cats...and so does he!! = ) So i'm sure that he'll like this and i'll get my 10 points. If not, at least I had fun drawing it.
I also took my 3rd physics test on Thurs. There are only 4 tests in the class and each one is 20% of the grade, so there's a little bit of pressure to do good on your tests or else you fail rather easily. My first test I got an 81% (not bad), my second test I made a bunch of little mistakes and I got a 47% on it (ouch!!). The 3rd test that I just recently took, I'm pretty sure I made between a 96-99% (amazing) and then on Tues I will have the final (dramatic drum sound). Hopefully I will do ok on the final. (Notice I didn't say great, I just want to pass = ))..) I really don't want to repeat this class!! So I will be studying a lot this weekend as well as finishing up my flipbook for my animation class.
As far as everything else goes, it's ok. Just lots of pressure at the end of each month since you have so much to do in so little time. I of course want an A in animation so I tried to put as much as I could into what I was doing, so we'll see what I get. As far as physics goes, I feel i've been doing fairly well. I remember for the most part what I studied and I can honestly say that these past 3 months of math courses have been the best that I have ever done since the 6th grade!! (I kid you not!) Math has never interested me in the least bit, but these past couple of months I have taken interest in bits and pieces of it and I find that I learn the most when I complain about it! LOL.

So I came up with a style of learning that helped myself study and could possibly help others study as well. So here's my method for people out there who have always had problems with math and studying for it. Just complain about it! Through complaining you'll come to realize how much has actually been retained in your mind and it's easier to remember the things you hate....honestly....just think of any song your entire life that you just couldn't stand to hear no matter what...then think of the lyrics for that song...more likely then not, you will remember the lyrics because you hate it so bad that you can't help but mock the living crap out of it. So anyways I'm going to call my style of learning...The Fuller Method...*copyright* (you read it here first)

Now the only reason I did so bad on the 2nd test is that according to my method, I didn't complain enough. So this weekend there will be a lot of complaining by me!! lol. But, you also have to remember that you need to look at what you're complaining about as well. There has to be some visual or auditory part of what you're studying in order for it to sink in. Because if you're just complaining about nothing and not knowing what you complain about, then it doesn't work. = ) Simple enough. "Wow...that sounds great, tell me more" "well, glad you asked, for a small price, I can teach you this method and send you many dvds on how to complain and learn through complaining, like a pro. However there is no money back guarantee, because I can't help you if you can't complain good enough.... and if you can't complain good enough, then you're retarded!"

Well that's about it for now, if you read this whole thing, then good for you, you're making me proud to write this and are a great friend, etc. If you didn't read it all the way through, then I hate you and you're not a true friend!!! j/k (but really, go kill yourself) = P

Light is Right!

So here's another fun update! I built myself a lightbox for my animation class and future individual animation studies that I want to work on. I was going to head over to my friends house yesterday to use his computer table which is glass. What is convenient about that is you can put a light underneath it so you can see through your pages (so it resembles an animation light table). However, the only problem with going to his place is that I didn't want to drive half an hour out to Universal Studios which is what he lives by, so instead, I went to target and started figuring out what I would need. I found a really good cheap picture frame, that uses a cardboard backing for 5$. The frame is plastic or something, but it is thick and sturdy so I figured it would be useful since i'm going to be resting my arm on it. The next thing I needed were lights. I found a package for 10$ which had 4 LED lights and they used AAA batteries (which i already had) so i picked that up thinking it would be enough light. However it wasn't and since Target didn't have the right size florescent light, I went to Walmart to buy it for 8$. It works great and I have no complaints. I spent 20$ on something that normally costs about 160$, so anyone interested in building one, this is the better way. I might later on go to home depot and have them cut some thin pieces of wood so I can make a deeper box, but for now, this is excellent. Here are some pics.

This is what it comes out to look like, there is a place on the side where I will need to cut a part of the frame out so it will lay flat, but depending on how soon I get to home depot, I think i can settle for not cutting anything right now. On the very bottom you'll see some tape and a rectangular strip with some pegs coming out. This is what I use to hold my animation paper in place. you'll see further down.

This is what it looks like with 1 page over it, you can obviously see a lot so there's no eyestrain whatsoever, plus I think it looks kind of cool for a crude design = ) I tested it and it can hold over 8 pages that you can see through, which is really good. normally i just work with 2-6 pages depending on what I need to see. When i'm flipping the pages, I don't use the light since it will make it harder to see my movement.

This is one of the things I did in class today. As part of our anticipation project, we are to make a character that's sitting down, stand up. Sounds simple, but it takes some planning, so I drew out some thumbnail sketches to test how I wanted to stand and this seemed to work for me. I will show you the rough and finished results by Friday or Saturday so you can see the animation = ). when it comes to these key poses, you really want to exaggerate the curves because when animation moves fast, you need more time to show that your character has life and dimension. I felt really proud when the teachers told me that I have good artwork. It means a lot coming from professional animators. The arrows on the pic describe my plan of action, and the arrows on his face were just to give me an idea of where I want him to look so I can draw it out better when i'm working on my scene. Friday will be our "Finesse" day which is where i'll get to finish my animation and fine tune my drawings so that they can be the best that I can make them in the 8 hours that we're givin in the day.

Well, that's all for this update, til tomorrow or Friday. I have a physics test tomorrow, so wish me luck!!

School update

ok I'm going to try and post the pics that I said i was going to post yesterday and I hope that you like them, i will explain what each picture is by describing what you're looking at below the picture so that way you're not lost.

This is the wall that is in front of my classroom for 2d Animation. The door on the left is where I would walk into class and the port holes are where people who are walking by can look in and see what we are working on. The Plaques that are on the wall are movies, games, etc, that are projects graduated students have worked on in the professional field, like the Matrix, King Kong, Call of Duty 2, etc etc.


This is the desk where I work on my 2d Animation projects (which is what i'm taking right now). It's a great desk and it is pretty pricey if you wanted to buy one for yourself. If you don't believe me look it up!

This is me working at my desk. I really love this class!! I will be posting my work by this friday so that everyone can see what i've been working on.



If you remember the very first picture with the plaques, this is the wall that's to the right of it. So if you were to turn your head, or whole body to the right, you would be facing this wall. What's special about this wall is that one of my past projects from OPE (object perspective...AKA Art class) was hung up for all of the students and passing visitors on a tour of the campus to see and admire. My work takes up the whole right side. you'll see in the next picture.

We had to create an original character and then build a Maquette (not in pictures) of the character we drew. This is different types of staging that we used. The silhouette is just to see if your poses would be noticeable to an audience if they couldn't see the full character, ex. a shadow. The very top picture in this picture was a drawing of the front, side, and back view of my character (a dragon). This was to help when it came to building the Maquette since I was building it off of the reference that I drew for myself so I could make it look how it should. Last but not least was the very middle picture. This is a demographic that we had to do for our character. I made him a baby dragon, isn't he cute? lol.


This picture is right below the one above on the same wall. The top 5 faces are different expressions that my character has. I can't remember what they all are (except for the middle which is WTF?!), but if you want me to tell you, i'll write them down next time i pass by. The bottom set of 5 faces are what's called canon changes; meaning what my character looks like having similar traits but different features, eyes, head, snout, etc, etc.


This is the same hallway but looking to the left from the very first picture. If you look all the way to the back wall, you'll see the pictures of my dragon, hanging there. Anyways, back to this wall. It leads into my OPE class which i had a couple of months back. If you don't remember what OPE means, then i suggest you read the above captions!! What is cool about this wall is that it displays another piece that I did for that class. If you look at the very bottom closest to you, that is where this next picture below is hanging.



This picture was my perspective drawing for OPE. I really like the way it came out and a lot of other people were very happy about it as well. The teachers really liked a lot of my art, and since they're fine arts majors, it was very hard to please them, so when I did, it meant a lot to me. With all of my pieces, they never complained about any of them, so I guess I was doing something right in class. They did make suggestions however on what I could do to make it stand out more = )

So there you have it, a pretty good update for you to look at (whoever you are). I hope that you have liked my little showcase for today = ) Thanks for looking!