Flash Walk Cycles

Here are a few walk cycles I've done in Flash. We have an in-house illustrator that designed all the characters and usually breaks up the pieces for me. I make everything move. So here's just a few of the characters we've used in games and their walk cycles. I just kinda threw this together, so there's no music or anything added to it.


Flash Walk Cycles from James Ward on Vimeo.

4 down, 2 to go

So I just finished class 4 last week. It was great to get the lip sync in there for my assignment I did at the end of class 3 and then to do a complete 2 person multi camera shot. I chose something a little more subtle for the 2 person clip so that it would challenge me to focus more on the acting. I think it came out pretty well overall. My mentor for class 4 was Jason Taylor (http://www.captainkeyframe.com/index.htm) he worked on horton hears a who and also quite a few shorts when he was at Blur studios. He animated the last shot in gopher broke when cow comes down.. ha.. Jason gave me great critiques when going through my work, very thorough :) So here's my work from class 4 and below: (sorry for some frame skipping, don't know why youtube and the blogger video do that)


Animation Mentor Class 4 Progress from James Ward on Vimeo.

Class 5 is going to be starting soon and I will be starting my journey to completing a short film on my own. I'm sure all the knowledge I've learned from the Paco project that I mentioned last in the last post will come in handy. I have a couple ideas so far, but we will be doing a bit of brainstorming in the first week or two, so that will help flesh out some ideas as well. So after all this is said and done, I'll finally be looking elsewhere for a job. I'm getting pretty excited about the whole thing, can't wait to get my work out there and find something that really is challenging and fun. (and animation is definitely both of them!)

In other news, I haven't done a whole lot of side projects since we finished Paco. I'm still working on animations for a project of a friends that is going to be a free massive multiplayer game. It's called "Stormfront Online", but there's no work or website up yet. It looks and sounds really cool and I'm trying to help out when I can. And another friend is doing a game for school in flash, so I'm just doing quick little flash animations for that, nothing too big though.

I'll try to post work from my short on here as I'm going along with it, here are some more links for inspiration:

Oktapodi
Doxology short (interesting mixed media piece)
RBC Blue Water Project
A.D.D. Jane
Michael the Terrible Boyfriend (this one cracks me up)
Animation background blog
Hug a developer

Lots of stuff

Alright, it's been way too long since I've posted, so here we go:

The Animation Mentor classes have been going wonderfully.. I am learning a crazy amount of knowledge and keeping a huge notebook of notes.. I think it will turn into pure gold when I'm done with the course. I am in week 8 of 12 in class 3 of 6.. so that means...... I'm more than half way through the program! wooooo! This week, we just started our first shot animating to dialogue. I've done a few tests with dialogue before starting AM, but this is one I feel most confident about.

In class 2 I had Michelle Meeker as a mentor and she was just great. She really pushed me hard which was exactly what I needed. At the end of the class, we all voted on which student was most improved and best of show.. and I won best of show! It was an honor to know that other people liked my work. I mean, I'm never really sure what other people's responses are to my work, cause they could just be nice and say "good job" or most of the time we are constantly critiquing others to push their animation.. but it was nice to know people enjoyed what I've done.

So now I'm in class 3 with Ray Chase.. he gives great advice and gets up and acts stuff out which really helps me know what he means. I finished an acting piece in week 5 and will finish my dialogue shot in the beginning of next class. So I'm sure I will have those 2 pieces the next time I post. But for now, here's the progress from the end of class 2:




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Other REALLY exciting news is that the short film I was working on is now finished! It's so nice to see a project come to an end, and the final product being as it is.. He rendered it in stereoscopic, so at the premiere we got to put on the 3d glasses and watch it on the big screen.. it was so nice to see the audiences reactions and getting all the positive feedback.. Of course there are things that I would change if I went back to it, but overall I am pleased.

here's the link: www.pacoshort.com

also, you can go to the cgtalk thread that was started: here


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In work news, things are kind of here and there.. we are working really hard to try and get our game portal product out there to as many people as possible. But we are still looking for an investor.. . heh, if anyone knows someone with lots of money and wants to invest in a game portal, hook us up! riiiight.. well we are being positive and hoping that it will work out.. we are becoming more confident this plan is going to work with the positive feedback from our clients, but just need money to see it through to the end.. i'm just glad i still have a job at the moment and hope it lasts for a while :)

if something happens, I think I've got some other options around the indianapolis area I can pursue.. or maybe I'll just move to california and live with Frank (the guy who came up with the Paco short) cause he just got accepted to the residency program at PIXAR! way to go Frank! You deserve it man..

well, I think that's about it from here, hopefully I'll get some more time to post more often, and at least get my AM work up here..

Thanks and here's some more links..

WALL E in Real Life!
Good references for facial expressions
FALLEN - A really good short
Engineer's Guide to Cats (my brother works with these guys)
The Grid is way cooler than the internets
Another short with Simon's Cat