Welp, the past half year has been a doozy. It's funny to come back and see the last post I wrote - how excited I was about a newly purchased FZ50. And right after I got it, I ended up selling it. But past is past and now we're here.
Only 18 months ago I was just starting to mess around with film-making and animation. And only 2 months ago I decided I was going to pursue this thing! I just got accepted to Animation Mentor's Summer 2010 Term a few weeks ago and I'm truly excited about starting this crazed adventure. I know they use Maya at the school so I tried my hand at a test piece in order to familiarize myself with the program.
Here's a playblast of my very first CG piece - ever! (never got to the polish phase though)
* Edit: Gotta give credit to Shikkin and the choreographer "shota NOPPO".
Here is a link to the referenced video I used:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-LXclD6TFk *
Before this I never touched an "IK" control before. And my friend Gimbal Lock visited me every 20 frames. In retrospect this dance piece was extremely ambitious as a first test. All the twisting and rolling created a lot of problems, but I'm slowly starting to understand the workflow. I hope I don't get a lot of flak for switching to CG. Animation is animation after all... right?
Right guys? ...
Definitely! Any creative expression is valuable. Hand-crafted stop motion, the kind of puppets and props that are built by physical hands, is only one very narrow form of art in my opinion. It happens to be my passion and choice of medium to work in most, but everything creative I've ever done enhances everything I try to do.
ReplyDeleteNothing learned and experienced will be wasted.
Right on Shelley, thanks for the support!
ReplyDeleteYou can always return to stop motion if you get the itch to (and your return will be celebrated if or when you do). I think, at the moment, though, the stop-moe's are glad they aren't competing with you for jobs ;) :P
ReplyDeleteI think it's great that you're learning all you can about animation and...well, movement. Animation IS animation, yes! What works for one animation medium works in all of them. I hope my comment about your latest reel was not interpreted as flak for "leaving us for the dark side". Do what you want to, man! Follow your heart and your gifts and abilities will take you anywhere you want to go.