A 3D Diversion

I've been dividing my time up a little more on my film so I can teach myself Maya. I am using a rig we had at Summer Arts so I can learn how to animate in Maya. Even though I have delved ever so slightly into modeling and rigging I really don't want to get into that aspect of 3D. I have done animation in Lightwave before and just barely in Maya so I decided to really jump in and work it all out. It's mostly getting used to where the different controls are in Maya as opposed to Lightwave. Maya does have better animation controls just like Lightwave has better modeling. It also helps to have such a nice rigged character as this one.

I also did this walk, which was to try and have him pulling something along. This is a nice challenge in 3D to keep the hands holding onto the same object while still walking the character and giving him a little resistance. I Plan on doing some more scenes as well as working with some of the texturing and effects.

Busy and Updating

I have updated my website with a few sketches I have done recently in my sketchbook. Since returning from our road trip to TX I spent one week at home before going to be a guest artist at CSU Summer Arts with some great animator friends,
Andrew Gordon, Mike Wellins, Brian Boyd, and Chuck Harvey. Rick Vertolli from CSU Chico heads up the animation program. This year we concentrated on character development. One of the coolest parts about it is in the same room we had 2D and 3D animators doing the same assignments but in their chosen medium.

Students got to have 3 days of acting
classes which helped them develop their characters. They then did poses, walk cycles and scenarios which were animated in either Maya (3D) or Mirage (2D). They also got a nice tour of Pixar and were treated to some of Chuck Harvey's great collection of animation.









All together it was a great time and some incredible work came out of there. You can see some of their work at MyToons.