The Shoe Factory

I got around to rendering and uploading The Shoe Factory last night. Here it is..



This animation is meant to deliver the idea of classification of shoes according to the wearer, or in this case the "Customer". The idea of this animation is that a customer (In this case Vince Vallero!) inserts a picture of himself into a machine, this picture is then taken down to the "Shoe Factory" where a robot processes the order according to the picture. He basically places the picture into the machine and then sets up it up so an appropriate shoe is made. Afterwards he scans to check if the shoe fits the customers personality and delivers it.

The rig I've made is pretty dynamic so I can easily make more animations with different narratives at a later date. I'm planning on making one where the shoe is rejected, and also one where the robot just cant make a shoe for the customer.

So like.. oops!

No post in 9 days! Well, I was doing work.. so to be fair I have a valid excuse... kinda.

I've done quite a lot of work this past week, I've finished an animation for a Taxonomy/Folksonomy Shoe Uni Project, Its pretty massive so once its uploaded I'l post a link on here aswell as on the Intermediate Studio Page.

Also this week I've revisited Vince and spruced up his animations a little. Here they are!






I've removed the bad voice acting, re-rendered the run completely and revisited sound on both animations in general. I'm pretty happy with the out come, one more animation to do I think, maybe a walk to some groovy 70's music? Hmm..

Vince Vallero!

Heres the 70's Cop Vince Vallero I've been working on for the past 2 week. Finally put him into a scene and rendered it out with some sounds. All bad voice acting by me! I used After Effects to composite the video.





Pretty happy with it! The problem I have with it though is that as part of the brief we had to use a biped system, which restricts the amount of animation you can use, so his hands seem pretty static.

Oooft.

The new cinematic for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm came out today..

The best so far by miles, I love the lighting effects they've used on Deathwing, he really glows!




Id love to work on cinematic's like this, it makes your hair stand on end when Deathwing roars (well if you're a raging wow fan like me!). Watching this makes me want to get into the CG industry even more, I'm definitely leaning towards cinematic's at the moment.. I decided to look at some more work that inspires me and ended spending a night on youtube! Here are some other video's of inspirations.

I've seen the light!

Seeing as the placement year is slowly looming I've been looking at some Show Reels to see how people in the industry put theirs together, and also to see what it is exactly I'd like to do in the industry if I get in.


My favourite so far is easily this one...



William "Rocky" Vanoost 2010 Animation Reel from William Vanoost on Vimeo.


This is the show reel of William Vanoost a Character Animator at Blur studios. Its amazing! He works mainly on CGI Cut scenes for Games, something Id be really interested in doing. I think this reel was put together really well, even the music fitted it perfectly, his work wouldn't look out of place in motion picture. 


I'm going to try and contact William and ask for some tips towards what I want to specialise into in the industry, seeing the animation in that reel, especially the fight scenes, makes me want to look into character animation a lot more, its something I have never really had a proper go at, blaming it mostly on not having access to good rigs (I cant rig very well yet!) but I shall work around that.. 


Looks like this year its time to put down the games and start animating and modelling till I drop, goodbye outside, I shall miss you!


Even though its a long shot, I'm going to have a look into Blur Studio's for a placement, at the end of the day the worst they can say is no!

So.. a new blog!

So out with the old blog and in with the new. I decided to set this one up as its more or less a fresh start from the one I did last year.

I am however going to make some major changes into the way I use the blog. Last year I mainly used it to document my progression through projects, and not even properly! Instead of updating it as I progressed I just sort of threw everything together and dumped it on the blog with various comments at the end of the project.

Time to turn over that new leaf! On this blog I'm determined to follow some ground rules.. I shall update at least once a week, whether it be something I've been working on, something that's caught my eye or just a random rant, Instead of dumping some images/video's and leaving them, I'm going to describe what I like and what I don't like about it. 

I'm going to do a quick start with 2 pictures I took this week of a building entrance in Huddersfield. This year I want to look more at architecture in animation, I'm a sucker for detail and this metal gate just got my creative juices flowing. I love how its not machined and you can tell It's been smithed.

Awesome Gate

In an Awesome archway, with heraldry!

I'm itching to model something like this. It would look great for a cinematic with someone walking in, maybe in armour.. In my head I can hear the noise of it opening now, and I'm pretty sure I have the sound file that would fit it perfectly in my SFX folders. 

I'm determined to make a model of that gate, expect to see one in the coming weeks.