015 - Summer Stuff

I took a digital animation course this summer.  I knew that I would be starting the animation program at Capilano in the fall, and was hoping the summer course would give me an idea of whether I wanted to focus on digital animation for the third year of the program.  Here's some of the stuff I did, and a bit about the program.  And in case you're thinking about maybe taking the course, hopefully Google will have helped you out by finding this line...

Capilano University computer animation and visual effects review

or maybe this one...


Capilano University computer animation and visual effects opinion

The course was two months long, from the beginning of July to the end of August.  The days were pretty long, usually from 9:30-4:30 with an hour for lunch, and then often working for an hour or two after class was over.  It felt like about a semester's worth of work done in half the time.  I liked how intense the program was, but if you're trying to plan a lot of other summer stuff as well, it could be a bit rough.

Each week was roughly 2 days of animating, 2 days of modeling, and 1 day of traditional design.  Mixed in with that were some effects demos, other digital stuff, and a bit of sculpting.

The lab set-up was pretty sweet, I had my own computer for the summer, complete with one normal monitor and one Cintiq tablet.

I learned a lot and enjoyed the program.  The teachers knew their stuff.  Here's a link to the school's site if you want any more info.

Now keep in mind, I'm not saying that what I'm about to show you is good animating or modeling haha...but for 2 months with no prior experience in 3D it's (hopefully) not that bad.

This was our first introduction to the Morphy character rig.  I somehow got his feet twisted 180 to the rest of his body and then let the computer magically "fix" things in mid air.

A nice creepy/awkward walk cycle.

A less creepy/awkward run cycle.

Some simple modeling and rough poses inspired by the TV show Wipeout (there are some amazing YouTube clips out there - definitely fun referencing this one).

We also built some simple rigs, and did some physics engine and effects stuff.

Here's some pics of some models I built in Maya.

An octopus speed model.

A cheetah speed model.  Ferocious yes?

I kind of like this one.  Hand painted textures.

Here's the door without texturing.

Hand model without and with smoothing.

I started building this scene (inspired by the PS2 game Jak and Daxter), but decided to focus on animation for my final project instead.

I posted these two vids before, but here they are again.

This was a nice step up from my earlier Morphy stuff.  I got a second character in there, used a constraint on the ball, a deformer on the mesh, and had a few different things animating at once.

This one was fun to do.  Tried to have him give a bit of a performance.

Oh ya, I almost forgot about some of the design stuff.  We were drawing on the tablet every design class except the first one.  It took a little getting used to, but was definitely nice for some things.

The tablet was nice for tracing over existing model sheets.

We started by sketching the basic shapes of some characters, then created poses for them.

Some concept scribbles for designing a character.

Some poses for character.  Those diving helmets are pretty cool.  Digital inking is tricky.

This assignment was fun: take an existing fairy tale, then come up with different settings for it.  I did some rough scribbles for Jack and the Beanstalk characters.

Jungle setting, and more ideas to test out.

Greek/Roman setting.  In order of Giant, Jack, Giant's wife, Jack's mom, Jack's lady-friend

It was fun trying out new ideas, even though the first one could have worked.

This was the last one I came up with, and it ended up as my fav.  The giant is kind of a Sasquatch-yet-beast.  The setting was loosely based on northern Canada, with the idea of spirits and wild monsters - or something like that.  I figured that the Giant's wife could shape shift between a bear and spirit that kind of looks like a mix between a female genie and a character from (I think) He-man.

Cleaned-up version of three of the characters, complete with first attempt at digital colouring.

A nice awkward rotation of Jack.

Rough sketches inspired by the yeti-monster.

Turn-around of yet-monster, and colour explorations.  This was for a character sculpt that I haven't quite finished.  Well I sort of finished it, I just haven't baked it in the oven yet because I want to tweak it a bit.  I'll post that up later.  Since this post is already ridiculously long.

So that's some of what I did during the summer course.