Just a little something...

Hey Everyone,

Here's a little video of an Animation Mentor student in Utah that was on her local news lately. I thought it was a nice little clip explaining all the things I also do, and dream of doing. =)

Back to animating.

-Sheldon

Click HERE to watch it.

My animation, and Jade.

Hey Everyone,

I have been pretty busy lately and thought it was time to post some of my work in progress(WIP). I don't really have a whole lot to say about it, but my mentor was really happy with my work last week and how this assignment is coming along...so that makes me happy. I just realized that I've never introduced this new character on here before. So I give to you "Bishop"!



By the way...the sound clip is from the movie Ghostbusters 2.

This assignment will spill over into the next class that will begin in early January. Thats when we will be taught how to animate a characters face...which is why you just saw my characters face not moving. I will have to do a little demo video in January to show you how much control we have in the face. Facial animation can get pretty complex. For example: When we smile, the corners of our mouths push up, which pushes our cheeks up, which then our cheeks push our lower eyelids up. All of this doesn't happen at the exact same time either...its a chain reaction that is so incredibly subtle. Its those types of small details that I ABSOLUTELY love to animate, and give me such a boost of energy when you get something to work right and believably.

After my last post of my reference video, I had a few very kindly placed complaints from a few people. They weren't really complaints I guess, more like "wondering why types of questions." The question was "Where's Jade?" You see, other times I have posted reference video on here, there has always been some video footage of my reference recording buddy, Jade. But last time...I didn't do it. I thought because I had recorded my reference indoors, and Jade was outdoors, would be an excuse. Nope! People didn't go for it. =)

So just for you, I went outside just 3 hours ago in the -22 degrees Celsius, -8 degrees Fahrenheit and played around with Jade for a bit. So here she is, and thank you for keeping me in line. I will never leave Jade out again. =)

Thank you for reading!

-Sheldon

Its reference video time!!...ha ha.

Hello Good People!

Well, this past week for the first 3 days I did nothing but watch movies all day. I was searching for audio clips that I thought would be fun to animate too for my next assignment. I found many great lines, but I had to narrow it down to my three favourite. This week I have to narrow it down to one, which is going to be so tough. It sort of makes me sad too...not like super double duper sad...but 2 of my lines are going to be left behind and will probably never become an animation. Oh well...

With my three choices, I then had to act them out. Classmates at Animation Mentor have been telling me to quit wasting my time becoming an animator, and go become an actor...ha ha. I think I would love doing that too. I definitely plan to take some acting classes in the future after I complete Animation Mentor. As an animator it can be really helpful when trying to find the right acting choices for your character.

Hope you enjoy my reference video, and yes I know...I need a haircut. =)

Thank you!

-Sheldon

5 weeks later...and Stewie still couldn't get it right.

Hello Everyone,

Stewie tried picking up that sushi for 5 weeks (I animated), and he still couldn't quite get a handle on the whole chopsticks thing.

Overall I am pretty happy with the way it turned out, but I will definitely be cleaning it up more for a possible piece for my reel. The thing that I am most excited about is that skill level wise, I felt I really took a step throughout this assignment. I don't know how to explain it...but I just feel it. I learned so much.

Here it is!



So...on to bigger and better things! We are finally getting introduced to animating to dialogue. What that means is we get a new character to animate with that has face controls to make our character look like its actually talking. So over the last 2 days and I have been watching movies (tough homework I know) searching for an audio clip that I think would be fun to animate to. My mentor highly advised us to find an audio clip that we get excited about because we're going to be working with it for a long time. And by long time...I mean until January 28, 2008...when its due. Thats right...until that date I will be working on the same 10 seconds of animation. Good thing I love animating, eh!...ha ha.

You definitely need patience to animate, and I hope that you can join in on the patience with me as its going to be a while before I am done this piece. But I will definitely be showing you my progress. But if you want to come back to my blog sometime during the week after January 28th to see the completed animation...thats OK...I won't hold it against you. =) You probably think I am crazy too, but thats OK...because some days I think I am too for getting into this animation game. =)

Thanks for stopping by!

-Sheldon