This was a Mcqueen test I did one day before Rob came from Pixar to help us with our Cars animations.  I did it so I could get familiar with moving the rig around.  

Here is a small test I did with the Cars 2 Mater game rig.  It was fun to just mess around.

Totally Awesome

This is an animation I started a while ago before the Cars2 game ramped up. I decided to finish it. Its a fun piece. I learned a lot from it. Rhino is one of my favorite characters of all time. The voice was hilarious but without the animation he would be nothing. The animators were totally awesome!

Wrestle Mania! OHHHHHH YEEEEEEEE!

Hey dudeskies! this is my last post for today.... Blogging can be a tiring thing! I noticed that I put that I have fun on every one of my pieces. ITS TRUE! I was talking to a good buddy of mine.... MEL MILTON.... (yeah I just name dropped)....and he was telling me how much he has seen me putting my personality into these pieces I have done recently. I didn't realize it until he said it. The best possible thing to incorporate into your animation is yourself! I love being crazy and doing stupid actions along with my stupid voices. That is why I like doing my pieces. They are interesting because I feel like they are me.
So this one was a contest entry I did for animationrigs.com. The contest was to help promote the website so more people would be a part of it. The idea is to go on this site and pay a small monthly fee to be able to use some insanely cool rigs for animation. Shane Olsen, a guy that works with me here at AVA did some of the modeling of the Characters. Sean Galloway (aka Cheeks) did the designs for this character. Combining his designs and Kevin Freeman's rigging abilities, its a mean combination. (props to everyone else that is involved!) I thought the rigs were great. Congrats to the winners of the contest!

Anyway, this is my idea of fun and letting it all hang out in an animation. If you dont like it, I dont care....how about I kick you in the teeth or just give you a tomahawk chop straight to your nose.... if you want, I dunno.

Woody Piece

This is a lil older of an animation I did after we finished the TS3 game. I had so much fun with this. One of my favorite audio clips of all time is on a League of Their Own where Tom hanks yells at one of his players and then she starts to cry. He then says "There's no crying in baseball!" anyway, here is a clip from that audio.

I did this piece with nothing but good poses in mind. I started this before the fat rabbit. I got some nice poses and really tried to get some good acting choices. There were tons of cooks in the kitchen on this one as I showed it to everyone at work. To say the least, Im not quite happy with the overall piece and how it flows. I feel like it dies in places and some of the transitions aren't working properly. But I loved doing it! I think I accomplished getting some nice poses and acting choices! I think out of all the pieces I have done I have gained the most from this one. The reason is because.....SOMETIMES YOU JUST NEED TO TRUDGE THROUGH A PIECE AND FINISH IT NO MATTER HOW LONG YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING ON IT! I did all of woody because he was so exciting and then I tried to do jessie and it was really hard to find the drive to finish her subtle animations. So, my advice to anyone who might be doing a 2 person dialog.....BLOCK THEM BOTH IN AND ANIMATE THEM AT THE SAME TIME. Dont know if that helps at all. Cheers! Quiet Waaaaaaaaart!

Fat Wabbit

So here was my attempt to a fun walk for the Spline Doctors competition. This one was a challenge because I really wanted to portray how uncomfortable it must be to get into a movie theater seat when you have way too much food in your hands. HAHA I see it waaaaaaay too often. Someone will come in and have to crawl over my lurpy legs and worry about not spilling their bahama mamma hot dog on my lap. WOULDN'T IT JUST BE EASIER IF YOU DIDN'T BUY THE FOOD? anyway.... adding a chubby rabbit to the equation made it that much more fun!

I learned a lot about getting in and out of poses on this one. I created some nice poses in the beginning to portray my story and then it was really difficult to get into them. I think I have a better grasp on how I will do it next time. To say the least I had a great time with this. It felt good to actually get something into spline doctors contest!

Gear Change final

Hey! well I doubt anyone reads this but I decided to finally do some blogging again. I have been learning sooooooooo much! I guess I never really finished this Gear change for the blog so I believe this is the final that I came up with. Looking back on this now.... well its a turd. HAHA but it was still fun.

So I told a friend I would post up my current animation on this guy. I spoke with Kevin Chesnos last night about this and he gave me a great critique on how to polish the puppy and make it sing. I learned a lot. So here she is with color and more polish but not quite finished. Dorthy Mantooth is a saint!

Before total polish

Ok, so here is a more recent version where i changed the major notes that Kevin gave me. I changed up the beats a lil and played with timing. I am feeling much happier about this one. It has come a long way since last revision. Now when Kevin gives the approval I will go in and polish everything. Oh and yes I have polished up the knees already! blah!

Polish Started

Well, so I decided to take out the wrapper part and now this is not in stepped. I have broken it down past blocking. Some of the notes I received were that he needs to be more frantic at the beginning. More energetic. Then I need to really work on the lick. There were more but so I am going to work on all that then post it. I am having a great time on this shot.

New Gear CHange Test

So, This is my blocking and general ideas for a new test I am doing. Its called a "gear change." Its a test that Pixar does with all of its classes. Its a test to show a change of emotion in a character. Something else that I wanted to do with this test was try to animate a kid-like behavior. It has been a challenge but I think my poses are portraying my story. Im excited to get some break downs in here and really time it out right.

As Far As I Got

Sadly enough kids.... this is as far as I got before I had to move onto another test for Dream Giver. But I learned a lot on this test. The end is still not totally decided. I wanted to get this one working more solid and polish it up, but I didn't have time. Maybe laterssssss!

Blocking DG Test Object Interaction

This week for the Dream Giver project Kevin Chesnos asked us to do a test with our character interacting with an object. I figured it would be challenging do a type of scramble but moreso of him bumbling an object and having to save it from breaking... this is my blocking

I dodged a bullet

So I had some recent acquaintances that I have always wanted to caricature. The woman character is always yelling at her husband and saying how crazy he is. She is like the toad princess that will punch a hole in the wall if she cant watch her tv program. Then the man is a blue collar worker that just shells out money like an ATM. He just gets yanked around by his choke collar and dances like a circus boy. Such inspiring people for great stories and character!

Redo

So Kevin critiqued my first go and I decided to simplify it. Here is what it looks like. I didn't get to spend as much polish time as I would have liked. There are obvious hiccups. Oh well. It was a fun test anyway.

DG blocking for Kevin Chesnos

Ok, so I have had an amazing opportunity fall into my lap! I have been working on Ty Carters short film called "Dream Giver." Then Ty went and did an internship at Pixar where he met Kevin Chesnos! (character animator). Kevin has agreed to mentor us on this short film! Im stoked because I can get great critiques from a pixar animator, and hopefully we can get the film in front of a lot of people. On top of that I hope to get some nice demoreel pieces out of the film. Thanks Ty!!! you are the man!
So this is a simple test that Kevin is having us do to show some of our character by having him hop around and land. This is just my ideas in a rough blocking state. I have already received a critique from Kevin and I will take this a step further by making him act more like Golam. Cheers!

Teton Dance!

So I had to put this on. We just had taken a lift up to the top of the mountain in Jackson Hole Wyoming and we had such a great view of the Tetons. I had to do a lil dance! Just shakin it like its nobodys business!

Blocking for new shot

So I have been trying to juggle three different animations right now. I am doing some freelance stuff, this clip for fun, and working on Dream Giver for Ty Carter. Anyway, I had an epiphany while doing animation this last week. It was really interesting when I figured out how keeping it in stepped can really help me organize my shot much better. Anyway, This is a fun clip. I hope to finish it soon.

Policeman Scene

Hey So I wanted to do this clip because it was on the 11 second club website and I didn't finish it in time for the contest. I loved the rich voice and I thought it would be fun to get some uncomfortable acting choices. Anyway, this is the first camera pass.... its just a start but I have half more to go. It has been a lot of fun. I haven't been smoothing this much. Next time I do a dialogue shot I will do it much differently. LOL

Deliah Ghost Flying test

This is a test that I decided to do to create a model for our character Deliah, when she becomes a ghost on our new film at Brigham Young University. I got my inspiration from pigbelly.com I think his stuff is amazing. I particularly wanted to try to mimic the bee commercials that he did and somehow apply that timing to our character when she is a ghost. This was a quick and rough idea but I think it is fun