Wow..it’s been a while since I’ve gotten a chance to post anything. A lot has happened and I’ve been super busy! AM is great and were already into week 8. Insane!

The main thing that has been keeping me from posting is moving. Having to move sucks because it’s stressful and just complicates everyday life. So right now my focus has been family, work, AM and boxing up my house. I’ll be moved by May 31 and sometime there after I’ll resume posting.

There are so many cool little plug-ins that I have bought and tips learned that I just want to start blogging about them right now. But if I start blogging I wont do them justice due to lack of time.

Updates forth coming sooner than later

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.

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.

Sort of reminds me of something my grandmother would say who just happened to turn 85 this past weekend. Lord knows I’m ready to rant to high heaven about the ills of UV mapping, tweaking and so on but I digress.

Needless to say I lost a day as well due to my UV maps getting jacked up or should I mention my newbish mistakes? At least I can say that it was not a total loss, in fact I learned a lot more through error. That’s usually how things work out for me.

Anyway, I’m done modeling this guy and the UV’s are finally (emphasized heavily) laid out correctly. So what your looking at is basically the base colors laid down, a simple flat coat of paint over the UV maps to test them out.

Tomorrow I’ll probably go over the uv maps just a tad and maybe put a few scratches, decals, etc on it. As much as I would like to go over the top with this one I really need to start rigging him this weekend. My schedule for completing this is a little under two and a half weeks. That’s modeling, texturing, rigging and animation which of course is done mainly after work…whew!

AM is almost be back in session for me so time is not on my side.

Well, it’s back to work tomorrow but I can hold my head up and say I accomplished quite a bit this weekend. For starters, I took this past Friday and Monday off. I’m one of those people who always seem to have a few vacation days left at the end of the fiscal Lucky for me, I have one more of these type weekends coming up at the end of the month too.

Anyway, I’ve really been digging head first in Maya and working out the modeling tools. The jury is still out but It’s real close. I’m actually starting to like modeling with nurbs and going back and fourth between sub D’s and polygons.

The situation that will settle the deal is when I actually start modeling a human character. Anything mechanical or basically non organic I can pull off in just about any application. It is when I start to work on humanoid characters that it gets interesting for me. I am all about work flow and don’t like to have to stop and think about how to use a particular tool. This is actually reminding me that I own Mudbox, heck I could just create a base mesh and go from there. Too much to learn too little time at the moment to put it on my plate.

I’m finished modeling the Mecha and now I’m putting the UV maps on it. I literally spent 10+ hours on these UV maps and it is still not done. Back when I bought Mudbox I was going to buy this UV mapper called headus Awesome tool and save tons of time but kinda expensive. So I figured why not learn how to UV map in Maya. Actually, it’s not that bad just tedious and a lot of point messaging and I mean a lot.

My goal is to have this guy mapped and at least painted by the weekend. Then I’ll start rigging him up next week and do some test animations with it. I also have an idea of another Mech that I want to make, it’s sort of like the one that was in the Matrix…yeah right. It would probably take a good month just to sort out the UV maps for it.

Ah yes, three weeks to go and then it’s back to the grind that is Animation Mentor! What was such a short time ago seemed like eon’s…seriously, freaking eon’s. But a lot has happened and all of it not bad.

During my sabbatical I received a promotion at work or maybe it’s a fall guy position I’ve also spent a considerable amount of time basically doing “nothing” in an attempt to just chill out. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve animated somethings here and there just to stay fresh but nothing heavy. Basically I just wanted to monitor my situation both at work and at home to make sure that I when the time came I would be ready to return.

Anyway, this weekend I started working on an animation that I storyboarded right before I left AM. Below is a screen shot of that animation and also a screen shot of a 3D model that I’m working. The 3D model is actually part of Maya tutorial I acquired a while back but never attempted. Currently, I’m converting it over to Silo (cause I like to make things hard) actually, since the apps are somewhat similar modeling wise it seemed like fun.

Don’t ask…I have a thing for 3D modelers hence my nick “Kid Mesh”.

It’s the end of January and I’m counting the days until I restart AM. I don’t know if I’m going to make it with out exploding before the time gets here. But hey, until then I must continue to animate and keep my skills up…that wont be a problem. I’m hoping to post some stuff soon just to show what I’ve been working on.

By the way, I also dabble in graphics programming (video game stuff). Below is a C++ DirectX game that I wrote back around xmas. All the coding, graphics, music and sound was done by yours truly. If you want to down load the game all you need to have is the DirectX run-time. You can get the game from here ClickMe

Here is a youTube video of the game

For those of you that had been following my Animation Mentor experience and for those who usually just visit my site, let me apologize of the ridiculous hiatus and lack of any information.

First, to all my AM buddies. By now most of you should know that I had to drop out of class one more than half way through. It was one of the hardest decisions that I had to make and it sucked. With out getting into a full blow explanation. I had issues that were work related which hindered the learning process and made it difficult for me to hit my deadlines with the effort and quality I’m accustom to.

So, I decided it would be best to just call it an experience……..and of course come back in the spring of 08 There is no way in hell I’m not going to finish this school. I’ve wanted to do this for so long and whatever I needed to do to make sure that I can give it 100% I was going to do. Even if that meant stepping away for a spell.

Everyone in the AM front office was really cool and offered all the support and encouragement needed. Now all that is left is time and opportunity….so I’ll be back around the end of march or when ever the Spring class starts.

Now what?…The road to Damascus I guess lol. The issues that were sucking up my time and causing me so much grief are just about settled and wont be a factor at all. Which means that my focus is strictly on animating and drawing until I come back to school. Occasionally, I’ll post what I’m working on here so my biggest advocate and really good online friend Dave Skaggs can C&C the hell out of my work.

Aside from that, I really miss everyone over at AM and I hate that I wont be graduating with my class. But at least we will still have sometime on-line with each other when I return. Keep in touch and I look forward to getting back with you guys in a few months. I’ll be checking your blogs through your class two run. Good luck.

Cheers

Anthony!

Stopped off at Best Buy and picked up a new web-Cam for AM. Funnily enough, I’ve probably had at least 20 of these in my life time. So you would think I would have one lying around

I’m also an avid toy collector and usually gravitate to any interesting figurine hanging on someones shelf. Today, I happened by a really cool Hell Boy figure…love Hell Boy. So I grabbed it and to my surprise it came with a DVD. Actually, I think it was supposed to be the other way around but honestly, I was looking at the figure.

I’ve included a quick cam shot of the top my CPU tower featuring of course Hell Boy and some other personal warriors of mine. Maybe one day I’ll post some of my Todd McFarland Spawn collection

Well more ready than not that’s for sure. I’ve made the decision to go ahead and blog some of my Animation Mentor experience as I embark on this great ride. Having had a blog before, I know first hand how much fun it is to look back at the past even though it can be embarrassing at times too

But hey, life is about growth, challenges and opportunities. So with that being said, you dont know where your going if you don’t know where you’ve been (something like that). Hopefully for those of you that follow this blog, I hope you enjoy it as much as I hope too.