Martin K - Animation Blog

The Making of Toy Story

2012-01-28T19:27:00.000+13:00

Short Toy Story documentary - I just love this behind the scenes stuff :)

Enjoy!

PIPA and SOPA - Not Cool!

2012-01-19T12:15:00.001+13:00

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

Piracy isn't cool, but this is not the way to fight it.

Eric Goldberg at CTN

2012-01-18T23:22:00.002+13:00

Tangled Ever After Clip

2012-01-06T18:39:00.003+13:00

The Making of Mulan

2011-12-27T19:39:00.000+13:00

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T07:22:00.001+13:00

Amazing reference!

Merry Christmas to ya all!

The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey

2011-12-22T07:05:00.000+13:00

"Baby" - Work In Progress

2011-11-22T07:00:00.003+13:00

I initially started this a couple of months ago and intended it for the October 11 Second Club contest, but realized pretty soon - that's not gonna happen :) - so I've just worked on it now and then when I had some spare time.

I thought it would be fun to try to do some acting stuff with a lying character and also play around with the Morpheus rig, which I have done before, but never actually animated a test with him.

Blocking WIP:

YouAnimator!

2011-11-20T10:23:00.006+13:00

What a great idea!

I signed up and got a good review of my reel. Not too detailed, but good enough to get an idea of what I should focus on and what to change to make my reel better. It was totally worth the 40 bucks they charge for it.

If this site grows into what they intend it to be, which I do hope, it's gonna be an awesome job hunting tool for animators.

Here's my YouAnimator Businesscard and check out the rest of the site at www.youanimator.com

Legends of Awesomeness

2011-11-15T07:14:00.000+13:00

Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness premiered on Nick on November 7.

Read more about the show at Animation Magazine

Malcolm - Free Maya Rig

2011-10-29T14:05:00.001+13:00

This rig is great - and it's free :)

CLICK HERE TO GET IT!

Celebrating Steve Jobs

2011-10-28T06:10:00.004+13:00

AM Animals & Creatures - Some aftertoughts

2011-09-28T11:35:00.007+13:00

It's been truly amazing to be back at AM for the 6 month Animals & Creature course, but as I've mentioned in previous posts, it's been exhausting because I've worked full time on "The Penguins of Madagascar" at the same time. I would actually not recommend doing this course while working - the course is fantastic, but it's just too intense and time consuming when having a full time job. That's just my experience and opinion though :)

I was very fortunate to get two awesome mentors. Keith Sintay and Kevin Koch are both really really good teachers (and super duper nice guys) and I learned tons from them. I guess all the mentors at AM are great, so it really doesn't matter who you get, but I feel very lucky to have had them as my mentors for this course.

The course is built in the same way as the core animation program, where each concept/lecture build on top of each other. They had some super cool lectures that really goes in depth into animal behavior and locomotion. I would say though, that this course isn't that much about animation (at least not from a technical point of view) as it is about intent, thought process, how and why animals move the way the do etc.

The rigs are really good as well and they kept updating and improving them as we went through the course.

My conclusion is that this course is worth every cent and more - it is truly amazing - but it's very intense and time consuming.

To keep practicing, I've started to do some quick cycles with the AM A&C rigs.

Animals & Creatures - Session 212

2011-09-16T07:52:00.004+12:00

So this is it! I've completed the very first official Animation Mentor Animals & Creatures class.

Right now I got a bunch of mixed feelings about it. It's been awesome, but I'm exhausted. Working full time and doing this course has been quite intense and sometimes I've felt like it's been too hard. I've learned tons though and I'm confident it has been totally worth it and that it will pay off.

Here's my final of the Dragon Attack shot:

Here's a progression reel from layout to final of the Dragon Attack shot:

Watch higher resolution here

And here's a compilation of the assignments I've done during the course:

Animals & Creatures - Session 211

2011-09-12T23:36:00.001+12:00

I continued to polish and went over a bunch of smaller stuff that most likely nobody will ever notice, but hopefully the sum of it will give the shot a more polished feel.

It's kinda sad, but this is the last week we actually have to turn something in. We do get a critique this week, which I'm gonna spend next week to address for sure, but there's no grade or assignment due for week 12.

I also put some lights in and rendered the shot just for the heck of it. It integrates the characters into the shot a little bit more than just a playblast, which I think is kinda cool.

Here's this weeks pass on the Dragon Attack shot:

Animals & Creatures - Session 210

2011-09-05T20:08:00.000+12:00

Got to do a toe/leg-pass, a wing cleanup pass, tracked arcs on both characters and kept tweaking and adjusting the shot through the week.

Here's this weeks pass on my assignment:

Animals & Creatures - Session 209

2011-08-30T21:11:00.001+12:00

Kept refining and cleaning stuff up this week, especially under the hood, and in general just proceeded refining the shot.

The exhaustion is starting to set in, but almost there :)

Here's the second refining pass:

Animals & Creatures - Session 208

2011-08-25T19:08:00.001+12:00

I spent most of the weeks cleaning things up - cleaning up the curves and the poses from the blocking pass.

I also worked a little bit on the dragon flying in and landing, as well as the pulling of the dragon. 3 weeks to go and a looooot of work left. :)

Here's my first clean-up/refining pass:

Animals & Creatures - Session 207

2011-08-19T07:31:00.001+12:00

It's been quite a stressful week trying to flesh out my shot and add more breakdowns to both characters. I think I got the main stuff in there now to show the idea and the intent, but it still has to be pushed and exaggerated - lets see if I can get to that next week.

This second class is a bit more demanding than the first class and a lot more hours are required - still fun though and I'm learning tons. 5 weeks to go!

Here's my blocking pass of the Lion vs Dragon shot:

Animals & Creatures - Session 206

2011-08-08T23:58:00.007+12:00

Rough blocking of our 2 character interaction shot this week.

My layout from last week wasn't quite working staging and composition wise. So I found another plate of the same setting where I could get the characters to fill the frame a little bit more.

The problem with the new plate was that it was panning slowly across and didn't fit the action I had planned out very well - the camera was leading the action instead of the action leading the camera. When somebody in our Q&A pointed out that it looked like a security camera in middle of the forest, I figured I gotta do something about that haha - thanks by the way to whoever pointed that out :)

Then I remembered something that Glen Macintosh had mentioned in one of the previous lectures - in one of the Jurassic Park movies, he had deleted frames from the plate in order to get more intensity into an action that felt too slow.

The original plate I used was about 30 sec long and the camera eventually came to a stop. I went ahead and started to delete keys from the matchmove camera in Maya to speed up the pan to make it fit the action I had planned out.

Once that was working, I went back and deleted the exact same images from the plate and renumbered all of them to match the new keys on the matchmove camera. It took foooooorever. Ah well...pain is temporary - film is forever. And I think it works better now, so I guess it was worth it.

In a production I would probably not be able to do that, but I'm pretty sure the plate would have been shot to fit the action better in the first place - at least it's my way of justifying it :)

Here's my "old" new layout:

Here's the new layout after the camera change:

Here's the first rough blocking pass of my assignment:

Animals & Creatures - Session 205

2011-08-02T23:13:00.004+12:00

Countless hours has gone by this week searching for reference for the next assignment. I had a few ideas that I explored. I went ahead and researched and edited reference for three different ideas, but eventually I decided on an idea that I think is doable within the time we have.

The next assignment has to have character interaction, so my shot is going to have a lion type-ish cat attacking a dragon that lands to search for food at some kind of picnic forest clearing.

My goal for this one is to be able to get to the polish stage and really dive into the details that hopefully can make it a nice reel-piece. Let's see how it goes :)

Here's my planning for the assignment:

And here's a super rough layout pass:

Animals & Creatures - Session 204

2011-07-28T07:12:00.001+12:00

One month already into the second class of Animals & Creatures. Class two so far feels harder in terms of concepts to learn, but at the same AM has changed a few things since last term, such as avoiding planning and polishing in the same week, which makes it better in terms of time management.

The lectures are really really good, packed with tons of information and/or walk-thrus by VFX industry veterans. We also have weekly Over the Shoulder Q&A's with Nicole Herr where she goes through hard concepts or grabs one of our assignments and talk us through what she would have done to improve it. Pretty amazing!

Next week we're starting our last assignment, which is a 7-week character interaction/fight assignment. That's gonna be cool!

Here's this weeks pass of the Church Landing Dragon assignment:

Ira Glass on Storytelling

2011-07-27T21:30:00.002+12:00

Animals & Creatures - Session 203

2011-07-19T07:38:00.005+12:00

Flying creatures are hard :)

It's been a bit of a tough week with lots of frustration and the feeling of that I have no idea what so ever of what I'm doing. Getting the dragon to feel right in flight with a gazillion controls to potentially touch and with very little experience animating flying creatures or bag of tricks to fall back on (regarding flights) - has been a real struggle.

Taking a step back and looking at this rationally - this is actually really really cool. Being this far out of my comfort zone is something I know is super necessary in order to learn and grow as an animator, but I find it very hard to force myself this far out of it if I don't have to.

A sentence by Glen Keane (from Clay Kaytis Animation Podcast) has been a helpful reminder through the week: "When you run up against a problem - you always think it's because you're not good enough - but it's not that, it's just that you've hit the limit of your knowledge and you gotta go out and observe and find and discover something more - those are the best times when you feel like you stink and you can't get it any better and you're stuck - now the world is open and you're ready to learn something new. You gotta take advantage of that!"

One week left on this sucker - not sure how far I'm gonna get on this one, but I'm gonna do my best - and if nothing else, I'm confident that I'm learning a lot and getting a lot of mistakes out of the way.

Here's my blocking pass of the Church Landing Dragon:

Animals & Creatures - Session 202

2011-07-12T21:56:00.001+12:00

This week we're starting working with live action background plates. For our next assignment we have a bunch of different plates to choose from, already matchmoved by Animation Mentor - which is supercool!

I was considering going back to the cat rig for the next assignment, which is a 3 week assignment - basically designed to get us introduced to working with background plates and matchmoves - but decided to stick to the dragon rig to learn as much as possible about flying creatures while I have access to an experienced mentor :) - I can always go back and do another cat test later.

Here's my planning for the next assignment:

Here's a rough layout pass with the selected background plate. Based on feedback, I already know I'm gonna have to change this a little bit, but this is the essential idea:

And here's the revision of the flight cycle from last week: