Archive for the ‘General’ Category

I did another animation test in my spare time. Since I’d do an hour here and there, I have no idea how long it took to complete. If I were to guess, it was probably 30 something hours.

This is, I believe, is from Anchorman. Since I find Will Ferrell funny, I just had to do something with the audio clip.

Once again, after uploading an animation to Vimeo, I notice the audio is a frame or two out of sync. I’m not sure what is going on, but it sure it annoying. Besides the sync problem, it could use some additional work, but sometimes you just have to call it quits and move on.

Only a few posts back (but thanks to my slow blogging, more than eight months ago), I posted an image of an animation done for Pepper Films. I’ve decided to share the actual animation. You can see it below or follow the link to Vimeo to see it in higher resolution.

Again, the point was to make it look more stop motion than CG. Considering how quickly it was done, I think it turned out pretty well. Originally it was textured and lit by someone else, but I decided to redo it to my own liking. Besides lighting, I was also responsible for layout, animation, rigging, and supervising the modeling.

From the previous post: “I’ll try to come up with something worthwhile to say soon. Promise!” Well, that worked out pretty nicely, didn’t it?

To try and make up for my laziness, I’m about to post another two after this one. They may be low on wordiness, but there will be animation attached. At least it will be something to look at.

I didn’t really realize how long it has been since the last blog update. Blogging motivation is really hard to come by lately. Between work, family, and play, it hasn’t been the first thing I think of every morning. I’ll try to come up with something worthwhile to say soon. Promise!

I’m pretty anal about file and project organization.  In fact, many years ago, I wrote my own software called Toontrack to help organize the project management side of things.   When it comes to the file/data pipeline, I’m no different.  I want exacting naming conventions and files put in the right place – everytime!

A while ago, I stumbled across  Open Pipeline for Maya.  It is an incredible set of Mel scripts to help keep your assets in order.  These open source tools are nothing short of awesome.  If you are a one-man operation, or part of a small team, I encourage you to start using this software.  You won’t regret it.  Even for larger teams or studios, it is a great starting place.  You can modify it to your exacting needs.

It makes swapping between assets, shots, sequences, and even projects very easy.  It creates the directories and puts everything in the right place.  It will even publish files to be used as references.

I’ve freelanced for dozens of studios over the years, and this software is better than what 90% of those guys have in place.  This is such a huge part of any project, I just don’t understand why so many people take it so lightly.  Now you have no excuse.