Clean Lines, No Capes

So one of the benefits of being finished with AM is that I really plan to try to keep up with this blog a bit more. Since I’m only just starting out in animation, I expect to have a lot to share and this blog is a great way to do that. With that in mind, I thought I’d post the final short film that I turned in at AM. Keep in mind that it isn’t 100% finished. The animation needs work in a lot of areas – just general cleaning up that will help loosen things up in some areas. Plus it still needs better sound fx and possibly music.

But on the whole, I find that I’m far more pleased with how this turned out than I would have expected when I was about 5 weeks into the animating. The story came together as I continued to cut out some of non-essential bits (shoe leather as my Class 5 story mentor, Jed Diffenderfer, might have said) and the animation solidified into something that I find entertaining to watch.

Anyhoo. Without further ado, I present my short film – tentatively titled “5:00″.

The 2007 Fall Showcase from Animation Mentor is out, and I made it into the reel! I can’t tell you how stoked I am – very exciting day for me today! Congratulations to everyone who had a shot accepted for the reel – I’m excited for each of you. The reel looks AMAZING!

Watch it after the jump.

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Quick post to put up my animatic for my short film. No Title (yet), no sound and bad drawings. Basic story is that the protagonist is bored out of his mind at work, gets slammed with paperwork with an hour left in the day, finds a way to grind it out before 5, races home in excitement, and plops down on the couch to watch TV, just as bored as he was at work.

Some drawings are red and some are black – the red ones are from my original boards of the last 2 weeks, the black ones were redrawn for this final animatic.

Watch it after the jump.

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Just a quick test cycle done for the main character in my short film. I’ll leave it unsaid as to what his personality/character is for now. This was a fun assignment, my only regret is that I only had about a day and a half to work on it due to Siggraph and other commitments. All the same, it ain’t great, but it’s not terrible either.

Watch it after the jump. 

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What just happened?  I finished term 4 at Animation Mentor, that’s what just happened!  It’s been absolutely CRAZY, pushing myself this term – always trying to improve my shot, keep production moving forward, and managing my time overall, but getting to this point has been well worth it.

There are a number of things that still need to be tweaked and polished in this shot, for which I’ve written out my mentor’s final critique so I can continue to work on this after the school officially shuts down for the 1 week break.  For now though, I present my final shot for week 11:

Oh, a couple more things:

1. There’s some kind of compression artifact showing up in this file.  It’s from Quicktime’s compression, as the Maya playblast file is completely clean.  It pops up in the shoulder area of Brussels (the green character) somewhere around when he’s making the chopping motion of one hand into the palm of another.  I’m working on fixing that, but for now, ignore it.
2. May I just say that to this point, my mentors at AnimationMentor have ROCKED!  Sean Sexton has been a HUGE influence on my work this term, and Mike Walling, who was my mentor for last term was probably the most impressive mentor I’ve had – he really pushed me to improve my work and critically look at every pose.  I thank both of them for their work in the AM program, I really feel that my work has improved tremendously.  Additionally, Ryan Donoghue and David Breaux, my term 2 and term 1 mentors, respectively, both helped put me on this road by showing me the fundamentals of animation and body mechanics.  Both were great mentors to me as well.  Thanks to all of you!  Now on to short film pre-production!