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Short animation exercise I did during my probation period at Gusto Games, about a year ago. Using 3ds Max and MAX rig by Peter Starostin which can be found at http://www.3dluvr.com/clisk3d/
Props (glove, hat, ball) and quickie environment modeled and textured by myself. Was a good exercise to get to learn the software and get into sports animation. Roughly 2-3 weeks work.
So finally here it is, a first sample from the Ultimate I Spy game. The game, made by Gusto Games, is published by Elastic (the games-involvement name for well-known american publishers Scholastic) and includes 10 levels of object finding riddles and minigames. Although primarily aimed at children I feel that it visually makes full advantage of the Wii graphics capacity and can be addictive and enjoyed by anyone. It was definitely great fun to work on.
This clip is a rendered version of the final payoff animation of the front end machine when all levels are completed - sorry to ruin the surprise finale..! It was particularly requested to be made longer and faster - hence the repetition and somewhat awkward music tempo - I’m not really fond of the music track but this is what we had to work with. Looking back at it now I can see a lot of room for improvement, but still it was great to animate the only rigged and complicated character of the game.
My involvement in the particular sequence was animating the robot and camera. Modelling and texturing of the environment done by Lucy Axworthy, modelling, lighting and rigging the robot done by James Roadley-Battin. This rendered version of the sequence is slightly different from what it look in game, with the robots eyes flashing and the lighting done programmatically.
More clips from my involvement in the game coming soon!
Finally I can show and tell about the game I’ve been working on since January. Unfortunately only american audiences get to play it - for the moment - but you can have a peek here:
http://www.ispyvideogames.com/
(another trailer under About tab and image stills under Features)
I will be puting together clips and images of work I was involved in and posting it online as soon as I get it OKayed
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Unfortunately I can’t be puting up any images of the game I’m working on as junior artist /animator since it is all confidential. But I can promise I am enjoying it lots and looking forward to the game being released to see if non-biased people like it as much. Although that means we only get to work on this until August and then move on to something probably sports related.
So here is a few pages I scanned recently from my sketchbooks, ranging from recent stuff to few months old.
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Some life drawing I scanned recently - about a year old. A definite improvement from previous years especially with quick sketches, and much more enjoyable and chilled sessions. Finally I could let go and not care if each sketch is a portfolio piece or not. Hope find somewhere to do some more sessions soon!
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Thank you for visiting my space of bloggings and work in progress. My personal website is finally up and running, visit it here: www.annamations.com
You can see my showreel and short film / tv shows involvement under animation, life drawing, sketches, paintings etc in the gallery and find out more about me under resume. And if you care for some animation news and inspirational work you can find them under links. All feedback is always welcome!
Coming up: Working on more animation exercises in Maya to improve my folio of work - and to keep from rusting - there are some great rigs available free online to play with. Oh, and lots of recent random sketches and life drawing - which I just need to finish scanning and photoshoping, annoying when stuff is A3 and your scanner is A4…
My animation showreel, featuring scenes from mainly three short films (Squeaky Clean - MA Final Major, Petrified - BA Final Major, Dreamcatching - MA Group Project). For concept and character design you will have to watch it to the end. Music - Akilah by Turiya Mareya Latin Jazz Ensemble.
Ladies, gentlemen and animation ppl (a species of our own), I present you my MA final major project, CG animated short, ‘Squeaky Clean’. Enjoy!
Three days before hand in, I thought I’ll post a few stills of the rendered shots, which I must say I’m quite proud of how they are looking. Still need to rerender a few passes and colour-match all the shots together but if someone told me last September that I’d know my way round XSI and achieving these results I would have had my dooubts. I even replaced some of the 2D effects I was planning to have with CG elements, and funnily enough it took me less time to achieve a good result that blends in with the rest of the style.
Well, enough blabbing here are the stills. I will be saving the animation till next week when it is all put together and looking Clean! Click to enlarge.
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Spend most of this week carrying out some extreme UVing. Used Roadkill for the initial unwrapping and then tidy up diferent objects togehter on the same maps - something like puting together puzzle pieces. Same as for the boy, I did ambient occludion render maps for each objects and used them in photoshop to produce some sketchy shading. I had to keep myself from adding too much detail or making the textures too realistic since I want to keep the film’s look more simple and stylised.
The results so far:
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I decided to keep the walls and floor in the same colour to keep it less distracting. Perhaps a slight bump map to give the feeling of tiles. Well, now that I got the look sorted I can go back to animating!