The simplicity of this animated short really stands out! I am imagining the range of facial expressions on the characters. Awesome work and bravo to the team!
Blog
RIGOLOGY ~ Letter from THE PUPPETEER ;)
What exactly do you need to be a good rigger or more lead a bunch of fellow artists!? Is it really age that determines a person becoming a lead? Experience may be!? What it really takes to be a sucessful rigger? What are the basics and the fundamentals? ~ Some of the countless thoughts being processed by our brain! So what else …
Well, my point is if you keep learning and updating your skills with passion and patience, you are going to be a good rigger. Once you have mastered the art you may as well start leading a bunch of artist! To lead a team is another challenge, you need to have strong communication skill and the motivation and will power to complete an assigned task. Of course you will have to keep the team happy and motivated. To be a lead or a superior, it doesn’t matter with age; it depends on your overall skill and talent. The real point is that you are never going to master a subject! Learning never ends. Problems leads to solutions and solutions leads to more problems. Never ending cycle ain’t it? Richard William once said he just learned how to hold a pencil. Now then, what have we learnt yet?
The core fundamentals for rigging is not just the tool and software; it is the Art. Always study reference materials for characters in motion, creature anatomy, study animated cartoons or characters, study the facial expression and acting of actors in movie and such. All these things add up and you can visualize how the joints are placed for the skeletal anatomy, how to setup an animator friendly rig; flexibility of the controllers and so on. One more crucial factor to be a successful rigger is to learn and respect the critiques and comments that the animators and directors throw at you. That’s a how you update your skill! We all are aware of the fact, how important INTERNET has been in our daily life and career. Make sure to go through those wonderful forums, blogs, websites, tweets and interesting videos that creative and passionate people like us share with the community 🙂
Here is a little quote that makes a really good sense “Good Artists Copy, Great Artists Steal” 😀
That’s pretty much it, keep the spirit and enthusiasm alive 🙂
Facial Deformation Based On Joints & PSD
Here is a really cool demonstration for facial deformation based on joints and corrective PSD (BlendShapes) by Andy van Straten. The pose space deformations are triggered by several controllers in the setup. The combination of joints and PSD gives some great facial deformation to this character or let’s say a facial deformation masterpiece. Really liked it!
Below is the video demonstration by Andy on how he actually setuped the PSD and overall facial rig. Really neat stuff!
P.S. “cvShapeInverter Tool” By Chad Vernon. For creating corrective shapes…. ultra fast!
http://www.chadvernon.com/blog/maya/free-cvshapeinverter-tool/
Dynamic Page Turn Tutorial
It’s been a little while I created some video demos and tutorials. Here is a video tutorial on creating a dynamic paper page turn animation using nCloth simulation. The movement is driven by two locators that use transform nConstraints. Hope you enjoy and like my tutorial 🙂
Smears, Multiples … Animation Gimmicks!
SMEARS, one of the spiciest and most important ingredient for cartoon animation. Great resource for Smear, Multiple frames from all kind of animation! Blog was created by Micael J. Ruocco.
Mr. Thong’s Rigging Reel
OK! Here comes one of my student’s first and latest Rigging Demo Reel! Now you might be wondering why the mechanical robot’s name is HongBot, well the credit goes to the very first Mechanical Setup Workshop student, Mr. Thong Hui HONG. Wallaaa, you get Hong + Robot = HongBot! Nice 😉
Thung is a smart kid; very good learner and listener. I wish him the very best in his endeavors and career 🙂
Overcast
Student film made by James Lancett and Sean Weston at Kingston University. I really like how the hand drawn animated footage is layered over live action footage, very clever yet simple! BTW, the character some how resembles little or more like Mr.Bean to me 😀
Manish Shakya ~ Leaping the Stairways of Animation Mentor!
Ok here is an interesting demo video showcasing some of the Basic Foundation animation by Manish, my Nephew! This is not something new, we have seen a lot of wonderful demo videos from Animation Mentor students. Well, here is the twist; this demo is probably and most certainly one of the only and very first student reel from a Nepalese student studying at Animation Mentor. Manish has always been a very passionate and dedicated artist and he is thriving to become a successful animator. I have known this kid from his childhood days. He grew up watching Japanese Anime and Classic Disney Animation. Oh yeah, we used to play a lot of video games for sure and we still do! Wishing him the very best!!!
GOOD LUCK Bhanje 🙂
Balance
Brilliant Stop Motion Animation. Balance or the Equilibrium is crucial for the success which in this short is depicted by Co – Ordinated TeamWork OR Is It!?
AXA Portrait Photography
Really beautiful environmental portrait photography. Simple in content but really vibrant and the atmospheric feel with the perfect exposure in all of the photographs are brilliant! I felt like it’s a must share 🙂
Click Here for more!