Visionfest 07

I get the awesome pleasure to be a juror in this year's Visionfest . Lots of great entries in here. Be sure to check it out, August 16-18. More to come on that... For now, here is a random drawing.

I'm approachable

snailhands

miles and miles of squares

monthly meeting contour lines

Art Swap Illustration

mrrrrrh

The Parker Pen

I found my Parker pen set, which includes 4 different nibs and 4 different colored re-fills. Got it when I was about 8 or so. Haven't opened it since I was about 10. So, I had to put it to good use.

Take that PC!

What I would like to do to all Dell PC's

Outro Animation for Mediasauce Demo Reel

Bookends for Mediasauce's upcoming demo reel. This was animated in Max. I don't feel like I have the control in 3DS Max as I do in Maya (graph editor,etc..). But I feel it forces me to go outside my comfort zone. I'm pleased with how these came out. My buddy Andy is working on the foley, which I'll post as soon as he finishes. Here is a rough, compressed version of the outro...

STU poses

Here is STU, the official intro character of AM. Once we got a strong pose in our drawings, we would pose the 3D character STU. Here are some of my favorites. The planning drawings I discussed earlier here.

Preview of Mediasauce new Studio site

click to go to site with animationsSneak peek of the new site to come. There will be a menu/interface to the right of 'Vibbert'. There are about 4 short idle animations that play at random after so many seconds: Yawn, sneeze, gear spit, and the what's up.

Planning, planning!

One thing they drill into your head at AM, is that planning is one of the most important steps when animating. This is quite brilliant and also pretty obvious, but it has made a big difference for me in the final product. When you have a clear picture of where you are going, it makes the process much more enjoyable. You don't second guess every decision you make along the way. I try to plan until I have something on paper that I would like to see, then when I get into the computer I have a bar set to at least what I captured in my drawing, and I don't call it quits until I at least capture what was happening in the drawing. So while I'm animating, I can really focus on the overall performance. That's my goal, at least.

Here are some planning thumbnails of poses expressing: concern, excitement, strength, and a few others. Details aren't important. Gesture, attitude, line of action and silhouette are the focus. Any additional thoughts?

STOP, don't shoot!

Had our long meeting today at work about the coming week, perfect time to do some sketch'n. I started tracing the shadows that the blinds were making on my paper, and a few pencil marks later... Not sure what to do with it, but it may have potential.

Do robots get colds? a.k.a.Sneeze animation

I got to do some 3D character animation at work. Gazunheid!

four legged animals=lots of keyframes

This is a flash animation I did for work yesterday. Head and body were animated cut-out style and the legs and tail were redrawn just about every frame. My first shot at a walking four-legged animal, which is quite intimidating at first. But it seems that really it's just like 2 people walking together, only the back legs are staggered a bit earlier than the front.
This was supposed to just be a still illustration on a website of the raccoon holding a sign, but we kicked it up a notch for one of our good clients. Lucky for me, cuz I lovez me some raccoons.

The truth about Kenny Bloggins...Animation Mentor Class 1 Demo

If you are in the business of learning animation, you should know about Animation Mentor
I just finished up class 1 and learned a lot in a small amount of time. The bummer is I will not be going onto class 2 yet, because it is quite expensive. So to keep productive, I started a blog. I really wanted to name it Kenny Bloggins, but reconsidered. Anyway, for the last assignment I had to put together a reel of all of my projects so far, and here it is.

After years of waiting....

What better way to start a blog than with a monster.