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.

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