MEATLOAF

Finally, my latest animation creation is complete! This was just a really fun animation exercise to do and I really got into the character. This audio clip is of Will Ferrell from the movie Wedding Crashers and it's probably my favorite scene in the whole movie. The hardest part in the planning on this one was disassociating myself from Will Ferrell's performance while trying to put my own spin on his dialogue. It only took listening to the audio clip about 14 million times before I was able to come up with the idea of this bratty kid at his birthday party, with only one other guest that showed up. Once I had that, everything else fell into place.

The fact that they are eating meatloaf only adds to how absurd this character is. The meatloaf is irrelevant. It's the fact that someone has finally agreed to have some of what he wanted that he feels justified in screaming and yelling for what he wants. After all, that's what he's done all of his life.

I wrestled with the idea of showing the guy who speaks first, but I felt in the end, it would take away from what I wanted to get across with the birthday boy. This guy is a grown up and he's still having these kinds of birthday parties. Who does that? I imagine all of the invitations were sent out but only this one friend decided to show up out of sympathy. He probably feels pretty awkward being the only one there so he's probably thinking, "I better hurry up and eat this meatloaf so I can get the heck out of here!" It's the only hope of saving the birthday party and as soon as his guest agrees to eat some, the devastated birthday boy immediately goes back to his old ways. He hasn't changed a bit.

I had a lot of fun with this one and I hope you enjoy it!

ANOTHER ANIMATED LIP SYNC PERFORMANCE

This is kind of my process when it comes to planning for animation. Obviously I didn't come up with this method. I can't say I got it from one specific source. It kind of just formed out of reading blogs and listening to other animators talk about how they approach a shot. I listen because their work is awesome.

The first thing I do with any shot is try to get on paper as quick as I can what I am seeing in my mind's eye. It can be a lot more difficult than you think. The audio clip (especially this one) tends to zip by so listening to it over and over and over again is imperative to find the key moments in the voice of the performer. Here are some of my thumbnails sketches based on where I wanted to go with the shot.

Once I had those ideas on paper where I could see them and study them, the next thing I did was act it out. Again, this is not my technique, rather I'm just using someone else's proven method. Anyway, not only will I record myself, but I take it one step further and add a time frame stamp and then go even one step further and import the video clip into Flash (or any similar 2D app.) and literally make visual notes on my own performance. Now some may say this is a little overkill, but for me, it helps a ton. Very quickly I have resolved many of the issues in my character's performance such as the timing, the posing, and the spacing that I could waste hours trying to figure out on my own. Again, if I'm the animator I have to become the character. I'm not cheating by using reference video, I'm becoming the character!

Finally, the animation basically reflects my performance. While I used thumbnail drawings and reference video to get me started, you can clearly see that I only used it as a guide. To me the most fun part in animating is trying to find those little moments where you can exaggerate the character beyond anything you could do in reality. That's really the magic of the whole process for me. Anyway, I hope someone out there can take these ideas (again, that I have borrowed) and use them to make their own animation even better!

This definitely was a fun animation to do and I'm really glad I was able to finish it; especially since I animated this character to the voice of one of my favorite characters of all time...Sheriff Roscoe P. Coltrane!!!

11SECONDCLUB,COM ENTRY '08

This is my first entry to the 11secondclub.com. I've never entered an animation competition before but this experience has been both challenging and rewarding. Even if I don't win, seeing my work next to others has given me a better sense of where I need to grow but it also shows me just how far I've come.

*UPDATE* Holy Crap!!! I won! I am so honored to have won this month's competition. There were so many great entries. What a great experience.

DIVING BOARD ANIMATION

This is a fun little animation I did this weekend. I really wanted to get the character to feel like it had a good sense of timing and weight. My wife is responsible for coming up with most of this idea, but the most genius of all is the light refracting off the water onto the diving board. That was her idea too. It might be hard to notice on such a small render, but trust me, it's there!

WALK CYCLES

One of the early trials of any character animator is animating a convincing walk. Here's a great diagram I found to get started on blocking it out. Notice the CONTACT pose is the extreme key. If this is off, good luck with the rest of your animation. Even though this shows a traditional 2D walk, the same principles apply in 3D. I like to get my poses locked down and check them by rendering them in the side viewport in Maya and turning on the Alpha in the Render View. This is the best way to make sure the silhouette is reading and the character is balanced.