New Animation and Inspiration

So I've finally started using Maya again and the "re-learning curve" wasn't as steep as I'd expected.

I've spent my evenings working on getting to grips with the software again and making a quick body mechanics test to try and get my workflow locked down. It's not quite there yet but with one or two more quick tests like this I expect it'll be second nature and I can concentrate on pushing my animation.

For my first test I decided to keep it relatively simple and do some body mechanics...



I've had some good feedback from the guys at work and I'm going to revisit this soon to act on that and give the shot some more polish. For now though I'm happy that I got what I was after out of this anim. At the moment I'm in the process of finishing up a lip sync anim I started about 18 months ago, but after how much I learned from this quick test I'm thinking it might be best to do a few more first :)

I'd like to start posting more about what's been inspiring me in the animation world and any cool tutorials I come across. I don't want to flood this post with everything I've been watching lately but some things that stand out are...

Daffy's Rhapsody


I can't wait to see this, the tone and sensibilities of the originals have been perfectly transferred into 3D. It's just a shame they keep putting them out in front of films I'm not interested in seeing :(

Collapsing Cooling Towers


Fun little eco-awareness ad. Really simple idea, charming execution :)

Zombirama

Zombirama - Trailer from ZOMBIRAMA on Vimeo.

Trailer for a cool looking zombie short. There's something really appealing about this to me, hopefully I'll get chance to see the finished film!

Pedro Sanz's Blog

Not much on there right now but I was really inspired by what little there is. Pedro is currently an animator at Blue Sky Studios.

Tradd Moore's Blog

A comic artist/illustrator who has a fantastic style. He's currently working on The Strange Talent of Luther Strode which is well worth picking up.


That'll do for today, in the future I'll try to keep the inspiration updates seperate from my personal work.

Cheers :)

Hello again!

According to the time-stamp on my last post I haven't updated this website in what's approaching 2 years..

So with that, and the fact that one of my new year's resolutions is to devote more time to animation outside of work, I thought it was about time I made a new news post.

In the time between my last post and now I've worked on a few little pieces of animation which you can see on my Youtube channel. But the biggest news would be that I landed a job animating in the games industry. I'm now working as an animator for Jagex on Runescape, which involves animating so really bizarre creatures as well as humans.

The thing I didn't count on when I got this job was how much animating out of work would fall by the wayside..

So after a looong time of animating purely in work I've decided it's time to get back into working on some personal projects. First off I plan to get back into Maya (we use in-house software at work) by doing some small tests, while working on my drawing at the same time.

Then I'd like to work on a little game in UDK (nothing too fancy), and a short film with some of the guys from work.

This should mean a lot more activity on the website :) Add to that the fact that I want to start posting links to cool animations, blogs, articles etc. and the site should have a lot more content over the course of the year.

Cheers :)

Boo!

I know it's been a while since my last post but rest assured there is lots going on at the moment that I can't wait to get on the website!

In the next month or 2 you can expect to see some great progress on the projects I've been mentioning, as well as some new ones. As well as that I think it's about time I sorted out my gallery page so I'll be collating concept art, renders etc. to give visitors a lot more to look at!

Exciting times!

P.S. - Here's a teaser of one the projects : )