Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Upcoming posts

Guess what I did today? I ordered a new computer. No! YES! Finally I will be able to animate again at home! I'm really excited about this. Even though it's hard to come home after work, live life with your family and deal with non-work stuff and THEN animate again, I feel like it is a necessary thing for me to do in order to keep my animation muscles active (the ones I don't use as much at work).

What does this mean? Well, first of all I can catch up on my No Continues work, but I can also finally finish my workflow demo, which is really long overdue. It will be interesting to see how the final shot will differentiate from the original vision (I had plenty of time to think about the shot and I'm planning on changing a few little things). This post will still take some time (despite the new and faster pc), because I want to present it in a nice way, with lots of comparison and individual stage-of-completion movie clips.

Another post will be about polish and how I try to take assignments/shots to the next level. Basically it serves as a guide to my students in terms of how the progression from an F graded shot to an A graded shot looks like. Arrogantly assuming that my final product is an A of course...

The next one will require your help. I want to build up a post which lists common pitfalls (with example clips) animators face when they start their animation path. Basically dos and dont's for bouncing balls, cycles, etc. It's one thing when you hear me rant about it, it's another when you actually see it. Plus I can use it in class for demos since it's difficult time-wise to do full on demos from scratch plus critiques for 20 students.

Last but not least, demystifying the graph editor. I frequently see beginning students struggle with the graph editor and a lot of times it feels like they concentrate too much on fixing the curves in the graph as opposed to planning and thinking about their poses and timing of the characters in their shot in the first place. Yes, the graph editor is a great tool, but it's not the holy grail. Especially at the beginning when you are taking your first steps learning animation, you can do the assignments without touching the graph at all. So for this post I want to do different little clips, some without using the graph editor and others with graph work only. And this is where you come in. I will hold a contest where you will have to figure out which ones are using a with-graph and without-graph approach. The winner will receive the "Art-of Wall-E" or "Art-of Kung Fu Panda", their choice. :)

That's it for now!
Cheers
Jean-Denis

8 comments:

Carlos Fins said...

Hey great blog, Jean-Denis.. been following your posts for a while now, and I really enjoy your range of posts.
I'd be interested to hear how you fire up your animation guns at home after work, and what gets you moving? I'm working on stuff at home and it is definitely tough to do!

-Carlos

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Thanks!

Yeah, really tough. So much to do, so little time.

Stay tuned!

Rico said...

Jean-Denis, I'm really looking forward to your workflow demo. I like to see other animators workflow to compare and improve my own.

Cheers!

Jean-Denis Haas said...

I hope it will be clear. :)

I'm trying to cover the workflow across different levels, like foreground animation vs. background animation, etc.

Graham Ross said...

Hey! Post some specs of your new machine!

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Years ago I would have done the research and built it myself, but I am sadly very out of touch. So pardon me if I just copy/paste the specs without really knowing anything about it. :)

>> ATI 100-505182 FireGL V3350 256MB GDDR2 PCI Express x16 Workstation Video Card

>> AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ Brisbane 2.6GHz Socket AM2 65W Dual-Core Black Edition Processor Model

>> APEVIA X-QPACK-NW-BK/420 Black Aluminum 1.0 w/ ABS plastic front panel MicroATX Desktop Computer Case 420W Power Supply

>> GIGABYTE GA-MA69GM-S2H AM2 AMD 690G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

>> Kingston HyperX 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model KHX6400D2LLK2/2GN

Chintan Shah said...

hello sir,

The upcoming posts sound really exciting.. eagerly waiting for them.

Thanks a lot :D
and congrats for the new machine

Chints :)

Jean-Denis Haas said...

The case came in today. The countdown has begun! :)

Btw. Carlos:

the only way right now for me to get going on home animation is when I'm alone at home. I just want to spend all the time I have with my family, so when my son and wife are out of the house, that's when I would be able (but then I got lots of other distrations and things to do...).

There is no clear answer as how I fire up my animation guns. You just have to be disciplined and go for it. But I'm having a hard time for sure. I will try to go through animation boot camp once the PC is assembled. :)