Friday, June 1, 2012

Practice, practice, practice!

Isn't there a saying that you need to get a thousand crappy drawings out of your system before you get a good one? Well, the same is true about computer animation. You have to practice and not be burdened with the pressure that every shot or sequence you start will end up on your demo reel (more about this in a later post). And my plan is to do just that.

But give me every option available and no deadline and it's going to take me ages until I decide on something. Deadlines and restrictions are one of my favorite things at work. I love finding the most creative solution within a set of restrictions. It's like a puzzle! ("It's like a big old mammogram!").

Enter the 11secondclub.

One of the things I've wanted to do for a while but never had the time for, was submitting entries for the 11secondclub. It's perfect for what I need. A DEADLINE! Each month!

So from now on I will do just that, enter a clip each month using every spare minute that I have. And it doesn't matter how much time I spent on it, how crappy it is, it's all about practice, practice, practice.

So here we go! This is my entry for the month of May. For this month, I had a day where the stars aligned and I was granted 10 hours of free time (sort of). I dove right into it and submitted the work about 2 minutes before the end of the deadline! HAHAHA! Better start practicing and improving my timing for that as well!

The clip was fun to do, especially the ending, where I totally went overboard. I just wanted to practice and have fun. There's a good mix of reference and imagination, pose to pose and straight-ahead animation in there. I loved it! And the Malcolm rig from AnimSchool is fantastic! So many controls, but never confusing! Btw. the stairs were built using this kick ass tool: Davveys Stair Generator 1.1.2 (maya script)

The clip here is zoomed in and rendered, which was not what I submitted but I prefer this one. Can't wait to start the next clip!

Here are also the usual suspects of formats: Vimeo and Quicktime


9 comments:

nathanimator said...

Dude, that's inspiring that you managed to do that in 10 hours. Looks like I need a lot of practice. Thanks for the push! :)

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Thanks! It's very freeing to just jump in there and do it!

Anonymous said...

This is very inspiring and I have decided to enter this competition every month from now on. Thanks.

B-Maui said...

.ah !so it was yours that clip!
I voted it yesterday.
I really liked it.
I sbumitted mine as well, for the same reason you did. Practise practise practise.
Good luck!
Maui.

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Haha, thanks Maui!

Anonymous said...

Hhey Jean-Denis. Still planning on doing some screen captured video tutorials of you working on one of your shots like this at some point.

I think you were looking into video capturing software a while back for such a purpose if im not mistake :)

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Hey anon, yep, still planned, but with newborn priorities have changed. Whenever time frees up I'll get to my list of things I need to do.

Anonymous said...

Well congratulations!!!

Kept that quiet :) But you never seem like the type to parade your family life on the internet.

Girl or boy? (If that kind of thing is not private!)

Akem

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Boy!

And outside of Facebook (and even there) I keep my family stuff private. Although I can't stop posting pictures of the baby because he's so cute!! :)