Archive for December, 2008

Much of my work over the last so many years is locked away under NDAs.  While it is great to work on these projects, it can be a real problem when I’m trying to load up my reel with new material.

The obvious solution is to animate a few things on my own so that I can stick them on the demo.  The problem with that is just finding time to do it.  So, the answer was to take a few moments and animate something short and sweet.

I gave myself a weekend.  The result is the animation posted below.  All in all, it took me around 20-25 hours to complete (not including lighting, rendering or rigging).  For those of you familiar with the 11 second club, you may recognize the audio.  I went to their website and grabbed last months and used that.

Animation Weekend #1 from Rick May on Vimeo

Download a brighter HD version here.

The model came from one of those freebies you can download for Maya.  Unfortunately, the body rigging had some issues, so I spent some time and re rigged it to my liking.  The face rig was left as-is and worked pretty well.  If I have more time someday, I may re-rig it too.

The video was uploaded to Vimeo.  Mainly because you can send them/view HD res video.  Unfortunately, the video is darker when viewed on their system.  Lucky for you, you can download the HD quicktime if you’d like to see it a little brighter.

I plan to do another “Animation Weekend” before too long.  Next time, I may try for something a little more physically driven instead of dialogue.  We’ll see.