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Well the day is finally here. In about 15 minutes I’ll have access to the site and start to get re acclimated with everything that is Animation Mentor. Man, it really seems like such a long time ago.
The only thing that sucks is that I’m still at work so I wont get the full compliment until I get home later today. But hey, that’s cool, I’m just glad it’s time to kick it into gear again.
On a side note, I’ve been wanting to get some new monitors for quite a while now. Currently, I’m using a dual monitor setup with 20 inch CRT’s. Yep, the big boys and they take up a considerable amount of space. So today I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on a couple of 22 inch wide screen flat panel monitors. This is going to be really interesting once I have that setup LOL. Were talking almost three feet of horizontal space!
A week from today I will finally be back at AM. What seemed like an eternity is now only a proverbial stones throw away. All I can say is that I’m highly optimistic about returning and even have a stronger fire, determination and eagerness then when I attended last.
It’s funny how life can throw curves at you to really dampen your spirits but I believe these last few months away has taught me a lot on so many fronts. I’ve also learned that if things get hectic again I have the wherewithal to preserver and push on. Knock on wood, this was my first and last leave of absence.
On another note…the second Mecha. I know…I know LOL. Seriously, I started it and was moving along fine and then boom, just was not holding my interest anymore. I’m kinda funny like that, if something cant hold my interest I wont even screw around with it and I will just move on.
After I left Animation Mentor there were some goals that I set for myself to achieve upon returning. A few of those goals centered around Maya which if achieved would result in a higher comfortability level in using the tool going forward. I can say that I have at least achieved the level of comfort that I so much desired. This was important to me because of my visual and creative nature.
The ability to add you own personality, ideas and for lack of a better word, flavor to a scene means a lot to me. Being able to create props, character models, along with texturing and lighting really puts me into a flow. When I’m working on my “own” thing even if it is an assignment, I try my best to standout. What is or can be distracting at least for me is the shortcomings or gaps in my knowledge. Of course you can always Google and find a tutorial but in the environment that is AM there are deadlines and time just doesn’t permit in some cases. I used to always find myself saying “man, if this were only Lightwave, I would….”
Side note, AM doesn’t require that you know how to model, texture, rig, light etc etc. The school focuses on animation only and pushes that too. Animate, animate, animate… Just wanted to get that out so readers did not get the wrong impression as the aforementioned are things that I want to do “better” personally.
Today, I’m more comfortable in Maya than I ever were in Lightwave and that is still blowing my mind due to my heavy and well documented Lightwave Fanboy-ism, but you know what? I’m not at all surprised that I’m starting to favor Maya more and more.
You see how I got away from the second Mecha topic? Hahaha…yeah I’m good, I know.
I’ll probably revisit the second Mecha and drop an animation or something sometime during the summer without notice, who knows. This doesn’t mean that I wont be working on other things and I will definitely keep everyone up on my re-experience at Animation Mentor. I really appreciate those of you that cruise by.
Speaking of which, I was on Skype with one of my class mates who is now in finishing up class 2. His name is Fawzi Yahya and is a pretty cool guy. He was showing me his final assignment which was to demonstrate a character lifting a heavy object. During our conversation I offered to create a set for his animation and was delighted when he said “hell yeah!“. Below is a screen shot from the animation featuring the set I created. Had a really a good time putting that together, modeling, lighting, etc…fun stuff.
Definitely!
I gotta do this one more time just to burn everything I learned from the first pass right into the long term memory. From the onset my goal was to discover the secret squirrel if you will about some things that had eluded me in the past about Maya. This first go around, I’d have to at least say it was a quasi success at best.
Animation mentor is literally two weeks around the corner for me and I’ll be fully immersed once again. So I’d like take make one more pass at another Mecha before school starts. This way I’ll end up with two cool models, rigged and textured to have for animation during school. Once we get to walk cycles and then class two, body mechanics I’ll really make these characters shine. Hmmm I wonder what else I may have created by then?
Depending on how much time I have left before the end of this month. I might go ahead and clean up this current animation or just do another one with both Mechas together. Although, the likely hood of that happening and it being polished before AM starts is dismal for sure. I’m a realist at heart but the fun is always in the journey.
Oh, before I forget. Hey Tony!…you weren’t lying about the quality of Veoh…..WOW! Thanks again for the tip!
Well here is the second blocking pass. The timing is off a tad and there are a few pops and some sliding for sure. All and all I’m ok with it thus far it just needs a lot of curve editing and timing adjustments. I’ll work it on some more tomorrow and continue to massage until it’s ready for final render.
I think I’m going to take a crack at one more mech and this time kinda go way out there with it on all fronts. Going through this process again will place me in a comfortable place in Maya right before the start of AM.
So far so good.
This is just a really rough blocking pass as I try to get the timing and poses down. One thing, I screwed up one of my joints and parented incorrectly. Haven’t figured how to fix it yet either. This means that I cannot animate the head, that is killing me. Oh, well…just something else to add to my to do list.
Ah yes. Rigging is not foreign to me, plus I own Messiah so rigging in Maya was actually a breeze for this character. Anyway, it’s been a looong time since I pulled off an all nighter. But guess what? Time to Animate! If I weren’t so tired I’d be doing back flips right about now.
Anyway, it will more than likely be a late start for me tomorrow/today but at least when I settle in I’ll be animating.
Now the fun begins 
Click the picture below for the final pose of the night…err morning.
Alright here goes…as mentioned before I’m not looking to go over the top with this model. Meaning, I would love to go ahead and add some bump maps, specular maps, decals, etc. But, I’ve decided to keep it simple so I can start rigging and animating right now.
So I’m calling it done modeling and texturing wise and maybe later I might add some military style letters here and there…who knows. I just need to keep it going and not get caught up.
You know, if I could get this guy rigged before I go back to work Monday that would just be…AWESOME.
Click Image to see larger size
