Acting

Next was our first acting assignment. We had to show a character reacting to this ball. We also learned some rendering techniques.

Walk Cycle

We finally upgraded to a better rig. The project was to animate this rig in a walk cycle.

Christopher Gombie

The next project in our PreProduction class was to take one of the characters we designed for the last assignment, draw a turn around of them and storyboard a scene with a dynamic action using that character. I chose Mr. Christopher Gombie.

Jump

Also in Maya class we were working more with the ball and legs rig, animating a simple jump.

Perspective Modeling

Continuing with our modeling lessons in Maya class, we were instructed to model in 3-D this drawing by Herman De Vries.

Characters

The next preproduction assignment was to show 10 character design influences, draw 10 characters and one background in two different stages.

My Influences


My Characters


Backgrounds

Turn Around

The same week in the Maya class we were told to make a character turn around. the Professor gave us all a generic rig to work with that was really limited so as to make us focus on what was important.

More Bouncing balls

The Maya class finally required us to use Maya for this project. Another bouncing ball assignment, this time I believe that we were supposed to depict a bowling ball, a soccer ball, ping pong ball, and a balloon.

Birdy

Preproduction class took a small change this week in that we were assigned to create or storyboard a dynamic camera shot. I coupled my knowledge gained from the maya class and created this strange little shot.

Wheelbarrow

For the next Maya assignment we were given a choice to either use Maya or hand drawn. The object was to show a character exerting themselves with some form of weight. I had my character attempt to lift a wheelbarrow full of turnip heads.

Bunnies Animatic

After we critiqued the short storyboards we were instructed to use the given advice and make our SB's into animatics.

Creatures

The next assignment in my Maya class was an After Effects project in which we had to animate a pop-up book. The goals were to gain a better understanding of the 3-d space in after effects along with cameras and other tools.

Bunnies Storyboard

This weeks assignment in preproduction class was to create a short story board based on the image we chose and render it.

Androsen Fall

The next Maya class project was again not in Maya. It was a digital ink and paint assignment of which we could either color one of our old animations or make a new one specifically for this assignment. I wanted to do something new so I pulled inspiration from a certain incident that I had witnessed of a friend of mine falling from the roof of our grade school. Animated traditionally then colored in Adobe Photoshop, tracked in Adobe After Effects.



Here is a less effective alternate.

Inspiration

The first project for my pre-production class was to find five images that inspired us and one of our own and present them to the class. Then we had to pick one of the found images to use for the next few projects. I choose the Luke Chueh image.

Summer experiments

Between Sophomore and Junior year I decided to toy around with some possible senior thesis ideas. They were all very loosely based concepts but I really enjoy watching these tests.

The first idea was to use extra business cards from the printing company I was working at, as a texture for a film, I also had an idea about having different people handing these cards to each other as the animation played on them.



After these few experiments I just decided to keep myself busy.





I also took on a commission to create a short web ad for a new iPhone application called 'Grocery IQ'

Dick America Dicks America

The final for my main animation class was to make a short film by using any of the techniques learned over the year. I decided to team up with a Mr. Ryan Tonner. We had had a couple running jokes throughout the year but the one that stood out to us as having the most story potential was Dick America. Ian Tyrone was kind enough to do the voice over and away we went without looking back or questioning the concepts we were depicting.



and that concludes my Sophomore adventures. I ended up producing a ton of work that year and made a lot of lasting relationships.

Emotive Walk Cycle

The final project for the Introduction to Maya class was an emotive walk, using the rigs we already made (I changed the geometry on mine). Overall it was a solid introduction to Maya as a program.

The Lift

The next Maya project was a rather involved one. We brushed the surface of rigging as a topic and made a very simple human rig. We attached very simple geometry to the rig and were told to animate it picking up an object.

Scronkorg

The maya class took a different turn this week and we were assigned to model a creature of some sort using Maya in conjunction with z-brush. We didn't rig it but rather used constraints to connect the pieces and make it some what movable, but in the end, it's best as a still image.

Dream Scape

At the beginning of this semester my professor had us start a dream journal. It finally came into play for this project. We had to take one of our recorded dreams and, using cutouts, re-create it under the camera.

Pendulum

This was an assignment that was designed to teach follow through, secondary action and how to use specific animation systems in Maya.

Teeter Totter

Next we began to explore other basic techniques of Maya animation. I don't think I got this one quite right. The music was made by me in Sony Acid Pro.

Stop Motion

In the main animation course we were tasked with playing around with stopmotion. So me and my classmates goofed around and played with pixillation and such. Here are our results.





and here is a little stopmotion that my fellow animator, Ryan Tonner, and I worked on together.

Experimental Maya Animation

The next assignment in the Maya class was to use the animation techniques we had been learning in class to create an abstract animation.

Sandimation

For the next project Doug setup a box of fine sand on a light box underneath one of our testing cameras. The assignment was to mess around with the sand then create a landscape and depict water. I really enjoyed this project. Also after we were all done there was another assignment to edit the entire classes collection of sand animations into a song of our individual choosing.

Ball Bounce Attitudes

In the Maya class we had to animate 3 ball bounces, each describing a different emotion. The emotions were Angry, Happy and Sad.

Collective Consciousness

We spent half a class one day spewing out the first thing that came to our minds as our professor wrote them down. Then we were instructed to create cut-out puppets and backgrounds according to that list and animate something. Later these would all be spliced together along with an open running animation that we all had to work on in camera.

Maya Still Life

Another class that I started in my second semester was an intro to Maya class. The first project here was to set up and photograph a still life and model, texture, and light it in Autodesk Maya. I was pretty happy with my glass shader but in retrospect, the whole thing just looks silly.

The Elements

Our first assignment in our new Experimental Animation class was to animate the elements fire, smoke, and wind, then combine them. I used a few different lighting techniques and production techniques as well. The only requirement was that it had to be shot on the lunch box, other than that, we had free reign.

Winter Break 2007

Initially a few other students and I had wanted to produce a film over the break so we came up with a very simple idea, influenced by the construction of the short cannon fodder, about a girl who is collecting ingredients to make tea when she is confronted by some faeries. I was charged with researching possible glow effects that we could use on the faeries. Though this project completely exploded I still managed to get some fun animated material out of it. This is what I had to present by the end of the month and a half long winter break.

Self Portrait

The final for my main animation class was pretty fun and interesting. The assignment was to start out with a shot of our face and then we had to morph into our animation. Also at the end we all had to morph our animations with someone else in the class so they were all connected. And that concludes my first semester of animation classes at the Kansas City Art Institute.

Crystal

Here is the final for my Designing the Frame class. The project was to re-tell the story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in a more modern style, use Photoshop and Illustrator to create the images and then make it into an animatic in After Effects. I choose a more trashy approach and again made some not quite right music in Sony Acid Pro.

First Walk Cycle

This was my first walk cycle. The process here was much like that of the bouncing ball. We had one go at the thing and then a revision and then we dropped character. I had a few options of characters to use so that's what I put at the end.

Weight

This was a pretty standard weight assignment. We were given very specific instructions on how to do this lesson. We had to show a rock, a piece of paper, and a leaf falling.

Puberty

This was a metamorphosis assignment. The time frame for this project was a week and a half and this is what I came up with. All of this was hand drawn and shot directly onto a lunch box.

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and in Designing the Frame we had to take the classic 'Tell Tale Heart' and turn it into three frames using adobe illustrator and photoshop.

Hitamus Rocketus

Anticipation is one of the major aspects of good animation. This project was a lesson based solely on that principle. This would be a good point to mention that almost all of the characters I use in these projects come out of stream of consciousness sketching which is just about how I do all of my sketches. Generally i have no idea what I'm about to draw until I start putting pencil to paper.

The Birth of Earth

Our next project was kind of a freebie. Our professor had to go on a 2 week trip so we had free rain to create a 30 sec or longer animation by the time he got back. Our only prompt was to think about 'visual rhythms'.




Also in an adjacent class called Designing the Frame we began to explore Adobe Photoshop and Iluustrator while also touching on composition theory and some aspects of preproduction. This specific project we had to create a scene that represented good vs Evil. We were also limited to a very specific color palette.

Bouncing Balls

As per usual animation introduction classes our next assignment was that of the bouncing ball. We were required to create a first pass for review, make corrections and then render it. At this point I also discovered the sound sampling program Sony Acid Pro and decided to make a cheesy soundtrack.

Sophomore Flip Books

Begin sophomore year! Everyone was excited to finally be starting their majors. It was nice to see that my animation class was made up of mostly people I hadn't had the chance to interact with much. Little did I know that these people would become my dearest friends. Our first assignment was to do a series of flip books on various topics, something beautiful, something ugly, something observed and something strange. I decided to make my series blend into each other. The main idea with this assignment was to get us thinking in a linear pattern. Also Doug collected all of the books and would not return them until the end of the year so we could have a chance to see how far we'd come in a year.

Breathe The Scene

Second semester of Freshman year was a bit different than the first semester. It was split up into three periods in which we took five week long workshops. My first was with Brett Reif in titled 'Arting the Find, Finding the Art" which was about making found object art and recontextualizing objects to create meaning. My second course was with Maria Creytes called "Polished Primitive" which was a ceramics class in which we had to polish the pots by hand before we put them in the fire to be cured. And my final class was with Trina Cooper. It was supposed to be a class on Max MSP and Jitter but it ended up being a video installation class instead. It became my first exposure to Adobe After effects. Here is a picture of the rough story board and pictures of the final setup of the installation and of coarse the video itself, please excuse the terrible quality, I had to rip it off of myspace due to some data mishaps.

The Best Day Ever

Then I went to college at the Kansas City Art Institute. The first year at this school is a general studies curriculum in which you work on projects in an array of different mediums, styles, and methods. I was lucky enough to have Nathan Fox for my first semester. He had us working on all kinds of mind numbing projects that really whipped me into shape. Towards the end of the semester he hosted a 24 hour comics day in which my entire class was locked in our studio with the intention to create comics for the whole 24 hours. I made a comic or two and this flip book. It was really a rewarding experience and I would never trade my freshman year at KCAI for anything.

High School Characters

And to finish off this string of high school postings here are some very geometric characters that I made when I was first learning Adobe Illustrator.

Photoshop Animation

I also did a some small photoshop animations back when the animation bar was first introduced to the program. It may look like flash but I promise you, it's not.

Airplane, The

Here is a short that I never cared to finish. Yet another high school attempt, created with note cards.

A Day in the Life of a Star

Here is another flipbook experiment from high school. For this one I used some cheep oil pastels on notecards and again assembled it in Adobe Premier Pro.

Flat Tire

So after my exposure to animation, I went back to High School and utilized some Independent study courses to delve further into this art form. So here is one of my crappy high school films called Flat Tire. I animated this flip-book style and then scanned in each frame and put them together in Adobe Premier pro (this was way before I ever learned of After Effects).

Metamorphosis

The final project to come out of this week long animation summer class was a class-wide metamorphosis project. We had to create an animation that flowed seamlessly from one persons project to the other. There are a few projects I can't post from this class, such as a ball bounce with a coin and some cutout animation, because we animated directly onto a lunchbox and I never got a copy of those projects.

First Storyboard

This was a little exercise that we did in story-boarding. I was given a short newspaper story that I had to make into a small storyboard.

First Bouncing Ball

And just like every other animator in the whole world, our second assignment was the famous bouncing ball.

First Flip Book

In the summer of 2005 I decided to enroll in a summer class at the Kansas City Art Institute. The class was an intro to animation crash course taught by Doug Hudson, who also happened to be the head of the newly established animation program at the school. The first assignment was a flip book and I, drawing mainly on my influence by legendary animator Don Hertzfeldt, came up with this.

The Idea

With this blog I intend to post every piece of work that I have ever created and will ever create that is related to animation, in chronological order.