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

Class 1 down, 5 to go!

Well the holidays are almost upon us, and that means that the end of the semester is here. So this is the reel with all of my Animation Mentor coursework in it. This starts with the most recent and goes down to the first assignment. The AM experience was SO amazing, I loved everything about it. I learned more about animation in that 3 months, than I have in my life because this is the first time I've had instruction that is STRICTLY for animation. I got an "A" for my final grade :)

Things with work are getting busy, but also going REALLY well.. we got our first client and are getting to launch the beta of our product in January. I am also excited because we are talking about getting off the short simple flash games that we have been developing and try to get into some bigger, more in depth games that can be sold on the shelves of walmart and target for PC and possibly DS or Xbox Arcade. It would look great to have some animation for that under my belt.

The Paco animation project is going nicely. Frank is going to be dedicating most all of his work time to get it finished by summer 08. I imagine, I will be dedicating more time to working on the animation for it.. I have finished 3 shots so far and have many more to go. The first shot that I animated is on the paco blog under "Shot render passes demo". My shot is the very last one in the video.. and lasts like 1 or 2 seconds.. but it still is nice to see the animation look so nice with the lighting and rendering. Frank did a great job with the first scene in it as well.

Well, it's off to the relatives up north for a little while and it will be nice to have a little break before class 2 starts up. Everyone have a great christmas and I'll be back when the next class starts up with more posts. And I'll leave with a few more links:

When Angry Animators Attack!
Solar Powered Animal Sculptures
Calling All Cars
Exaggeration Reference- Dover Boys
Some great Animated shorts
GLOW IN THE DARK CATS!

progress

Well it has been a while since my last post. I've been really hard at work with all the animation I've been doing.. So to give everyone an update, I put together the work I've done for my Animation Mentor class up until now. It is already midterms and I'm getting ready to start handling characters with tails and legs in the last half of the class. The school really is everything everyone says it is... and more.. really.. My mentor is a guy named Paul Allen. He worked on the Jimmy Neutron and Ant Bully movies. He is currently working on a TOP SECRET video game project in Texas. Can't wait to see his work when it gets announced closer to the new year. Also, here is an animation I did that I couldn't use for one of my assignments, check it out... it was fun.



On another note, my full time job has been going wonderfully.. It gets a tad stressful with upcoming deadlines, but it is a LOT of fun cause I get to make games. Possibly the BEST part of it is that I get to practice doing 2d animation in Flash. I always hear professional animators say that they encourage people to get started doing 2d before trying 3d.. I completely back this up, because I have learned a lot, much faster from working in Flash than if I only animated in 3d. If you can't afford Flash there are quite a few 2d animation software packages out there..
Pencil
Flipbook
Mirage
You owe it to yourself to do some 2d, even if you can't draw.. try doing simple effects, like a water splashes, or even your typical bouncing ball in 2d.. it is awesome practice.

the paco animated short is going slowly but surely.. We 3 animators (myself, Jared Price, and Frank Tai) have dedicated at least one night a week to work on the animation for the short which helps because we are all so busy. Hopefully this will start to come together towards the new year.

alright, that's about it on this end.. here are some links for your viewing pleasure.. just random things that I think are worthwhile on the net..

Animation Mentor Fall Showcase
Rock Band Trailer
Dale Baer on Animation Podcast
Breaking into Games: I want to be a Designer!
Michael Caine: Acting on Film
A Conversation with Don Hertzfeldt
Wake up - a short about a cat
Awesome stop motion spot for Sony
for fun... Flight of the Conchords - Business Time

Animation mentor

I just got accepted for the fall term of Animation Mentor!! I'm really excited... now I need to read up and practice up for October 1st... .... wooo!

also, theres this guy named Frank Tai that I'm doing some animation with for his short animation named "PACO." You may be asking yourself.. "Who The Hell is Frank Tai?" well, check it out here: http://pacoanimatedshort.blogspot.com/

Visionfest 2007

I had a wonderful time this last weekend because it was Visionfest weekend... I got to hear guest speakers like Rick O' Connor from ILM, Conrad Montgomery from Disney Television Studios, and Rich McKain from Blue Sky Studios talk about their experiences in the professional world. Rich McKain even showed us how he approaches a walk cycle and I took a full page of notes! It was so inspiring to see their work and hear how things happen in a studio setting like that.. gets me excited just thinking about it! ..

Another thing about Visionfest... it's a juried student competition with three categories, 3d short, 2d short, and Sequential Art. I just so happened to submit a few things into the Sequential Art category, just wondering if they would even be on display at the event... It turned out all of my comics (3 of them) were on display and one of them got much more recognition than I could have hoped for... They announced the best in the undergraduate category for sequential art and it was me... then the best overall... and that was me too! I was flabbergasted! ....Really, you can see for yourself.. that's my big cheesy grin as I hold on to the wonderful plaque with my name on it :)













you can see an article on the School of Informatics site, here is the link:
http://informatics.iupui.edu/news/story.php?id=593

So basically, not only did I get to chat with people working on the movies that I want to so desperately make, but I also got recognized for making good artwork and telling a story! I would say that's one helluva weekend! I even got a little time to show Rich McKain my animation reel after the awards and he went through it with me, telling me what he liked and disliked... you can't beat that kind of feedback!

So anyway, here are the images of my comic that won, called Wonderland

























































I have to thank my professor Durwin Talon for helping me with getting this comic presentable.. Thanks so much..