Well the first week of summer classes is over, and it’s pretty apparent I’m going to be busier now than I was during the normal school year…I thought summer was supposed to be a break!

I’m taking 3d Character Animation II, which should be challenging, Environmental Look Development, which should be awesome and loooots of work, and CG Modeling and Design, which should be…..interesting o_o

We had a ’skill check’ assignment in 3D Character, to do a walk cycle with personality to it, here’s what I came up with:

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vimeo Direkt

For Environment Look we had to do a ‘concept sketch’ based on a prompt. We were not to spend more than 5 hours on it and try to get across the feeling we want, like a pitch to a director. Our first prompt was “A Little Planet: It’s a Small World After All.” My results were:

I’m still veryveryvery much learning how to model and texture in 3D, so this class is gonna be challenging…hopefully I’m able to get across the aesthetic I’m picturing at least ^_^; We have a prompt due every class (so twice a week) our next one is ‘Mousetrap: The Board Game of Life” and it’s due tomorrow…we’ll see what I can crank out o_o;

Xposted from Nate's fancy blog, A Progress in Work....

Saw this tonight and just had to share:

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Freaky, creative, gorgeous, beyond impressive…and apparently all the work of one person.  Just wow.

Xposted from Nate's fancy blog, A Progress in Work....

( What I've Been Up To )

Xposted from Nate's fancy blog, A Progress in Work....

Hey look, I made leveL move!embedded by Embedded Video

Technical Specs for those who care: A test to see the potential for using Maya as a souped-up multi-plane camera for creating depth with traditionally painted backgrounds and environments….this is an old illustration I did for my comic (seen here) that I split up and tried to make look 3D-esque. For what a slapdash job this was (I didn’t edit or touch up the original picture at all, just sliced it into layers…and the video is just a simple playblast, no lighting or textures at all, hence the not-awesome quality of the video), I’m pretty happy with the results and excited about the possibilities this presents for using the technique with my thesis. Already planning a more thorough, proper test with images drawn for this specific purpose.

leveL lives…IT LIIIIIIIIIIVES.

Also, my Conditional Review is tomorrow morning….shall report back on the results of that and my profs’ adviee as to my 2D vs 3D debate…

Xposted from Nate's fancy blog, A Progress in Work....

Went through a short spell of creative rock-bottom-ness this past week. Well maybe that’s putting it a bit harshly…what happened is I saw some really inspiring work and it motivated me to spend some time working on my thesis concept. After giving it a couple days thought and a bunch of random sketching to try and get the juices in my brain flowing, I kept coming up with nothing. Best I got was considering reverting back to some as-of-yet-unused leveL concepts, but this frustrated me even more because all those ideas are more that 5 years old, and if I expect to be any sort of a viable creative force, I need to start coming up with some new, fresh material.

So after some low-level huffing and angsting I sat down with the Planet Earth DVDs to inspire me…that really didn’t lead to anything, but after that I had to make a 3 hour drive to visit family for Easter, and the time alone in the car with me ruminating in the thoughts and impressions from the DVDs led to some exciting ideas that I’m looking forward to exploring….which I guess means crisis averted! …for the moment at least. I guess I need to remind myself that creativity and inspiration isn’t just a faucet you can turn on and off whenever you choose…..if anything it’s more like a muscle that needs constant exercise to remain strong and responsive. In any event, I’m excited for the concept I’m working on…once I’ve got it fleshed out a bit more perhaps I’ll post some preliminary work

This coming week is going to be a big pick-up in workflow, as the short film for my Digicel Animation class is going into the ‘Production’ phase, and I’m also starting work on an independent short film with what freetime I can muster. This is all pretty exciting, it’s nice to be making some real creative progress.

Also, if I didn’t mention earlier, my Preliminary Review was pushed back to this coming Friday, so I will have to wait until then to get some faculty opinions on what direction to take the remainder of my studies here. Hopefully they will have some enlightening advice!

AND!  Just for a fun note, here’s a serious blast from the past for anyone as old as me who can remember it:

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Xposted from Nate's fancy blog, A Progress in Work....

Why are all the cute, intelligent nice ones that I have lots in common with already taken?

Boo on you this evening, life.

Woke up this morning and had an idea to throw out what I have so far and completely re-work my Character animation assignment...due tomorrow. This might not end well o_o

I caught Dreamwork’s How to Train Your Dragon last night.  Despite some technical difficulties in the theater (the BG soundtrack only played at about 25% of the actual volume it was intended), I wholeheartedly enjoyed this film.  The only two things I can think of that I’d wished were different were that I felt the character of Astrid was a bit underdeveloped and came to her conclusions waaay too quickly, and that I didn’t think the 3D actually took advantage of the grandeur of the great vistas it was showing (that last point, however, might once again be attributed to the lackluster theater I saw it in, it was kinda ghetto).  The dragon was soooooo well animating, his design was at once endearing, cute and cuddly, and really dangerous and intimidating.  Hiccup’s voice was perfect, and I really liked the relationship between him and his father, it felt very layered and real, like they were both rounded characters with their own flaws and hang ups having a really jilted interaction that led to avoidable complications….a very realistic father/son vibe, I felt.

I’m not generally a fan of Dreamwork’s films…they are a bit too pop-culture reference-y for me, and I’ve never been a great fan of their character designs, but this one really got me.  It was, on all levels, pretty durn fantastic.  I wants to see it again

On the school side of things…this quarter is gonna be pretty steadily busy the whole way through.  For my 2D Character class I’m working on a dialogue acting piece which I’m using one of the gargoyles from Hunchback of Notre Dame for (I should have a pose-test done for that sometime soon, shall post the results of that once I do)

My Aesthetics of Animation class, taught by the Chair of the Animation Department, seems like its actually going to be very interesting and engaging….our final project for that class is to make a personal project exploring some aspect of animation we are interested in…right now I think I want to do something with 2D-Environment/Atmosphere….I’ve actually considered possibly exploring that dream I had when I was in Japan, it could yield some useful results for my thesis…

Finally, my Digital Cel Animation class, in which we are making a short film based on a children’s book written by a student here at SCAD.  This week we were all asked to explore a different digital technique of translating the style of the book (ink and watercolor drawings) into digital animation means.  Some people are making Flash puppets, some are coloring in Photoshop…I was asked to animate it in Flash and then print the inked animation, color it by hand and scan it back in.  I used watercolor pencils and washes (similiar to the technique I used for my Rotoscoping Project, minus the inverted color), and here is the result:

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Just a VERY quick and shoddy walkcycle….it was my first attempt animating anything in Flash from scratch ever….surprisingly I think I took to it pretty easily.  If anything else, it was fun to animate something with a bit more character to it rather than just demonstrations of animation principles like overlapping action x_X  Speaking of characters, Hubert the Beagle is copyright of Nate Marsh, and quite a delightful little pooch he is too X)

Beyond animation-type things….I gotta make a couple big decisions here shortly, about living accommodations for next school year and what I will be doing with my summer vacation.  Kinda deciding between a few big options, hopefully I’ll get some sort of sign about which direction I should follow >_>

Xposted from Nate's fancy blog, A Progress in Work....

Return-ed to the deepish South, and classes begin tomorrow for another quarter of fun! This coming course load should be interesting...and adequately back-breaking, hehe. The interesting thing about my classes this quarter is that I'm only taking 2D animation....that means everything will be hand-drawn or done in Flash. No CG models, no Maya.

This has been making me a bit nervous, I guess you could say. I don't really like the idea of just putting down practicing 3D at all for a couple months, but my advisor and some trusted professors assure me its a good idea to strengthen my 2D skills first, then take on 3D more intensely. Plus they suggest I partake in this unofficial '5-Second Club' amongst students here, where everyone works all quarter to complete an animation to the same sound clip with their free time. Could be good...

I've been throwing around the debate about what I really want to focus on, 2D or 3D animation, with my Master's program and Thesis project. Thing is, I think I've got a natural skill set for 2D and I enjoy it a lot....but there are next to no jobs in 2D, everything is 3D these days. I don't mind that, but I feel like I'm leaving a lot of good skills behind to fiddle on the computer all day posing fake-puppets and tweaking motion curves in graph editors. I can do that all pretty well, I believe....at least well enough to make me competitive to get a job...but it's a bit sad to leave all my drawing skill set behind. The debate is complicated further by the fact that I'd also like to leave myself open to the possibility of working in the gaming industry, and that is 99.999999999% 3D animation.

Beginning of April I've got my 'Conditional Review'....being that I have completed all the preliminary coursework they assigned me (undergrad classes to get me up to speed, since I didn't study animation before coming here) and have to present my progress to a panel of faculty members to officially be accepted to the Master's program. This is really just a formality, since basically if you pass the classes they let you continue the program, but that means the whole thing is sort of an unofficial advisement meeting, where there they will ask about my direction and I'll have to present my work and my debate about which direction to go in....not that I have to decide anything concrete for this review or even take whatever advice they give me, but I am nervous about it and what they are gonna say. I'm sad at the idea of giving up either....maybe I'll just keep doing both, lol.

Anyhow, probably thinking too much. I will sleep on it and hope a direction materializes in front of me :O

Tomorrow I head back to school. I'm excited to start work again and see my friends, but I'm gonna miss Ohio. Savannah is a cool enough place...the historic buildings and gardens are incredibly beautiful, but I miss the seasons. Having winter just kind of not happen this year was really surreal, and left me feeling like I'm in some sort of time warp where everything is standing still....it felt only marginally different in there from September to March, and that's just weird. I think when it comes down to it I'm just a cold-weather person, lol, I needs my snow.

Thinking a bit about where I want to end up when I graduate. Most likely it'll be Southern California, since that's where most of the animation studios are, but I would really love to go somewhere else. I think I'd be happiest in the Northwest or in the New England area (I know, those are kinda very different places, but they both have the qualities I'm looking for, lol). Only a handful of jobs for animation in those places though :\ Mayhaps I can get some connections made in LA for a few years to the point where I can just work freelance from whereever...ahwell, time will tell.

For now, I'm off to get a haircut! *GULP!* I wonder what it'll be like to see again without my bangs in my eyes :D