Big beginning of the Year Post

Ok, its been an intense year thus far. We've knocked out 3 animations in CA, 2 animatics in Concept, and a character design project in DFA (Drawing for Animators). So, in order to catch up on all that I'm just going to make one big post! Here we go:

Walk Cycle: given the model and rig we were to come up with a character walk cycle. I made a distracted head-in-the-clouds type walk with a stumble in there (Requires quicktime to view)

Silhouette: We had to show 3 emotions in complete silhouette, I'm not going to tell you the feelings because if you don't get it, I didn't do my job (Requires quicktime to veiw).
Waiting: We had to have a character waiting for something, this was an acting drivien excercise. Lets go to the show! (Requires quicktime to view)
DFA Silhouette and Texture:
Silhouettes: In our inaugural DFA assignment we had to draw 100 silhouettes and then find characters in them, eventually narrowing it down to 5 silhouettes and finding 3 different characters in each, and finally 5 finished designs.


Textures: For this half of the assignment we had to take 100 photographs of something that has some texture to it, like gravel or a stuccoed wall, and find 30 characters in those photos, and finally bring 5 to refinement:Character Model Sheet: In all of the madness of our DFA project we were supposed to find a character we could use for our big animation this semester in CA, Push/Pull. Here's the one I choose and have begun modeling:There we go! I'll post the character model probably at the end of this week or early next week. Other projects I'm currently working on include a self caricature in DFA which I will probably post some progress on next week.

Blend test

Here's a blend test for my finished modeled and rigged character, its still a bit rough but I wanted to move on so I could do a quick little animation with my character:

Summer Character Model

Here's the model for the character I've been working on this summer:

the Astronomer's Dream

Cool animation I found on Drawn today by animator Malcolm Sutherland. Cool design and an interesting, all be it strange, story.

The Astronomer's Dream (2009) from Animalcolm on Vimeo.

Cartoony Self Portrait

I was bored and needed a profile pic for the blog so I decided to draw this:

Summer Character Sketches

So to keep myself sharp and to have some fun, I have designed a character, the magician Finnius the Great, to build, rig, and animate this summer. I have modeled him so I'll post some screen caps of him a little later on, thanks!

Reel

Here's my reel from the end of sophomore year that got me an internship at bazillion pictures this summer:

Demo Reel 2009 from James Graff on Vimeo.