It’s been quite some time since I’ve done a traditional painting, and it was my first time with acrylics, so I started by doing a quick digital sketch to figure out how I wanted to approach it.

(I’m not sure the world is ready for this…)

oh, I should note that this was heavily influenced by Pete Oswald’s work on Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, which happens to be Randy’s favorite movie (I’ve never seen someone identify with a character so much before :)

And these are some quick (60 sec) gestures from the cool Animal Gesture Drawing Practice Tool on pixelovely.com

I did this in little more than an hour of just playing around with it:

(though doing a water color under water sounds like an interesting challenge :)

Anyway, here are some drawin’s from the drawing class I’m taking at work:

(all were 5 min. poses)

Download (Android & iPhone compatible)

Demo Reel Breakdown

Here’s a dialog animation I did to test out the facial setup of my character:

New Version

Old Version

I know a medium close shot of a character just delivering a line of dialog isn’t the most interesting thing you can do in animation; however, I had a lot of fun being able to focus on it’s subtlety. I didn’t actually use any reference for this animation (not always a good thing to do), but  I recently read a book on facial psychology written by Paul Ekman and Wallace V. Friesen called “Unmasking the Face” and tried to put a lot of what I learned from that book to use. I find it very interesting what triggers a facial expression, and tried hard to show it as my character is thinking through his dialog.

Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear any and all feedback!

I am now starting to do some test animations.  Not only so I can show them off in my new demo reel (that I will be making shortly), but also to find out if there are trouble spots in the rig. I’d rather find them in a short test animation, than having to deal with them in a longer animation that I’ve committed myself to :)

Here is a quick test I did to show off/test my characters clean shoulder deformations:

The animation was done quickly and I would love to tighten it up, but again I need to press onward!

Though it was often hard to find the time, I had a lot of fun creating all the graphics for the game. At the risk of ruining some of the surprises (if you haven’t already played through it) I thought it would be fun the share the graphics I did for it:

(these ones are really fun to blow up)

If your interested in finding out more about it, we’ve set up a site at: www.tojamgames.com

Search for it in the Android Market :)

(This is a QR code for those of you who don’t know. It will take you directly to our game in the market if you take a picture of it with a bar code scanning app on the phone :)

I’m pretty darn happy with how clean and flexible his deformations are. I can actually corkscrew his leg 360° without any geometry tearing!

All were done in roughly 15 -30 minutes.

Spending Christmas morning with my parents, I pulled out a small portable watercolor set to pass the time :)

These were both done on 2.5″ x 3.5″ water color paper (trading card size)

The texturing could use some tweaking, and I’d ultimately like to go with a different technique for the hair; however I’m going to start pushing forward with rigging so i can quickly get this guy moving.  I can always come back and adjust things to my hearts desire later.

I was watching Pete’s Dragon a couple of weeks ago, and while watching it I doodled down this likeness of the charlatan character. Which I then spiffed up into the above painting.

Needs some reworking, but I like some of the concepts of it.

where i wasted a few minutes of my morning doodling this:

The cool thing is that it saves out a video of you doing the sketch:  Check this out

]]> http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/09/14/odosketch/feed/ 0 http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/09/05/vehicle/ http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/09/05/vehicle/#comments Sun, 06 Sep 2009 05:18:27 +0000 James http://direenworks.com/jdblog/?p=384 Not very functional,  but somewhat neat lookin’ vehicle design…

download

One of my co-workers let me sit down and play on his Cintiq (A flat-screen monitor that you can draw on).  Without anything in mind, I just doodle away seeing how I like working on the monitor; Which I did, and will one day have to envest in one :)

I like the way this one came out. The more I do, the faster and easier it becomes… go figure?

]]> http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/03/11/slacking-off-at-work-again/feed/ 0 http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/03/11/environment-desk-doodle/ http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/03/11/environment-desk-doodle/#comments Wed, 11 Mar 2009 17:44:58 +0000 James http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/03/11/environment-desk-doodle/ Been a while since I’ve posted anything, so here you go. Hopefully soon I’ll post something actually worth showing :)

]]> http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2009/01/24/office-paintodoodle/feed/ 0 http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2008/12/22/sticky-walk-cycle/ http://direenworks.com/jdblog/2008/12/22/sticky-walk-cycle/#comments Mon, 22 Dec 2008 19:30:14 +0000 James http://direenworks.com/jdblog/?p=303

Playback doesn’t seem to loop smoothly, so here’s a download link:

Download

It still takes me quite a bit of work to pull these off with any level of success. A well practiced characture artist can nock these things out in 5-10 minutes apiece. Though I don’t take much longer than that to do the actual drawing, only 1 in 10 of mine come out looking good. I think I did about four attempts on this one before it came out looking right.

(Yup, he scares me too…)

I’ve finished off his modeling for the most part, and am now working on his shaders. As you may have notice, I am using a sub surface scattering (SSS) shader for his skin, which approximates the way light transfuses through it. Neat huh!

A good learning experiance… which is another way of saying I’m not completely happy with how it turned out :) It sertainly isn’t bad, and there are a lot of things I still like about it. It just didn’t end up with the snap that I wanted to give it at the end.

This is a test I did in what I think was about an hour (though it may have been a bit longer… time seems to fly when I’m animating : )

Download

The drawing tool doesn’t produce a clean line yet, which causes me to make “chicken-scratch” lines. But like I said, I’m not interested in this program for it’s quality, but it’s speed. I’d like to write some scripts that lets me cleanly interface it with Maya. Ultimately using it as part of my 3D workflow.  I’ve been wanting to do this since I saw how effectively Jason Ryan (a Disney Animator) works with DigiCel’s FlipBook software, as can be seen here: http://www.digicelinc.com/3D/3danimationJR2.htm

I’m still not consistent with my caricatures, but once in a while I pull off one that I like:

Here is one I exumed from a 2006 sketchbook:

It’s not spot-on, but it is close enough for me to be happy with it. I spent about 15 min. on it while he was sitting there, and another 45 filling in what I could.

Download

Talk about your random subjects. It seems somewhat reasonable for me to sit down and do a random sketch of whatever hits my mind, but an animation?! 10 to 15 hours is a lot of time to put toward a half baked idea.

Why did I decide to animate a girl climbing over a counter? I wanted to do something that would challenge me in terms of body mechanics and construction. Something that wasn’t just about going from one pose to another but had more of a continuous flow. Something that moved both dynamically and dimensionally. So this idea seemed to fit when I came across one of those random sketches I had done of a girl standing at a counter.

This animation is not all that entertaining, but I learned a lot from it! For Instance: Planning out the timing for animation is IMPORTANT! Not for just the subject as a whole which is obviously important, but the individual aspects of that subject. What will be the spacing for the hips, the torso, the head, the arms, etc. they can each move at separate speeds, and generally should.

In animation terms the concepts of moving elements with different timing are referred to as overlap, follow through, and secondary motion. They are fundamental concepts that I learned long ago and have been using for years, but this animation really drove home the importance of giving some deeper thought and planning consideration as to how your going to use them in your animation.

Anyone who has done much computer animation, might understand why it has taken me so long to have this epiphany. With the computer it is so easy to adjust things as you go. Speeding things up or slowing them down is just a matter of sliding a red bar on the timeline (i.e. “oh, the hands are hitting at the same time as everything else… let’s just move that key back a smidgon… there we go”) You do a lot of tweaking in the end to make everything look good, and it does, but you end with the result that you “found” rather than one that you intentionally created.

I’m not sure that I’m making a whole lot of sense to anyone but myself… In an attempt to clarify it: A lot of time is spent on posing a character to describe what they are doing, but it is the timing that tells of the way in which they are doing it. It is easy enough to adjust on the computer, but it shouldn’t be left as an afterthought. A characters attitude and personality comes out through the timing and spacing and thus should be given as much thought as the posing and general movement itself.

Download

Download

Hadn’t done much gesture drawing in a while, so figured it was a good time to do some last night while watching a video.

These are a couple of office doodles I did the other day while wishing I was outside.

Download

I’m glad I got this one out of the way. I originally wanted to set myself up to do 2D so I could just do a whole bunch of quick pencil tests to study motion and get better at animation in general; but having started this project, I felt that I should finished before moving on, which ended up mentally blocking me from doing any of it. So hopefully I’ll start posting some of them-there pencil tests in the near future.

I originally thought I would end up fully painting it, but I started playing around with a markered look and liked how it was turning out.

I like the way it turned out, and hopefully I’ll color it when I get a chance…

Here’s Christopher Reeves in the original Super Man

The Psychiatrist in Terminator 2

And after spraining my ankle last week, I did some foot studies from Louise Gordon’s anatomy book

My apologies for the poor quality images. I really need to make my scanner more accessible…

Not good, not horrible, makes me realize how much I need to continue studying anatomy…

Still needs work (who knows, I may end up redrawing it altogether), but this is where I am at with it tonight.

So here you go:

(Click for larger image)

This was a storyboard of a short scene in “the Three Musketeers” that I did for my storyboarding class in college.

These are from an animation short idea that a friend and I had for one of our classes in school:

Though there was some initial work done towards the animation (some of which can be seen in my rigging reel) the project fizzeled out and died. I hope to one day get back to it and do the idea justice.

p.s. DON’T STEAL MY IDEA! or you will suffer a marsh mallowy DOOOOOOM!

Hopefully I’ll be able to ride the wave and kick out a few more of these. I sure could use the practice.

These are a few that I scribbled out on some postit notes at work:

Oh, and if you haven’t come across the internet pluggin Piclens, you should go grab it at www.piclens.com . It allows you to view images in a 3D slideshow environement, and i’ve enabled it on my site… WOOO!

Often as I go through life and am about to do some action such as riding a bike, juping on a trampoline, or going off a diving board, my mind flashes to me the worse possible thing that could happen. Does this happen to anyone else? or is it just my over active imagination. It usually doesn’t scare me, but on the contrary makes me laugh.

I had so much fun with this pencil test, I think I may take it a step further and clean it up. (we’ll see if I make it to the coloring stage).

I’ve got a ways to go before I would actually call my self good at this stuff(long ways), but it’s a start.

well maybe just a breif one here: I did this one at a Rockies game after I got board of watching the game, which didn’t take long… Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against baseball, I just think it would be better if there were only three
innings :)

Yeah the back scatter (the effect of light showing through) is bit too much and makes him look waxy, but I was just having too much fun :)

With all the technical stuff I’ve been doing lately, it sure feels good to sit down and do some painting. Even though this took me a couple of hours to do this, it is still more of an instant gratification than the 3D stuff I do.

This is the first of three shots in an animation I’m doing for an online mini-challenge

It’s nothing great, but the graphical shape the overal pose made really stood out to me.

 Quick sketch I did when I had a few moments at work.

It started out as a quick sketch on lunch break last week, then I went in and added some shading while I was waiting to meet with someone yesterday at work. overall, I may have put 20 mins into it.

First I’ll post a few from my sketch book, these are usually drawn while i’m sitting waiting somewhere, or out on lunch break.

When i’m sketching these people, I’m usually not too concerned with making it look like them… For one thing, people rarely hang around long enough to get an acurate likeness. Second, i’m usually not that interestest in “who” i’m drawing, but more how their standing sitting or doing what ever their doing. It’s a practice of visual note taking.

I should probably through some color into it if I get the time (and motivation).

More never came…

Well, it has been a while since i’ve posted anything new. I’ve been doing a lot of technical stuff lately. I suppose I could post some of the program code that I’ve been writting, but that would have a very limited audience and may cause me to loose my precious viewers. But while sitting here watching a movie with family on NewYears Eve I felt like doodling. Here is what I doodled:

I created these guys for an animated short that I was working on in school; unfortunately the project started falling apart and didn’t amount to much. The concept is so cool though! I hope to be able to re-work it someday.

Oh, and i’ve figured out how to make it so that you can view a larger version if you click on it. So enjoy.