Want to animate?

Countdown to Rockstar - 36 days to go.

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:52:00 +0000

Well the last few days haven't seen many blog posts. Most of the time was spent with my lady, but it was a good few days in terms of trophy collecting!

On Uncharted 3 I'm now at the hallowed 100%, here are the trophies I collected:

Land Shark (bronze)

30 Kills - TAU Sniper (bronze)

30 Kills - Dragon Sniper (bronze)

30 Kills - T-Bolt Sniper (bronze)

30 Kills - SAS-12 (bronze)

30 Kills - RPG-7 (bronze)

30 Kills - PAK-80 (bronze)

Marco Solo (bronze)

Grenade Hangman (bronze)

Headshot Expert (bronze)

Riot Rocker (bronze)

Sidearm master (bronze)

Brute beater (bronze)

Buddy system (bronze)

Rolling Ammo Master (silver)

Master Fortune Hunter (silver)

Dyno-might master (silver)

Survivor (silver)

Combat leapfrog (silver)

Charted - crushing (gold)

Uncharted 3 Platinum

In addition I got one on Sonic 2 and two on Hydrophobia Prophecy. That's a total of 24 trophies, meaning there's not far to go!

It also looks as though my gym membership has been cancelled. That won't stop me from my fitness goals, though.I just have to figure a way to work out from home. Crunches, press-ups and squats are the main order of the day but I would like some cardio. If anyone's got a suggestion, I'm all ears!

As for the animation, I'll be updating later with progress on that.

Countdown to Rockstar - 40 days to go.

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:38:00 +0000

Well, today I didn't make quite as much progress as hoped, but here's the animation with some added keys:

I also earned four new trophies on Uncharted 3:

Throwback! (bronze)
G-Mal 30 Kills (bronze)
He's gonna need a sturgeon (bronze)
Master ninja (bronze)

Today was a day off from the fitness, my legs were feeling it quite a bit from yesterday.

Countdown to Rockstar - 41 days to go.

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:30:00 +0000

It's 41 days until I start my employment with Rockstar North in Edinburgh. With that in mind, I've set myself a few goals to get myself ready for working there, as well as some personal development.

My goals are as follows:

Get to 1000 trophies on the PSN - I'll be a QA Tester so I'd better get some practice in. Not only will I be playing the single-player components of games to achieve the trophies, but I'll be playing online too, so that I can really get myself to a level that I'd expect of a "professional gamer".
Finish two short animations for my showreel - I'm optimistic that if I excell, then Rockstar will keep me. Not only that but if I can keep animating and working hard, who knows? Maybe an opportunity will arise in the art department and I'll be there.
Run 10km in under 45 mins - Anyone can travel 10km on the treadmill, but I've had in my head that 45 mins is a good time to be aiming at for years. It's about time I did it.
Increase my fitness overall (this is being tracked on Fleetly) - Fleetly tracks every workout I do, so it'll be good to see if I can actually get myself fitter over a tough period of moving home, Christmas, and New Year.

So what I'll be doing from now until 10th Jan is posting a progress report on each of these goals by way of the day's achievements.

With that said, here's my current status!

Trophies

Below you'll see my portable ID, which shows the most recent games I've played (Uncharted 3, Rage and infamous: Festival of Blood), my level (12) and number of trophies (906 total) along with the breakdowns of the trophies (3 platinum, 34 gold, 137 silver, 732 bronze). This will automatically update, hence me writing out the values.

That means I've got 94 trophies to get in 41 days. I never play "kiddie" games to get easy trophies, so that's just around 2.5 per day. Doable? I think so!

Animation

I had been working on an 11 Second Club entry for October, but wasn't able to finish it in time (I had genuine reasoning for it this time, rather than a flimsy excuse), so I thought I'd pick up where I left off with that and aim to complete it "on time" (that is - 5 weeks later than the deadline since I have been put back by 5 weeks). My deadline for this animation, then, is December 8th.

Here's a playblast of things as we stand:

It's at the blocking stage - meaning that only the main poses have been put in at the moment and nothing's smoothed out. I'm in the process of adding poses between these to make the movement slower, and then everything will appear more natural.

Running

I've already been making my way towards the running goal. Since Monday last week I've done over 28km total. Today's distance was 7km in 34 mins. Not a bad stage to be at, but that will definitely have to improve if I'm to make this goal.

Fitness

I was hoping there would be a way to embed a display of my data from Fleetly, but it doesn't seem there is. Anyway, my profile can be found

The Racism Thing.

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 21:38:00 +0000

This video's been doing the rounds on Facebook all day, so I thought I'd give my opinions on it.

Just a disclaimer to start off: I'm not racist, in fact I believe myself to hold the most anti-racist of beliefs: that there is only one race. I am, however, against the current immigration system.

The woman must be drunk (or intoxicated in some way) with the way that she is repeating herself and unable to string together coherent sentences. But should the points she raises be dismissed simply as deplorably racist and ignorant? Aren't other people saying things of a similar nature, only much less vocally? If we go back in time to when racism and segregation were rife, wouldn't such comments by an African-American would have been lauded as revolutionary and the speaker put on a pedestal?

A bit of background first then:

At present, the umeployment rate in the UK is at its highest for a great number of years, courtesy of the great recession. Naturalised British people (more on that later) are seeing factories close their doors and their jobs go overseas, as well as seeing immigrant workers come in to take the unskilled jobs. There are two points of view on the subject:

British people are too proud or lazy to do those jobs.
The immigrant workers are accepting lower than national minimum wage (the legality of such may be questioned)

It is true that some British people are too proud to do those jobs. A great number of graduates are finding it impossible to find relevant work in their field of study, so sit around waiting for that elusive opportunity to arise. There are also an incredible number of people that would rather sit around collecting benefits than going out and earning money, working hard to do the work that would help the country improve (every little helps), yet bemoaning the immigration system at the same time (I imagine the woman in the video fits into this mould).

I often hear British people complaining about one matter or another, and yet very little is done about it. Since the British government seeks to nullify British identity (punishing Britons for racism whilst handing out lower sanctions for anti-British protests), the British people likely feel that they have no voice, thus are too timid to come forward. The occupy movement is one that is making waves, and should have arrived sooner, but it's time for British people to stand up for themselves and realise that strongly supporting your own culture and ideals is not a racist stance, it is simply self-preservation.

When the woman says that Britain is now "nothing", she may have a valid point. The British identity is certainly being lost and somewhat diminished as other cultures take hold more and more around the country. Walking around most town and city centres, we see the same, familiar places: Starbucks, Costa, Caffe Nero, Greggs, Tesco, Asda, JD Sports, amongst others. It is becoming increasingly rare that we see a unique place to eat or shop. This is American capitalist culture at its finest. Supermarkets have wiped out all of our local, single-purpose shops and identity (as well as a personal touch) has been lost. It is increasingly difficult to find truly traditional places from where we can buy good, English food and clothes.

Now, what is this British identity of which I speak?

For centuries, Britain has been a centre for immigration and adoption of culture. The vikings raped and pillaged many British villages, and the Romans did similar, and the British themselves advocated the slave trade way back, which began an influx of Africans to this land. So, in this sense, there is probably no single British family that doesn't have a multicultural history, and long may that continue. We have, however, always held our values and traditions dearly. We pay respects to our fallen soldiers on the 11th November, the calendar is still very much Christian-orientated (we even have our own branch of Christianity - Anglican), etc. It is these traditions and values that we must protect and ensure that we do not lose. And it these that are in danger, which causes anger.

Having said all that, the woman's anger is very much mis-directed. Put yourself in the shoes of those Polish, those other eastern-Europeans, those Asian folk, look beyond the fact that they may not speak English perfectly and see that the reason they came to England was to improve themselves, to take an opportunity. Most of them left their homeland for a better life here in England. If cleaning toilets (for example) for a living made them move thousands of miles, how can we then say they are undeserving of their stay here? Would we not move to another country if we saw a better opportunity? For example, I would love to move to Canada if the opportunity to work at an animation studio arose there. Would I be seen as stealing that job from a Canadian student that was looking for his break? It is not the immigrants that are the problem, but the authority that allows them into the country in the first place.

The woman should be arrested, she is a blatant racist, and racism is wrong. Seeing somebody as inferior due to the colour of their skin or their country of birth is wrong. We shouldn't recognise such differences, we are all part of the human race and we all hold our own values and traditions, which should be respected. It is these that make us all different, and I would love to see a day when every Briton (no matter the colour of their skin) can be proud to say they are British.

I just hope that we can use this video for good.

Blitz Games Experience

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 08:54:00 +0000

At the back end of last week I spent two days doing a trial at blitz games. I won’t go commenting on the exact task I had to complete because I’m sure they don’t appreciate prospective employees knowing beforehand what’s to be expected of them. However, what I will say is that the task was something of a unique challenge, at least to someone like myself who has spent the best part of their time rigging cartoonesque characters.

At this point I’m unsure whether I managed to do enough to impress the “judges” - in fact I very much doubt it - but regardless of whether I get the job, the experience was probably the most worthwhile of my career to date. You never really know what it’s like to work for a games company until you do it, and I certainly was NOT disappointed. The place is absolutely full of talented people - the riggers and technical animators I spent most of my time with, the character artists, everyone. It was great to see that everyone loves their jobs as well, much unlike every other place I’ve worked at.

In terms of what I learned, it showed me that I should broaden my horizons much further and it taught me the beginnings of the pipeline for rigging in games. Now I know for sure that bone-based serums are the only way to go. The key is how you drive those bones and affect their movement. For me the biggest issue I had/have is maintaining muscular volume whilst the character is animating, without having underlying deformers. It’s tricky but I’m going to go away and give it a go in my spare time to see what other solutions I can come up with, because I’m certain that what I did at blitz wasn’t the best way!

All said, it’ll help me on the path no matter what happens. I’m just hopeful that they see some potential in me because the place is awesome.

Rigging Reel

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:36:00 +0000

Roughest edit of a showreel I've ever done, but since I don't want a job as an editor, I really don't care so much. The rigging takes centre stage here:

Short Reel

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 19:30:00 +0000

This one seems to be garnering some interest, since it is so short. Strange how the world works like that. Less is more and all?

Face Rig with Curves Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 16:22:00 +0000

It's been a while since I posted parts one and two of this tutorial, but here's part three, finally!

As I said in part two, we're moving on to skinning the curves, which is probably the most complicated process and is entirely dependant on what you're wanting out of the rig. For example you might want the eyelids to control more vertices than in my example, but that's up to you. Of course, your character will also be different to mine, but these weighting "rules" will carry over regardless of whether you have three eyes, two mouths, whatever!

The key to successful skinning is to make sure that deformations are smooth and not giving you unnatural and jagged edges once the movements are happening. The best thing about curves as opposed to using joint chains is that once you move ONE CV (control vertex), the rest of the CVs more along in turn in a smoothed-out manner. Thus, by their nature, they give you a smoother deformation.

So, on to the skinning.

What I do to start with is select ALL of the vertices in the head, and make sure that their weighting is entirely with the head joint. To do this, select the vertices, then go to Skin > Edit Smooth Skin > Paint Skin Weights Tool. Once you've got this open, you'll see a list of the joints in your chain. So long as you've labelled them all correctly, you'll see the head joint. Select this and then scroll a little further down this window. You'll see what I've highlighted below:

Here, you want to make sure that you have "Replace" selected, that the Opacity is set to 1 and the value is set to 1, and click "Flood". This places a value of 1 on the vertices for the head joint. Now you have a blank canvas to play with. What you need to do next is select every joint in the lower jaw and repeat the above process for the jaw joint. Here's an image of the vertices I selected on my model:

From here, I usually start with the eye lids, since they're easiest to skin.

To skin the eyelids, what you need to do is select the appropriate eyelid joint. Remember we created R_LowerLid and such? Select the joint and the corresponding loop of vertices closest to the eye on that lid. Give them a weighting of 1 by clicking flood. Then select the next loop outwards and give it a Value of 0.6 and once again clicking flood. Doing the same process for each curve that you created will give you places of overlap. Here, it is up to you to find the optimal settings for the deformations you require. For example, on the lower lid, the squint curve acts upon several of the same vertices. Here's an image of my final weighting on the lower lid:

If at any point you feel that the deformation is not smooth enough, the Paint Skin Weights Tool does allow you to smooth out your weightings, so long as you have that option selected. The process for the brows, mouth, smile lines, is all the same as the eyelids. You're simply subtracting from the head hold's weighting and ensuring that those joints/curves are deforming your face as you desire. I find this gives me the best level of control and also avoids unecessarily wasting time on my skinning.

If at any point you find the Paint Skin Weights Tool isn't giving you quite the right level of control and you'd like to manually modify the values, you can always open up the Component Editor. To do this go to Window > General Editors > Component Editor, and scroll through the tabs at the top until you find the Smooth Skin tab. From here, you'll be able to modify the values. If, for any reason, the particular joint that you wish to assign weighting to isn't appearing in the list, my advice is to select another vertex that DOES have that joint assigned to it, as well as the vertex you wish to edit, and tweak accordingly.

Here's a gallery of images showing my final weighting.

I'll finish things eventually

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 20:28:00 +0000

Well today I had an interview at Cubic motion. Great guys, and I really hope to get the job!

It made me realise that I really need to start to finish some of my projects, so starting this week, I'm going to work on finishing what I started. First up is that facial rigging tutorial! I'll Get the final parts done in the next few days and even post up a video version!

I'm really excited by the prospect of working for a company with such a strong client base, and being so ultra-focussed on facial animation as well! If I don't get the gig, it was worth it just to realise I should finish what I start more often!

More on the way.

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Sat, 14 May 2011 02:52:00 +0000

Well, I got fed up of looking at that multicoloured image adorning the front page of this blog for so long. Today, though, I found the most interesting reading of my life at Andy Gavin's blog.

There's an extensive 10-post look at the creation of the first Crash Bandicoot game, which just so happens to be the single most important piece of media in my life. It made me certain that I wanted to be an animator, it made me love 3d, it made me love the PlayStation, and it made me love Naughty Dog. That was 15 years ago, and none of those things have changed. In fact, if anything, going back and playing Crash made me love it even more. The way he moves just isn't done in 3D. It must have been something to do with the restrictions they had on the hardware, Crash being 500 polys means that there weren't so many vertices to move around when more flexibility was needed. Maybe I'll try making an ultra-low-poly model for my next rig and do some vector animation of my own, see how it goes. It's quite a novel approach.

You can check out the posts here:

Making of Crash Bandicoot

Face Rig with Curves Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 12:31:00 +0000

For Part 2, you're going to need a couple of scripts. Download them here:
FS_faceCurves and FS_addInfluences

Following on from Part 1, we've now got our joint chain set up and want to create the curves that will drive the movement of the muscles and make our face deform naturally. Before we jump in though, I think it's best to establish an understanding of where these curves need to be.

In the human face, the muscle structure is complex, we have muscles driving other muscles to create an emotion. For example, when we wink, our eyelids will close, which makes the brow move down a little whilst the cheek compresses a little, which in turn moves the corner of our mouth the tiniest amount. The more exaggerated the wink, the more accentuated these movements are.

What this tells us, though, is that our curves need to be on the brows, the squint line, the cheeks, the smile lines, the upper and lower lip and the nose. I've illustrated this below:

Now go to the Create>CV Curve Tool, and make sure that point snap is selected in the menu (looks like this):

What I do is create curves that have a maximum of four CVs. This means that we have enough control over the curve shape without our scene becoming too complicated. The only exception to this rule are the upper and lower lips, which need perhaps six CVs to give them enough range for the deformations we'll be requiring. Simply create each curve by selecting vertices on your mesh that correspond to the above muscle structures, and you'll end up with the following curves:

I had to display this in x-ray simply because my curves were intersecting my mesh, but you see how each curve is following the muscle structure in a logical manner? This is what will give us the highest level of control over all of our character's emotions.

Now, with that done, select all of these curves and run the FS_faceCurves script. That will create clusters and control objects for each of the points on the curve, and you'll see that when you select one of those control objects, the curve deforms in a smooth manner, much like the muscles of the face would! We're actually getting there now. You'll see in your outliner (Window>Outliner) that a lot of curves and clusters have been created. First, select the original face curves (the CV Curves we created) and parent them to the Head_Top joint. Then, select all of the clusters and do the same. Next, select the control objects for all BUT the corners of the mouth and the lower lip, and parent these to the head also. The lower lip control objects should be parented to the Jaw joint, and the mouth corner controls should be parented to the corresponding mouth corner joint.

The final step in this part is to add skinning to your geometry. First, select your root joint followed by your mesh and go to Skin>Bind Skin>Smooth Bind>Option Box and make sure your options are as follows:

Now select the mesh again and open up the Attribute Editor (CTRL+A). Find the Skin Cluster node and make sure that Use Components is allowed.

Finally, select your face curves, followed by your mesh, and run the FS_addInfluences script. This will add the curves as influence objects to your mesh, allowing them to deform the geometry. Now we just need to skin them!

Part 3 will show the weighting I use and move on to setting up our GUI for the character.

Face Rig with Curves Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 11:22:00 +0000

Introduction
Whenever rigging in Maya is introduced to us, the usual way that we’re shown to set up the character to display a range of emotions is by using blend shapes. I bought Jason Osipa’s great book Stop Staring and whilst it really is a huge help, blend shapes just wasn’t for me. I remember being at university and having so many problems with them moving my geometry and doing all sorts of things that I really didn’t want.

So I changed my approach. At first I saw some tutorials by Chris Fram, where the facial movement was controlled by several joint chains with underlying deformers, and this setup, for me, had much more flexibility, it allowed complete control over every part of the face. The only problem was that it was a complex and long-winded setup process (and I forgot some of the steps needed anyway). So then I came across Warren Grubber’s tutorial on creating what is essentially the same thing, but using curves as influence objects rather than joint chains. This approach is the easiest to do and still gives you all the flexibility you need in your facial rig.

How to make it happen
Once you have your geometry modelled, you’ll have to scoot over to the joint tool (change Maya to animation mode first) and go to Skeleton>Joint Tool. You’ll need to place your joints as follows:
One at the base of the neck which is self-explanatory, one at the base of the head to control the head rotation and one at the top of the head to hold everything that doesn't deform. Press enter. Your chain should look like this:

Now press the G key (the global shortcut for re-using the previous tool) to create another joint chain. Place one at the base of the jaw, where the natural rotation of the character’s jaw would be, and another joint at the tip of the jaw. Press enter. Now create joints at the left and right corners of the mouth. Parent the Jaw chain and the mouth corner joints to the head base joint by selecting the head base joint and then each joint and pressing the P key. Rename your joints Neck, Head, Head_Top, Jaw, Jaw_Tip, L_MouthCorner, R_MouthCorner.

Almost done with the skeletal setup. Lastly, create joints at the exact centre of the left eye geometry. If you can’t easily find the centre of the eye, select the mesh, go to Display>Transform Display>Selection Handles. This will place a handle at the dead centre. Create your joint and then hold the V key whilst moving it and snap it to this handle. Now parent your eye joint to the Head_Top joint. Duplicate this joint twice. Now rename your eye joints as L_Eye_Placement, L_Eye_UpperLid and L_Eye_LowerLid. These will later serve to move the eyelids in the easiest way. To complete your skeleton, you’ll want to mirror these joints so you have the same on the right side. Go to Skeleton>Mirror Joint and click the Option Box. Here, make sure your options are as follows:

What this does is makes sure that the mirroring is in the YZ (also known at the X axis), and that the "L_" will be replaced with "R_", ensuring that the joints are automatically labelled correctly.

Your skeleton should look something like this (of course your character won’t look exactly the same:

In part 2 we'll look at creating the curves.

Part 2

Principles follow-up

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 18:17:00 +0000

I was going to make a post today about squash & stretch with some example video, but here’s a really great post with lots of reference about all of the 12 principles::

http://digitalworlds.wordpress.com/2008/04/08/breathing-life-into-animated-objects/

Instead of focussing on the principles and making my own posts on each them, I think it’s a better idea to assemble the useful links into posts like this one and focus my time on creating tutorials about things that are less well-documented, like my facial rigging pipeline. Look forward to that in the coming days.

My time is going to be poured into rigging for the time being since that’s the stage I’m at with my own project. More animation-based posts will be coming in the near future!

Sucker Punch Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 00:48:00 +0000

Sucker Punch is a difficult film to review.

If you haven't seen it already, don't read any further, because I include plot spoilers. But if you're going to watch Sucker Punch for it's plot, don't bother anyway.

At the start, you're treated to an awesome 10-minute dialogue-free sequence in which what you believe is the lead character - Babydoll - accidentally kills her younger sister in a ham-fisted attempt to save the girl from their stepfather. It serves to set up what you're led to believe will be a great-looking film driven by a vengeful plot.

It's somewhat misleading though. You see, come the end of the film, it turns out that Babydoll was not the leading character, that vengeance was never on the cards, and that, whilst the certainly film has it's moments, its look is not universally great.

Let me start from a technical standpoint. The introduction has a washed-out look that I thought was perfect. It was befitting of the ominous tone of the visuals, and made everything much more impactful. Once Babydoll enters the institution, however, the visuals take a much more colourful turn as the on-screen action also becomes more vibrant in the brothel world (I'll come to that later). The visual style changes once again when Babydoll enters her fantasy and starts dancing. In these sequences, everything's much more dreamlike, so the audience is aware that this IS indeed a fantasy. We're "treated" to our heroines fighting off ancient Japanese ninjas, medieval fire-breathing dragons, Nazi zombies and futuristic robots. This is where the film falls down in my book. Could they have been any more generic? Talk about pleasing the ADD-suffering Call Of Duty crowd.

The first of these is the ninja fight sequence, and after an opening that really piqued my interest, I found it draining by time Babydoll had won out. The ninjas were oversized and yet had little feeling of any extra weight. If anything, they moved like nimble 9-stone martial artists, and less like bulky ancient warriors clad in suits of armour. It seems the effects team didn't take such considerations. We're given a load of spiel about how Babydoll needs to collect a knife, fire, and a couple of other objects in order to complete her escape.

So things follow on simply enough, moving from one fight sequence to the next, whilst the characters acquire the things they need to break free from the brothel by using Babydoll's natural gift of distraction. Then, once all the objects are indeed collected, the brothel's owner finds out, kills a couple of girls, and it's left up to just the two of them, Babydoll and Sweet Pea, to complete their escape.

So far, so good, at least the main character's still around. Screw the fact that 3 people died in order for her to escape, right?

Then, as the escape is near completion, we discover that Sweet Pea is the film's lead character, that the brothel was all a fantasy, Babydoll is indeed fantasising the whole time, and the complete confusion of a lobotomy that's unknowingly sanctioned by a doctor-come-dance-instructor with a badly-realised Eastern European accent.

It has it's moments, but it seems to me that after the stylish but over-long bore that was Watchmen, Snyder tried to do too much in too little time with Sucker Punch.

The 12 Principles

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:01:00 +0000

Long ago, legendary animators known as the Wise Old Men came up with the concept of the twelve principles. The twelve aspects of animation that any and every animator should not just know, but fully understand in order to be successful in our art. Without complete understanding of these underlying principles, when the audience views our work, they will be left with the sense that something is missing. Most likely they won't know quite what it is, but there will most certainly be a moment of realisation from the audience that they are watching an animated character, rather than the belief of the scene feeling truly alive.

There are plenty of resources out there that list these principles and describe them in detail, but it never hurts to go over them again and again, making sure that they're all present in your wok. Maybe not all present at every moment, but therein lies skill and wisdom. Knowing how to use them properly.

The principles were developed as applications to traditional 2D art, but with the technology advancing, we are more and more capable of achieving the flexibility offered in traditional art with our 3D work, so each and every one is still every bit as relevant today as it was 30 years ago.

What I'll be doing is posting entries and examples to cover each of the principles in depth, to consolidate my own knowledge of the principles and also to share the knowledge gained from my own research and experience.

For now, here's a list of the 12 principles:

1. Squash and Stretch

2. Anticipation

3. Staging

5. Straight ahead and pose-to-pose

5. Follow-through and overlapping action

6. Slow-in and slow-out

7. Arcs

8. Secondary motion

9. Timing

10. Exaggeration

11. Solid drawing

12. Appeal

Think you know what all these mean? Sound off in the comments if you like.

Rango Movie Review

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 20:42:00 +0000

If you haven't already seen it, here's the trailer:

I went to see Rango recently, and I have to say that it was really a pleasant surprise.

I'm really enthused that it's been a commercial success, because they took some gambles with this one. For a start, every character in the movie's ugly. They've intentionally strayed about as far from the "norm" as they could've gotten away with. From a technical viewpoint though, the guys at ILM have done a typically fantastic job - the rendering is about as realistic as you can get, but of course these creatures are far from reality. In terms of aesthetics, just look at the characters in the trailer. Ugly! I love it!

For too long we've become accustomed to the typical Pixar and Dreamworks cutesy-look. It's all too fluffy. I love those films on their animated merits, but they're becoming far too samey and it was about time a mainstream success changed that outlook. Whilst I was watching, I kept thinking how vibrant and sincere the characters were, and how much more that would appeal to children than, say, Toy Story 3's Incinerator scene. Sure, Shrek's also an ugly film, but Shrek has lost a lot of its charm over time. So here's Rango to take up the mantra.

I thought the humour was great throughout, and although Depp is in yet another oddball role, it genuinely works. You can see why Verbinski stuck with his leading man once again.

If you haven't seen it already. Go do so. I'm sure you won't be disappointed.

Why blog? Why now?

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 15:23:00 +0000

Before I answer those questions, a little background:

I'm an animator and technical artist looking for a way into the games industry. This blog is my way of sharing my experiences, setbacks, triumphs and ideas with the world.

I'm based in the north west of England, Bolton to be precise, so I'm not located at the heart of the industry, which means that my options are restricted to a select few companies around the north west, moving back to the midlands where companies such as Rare and Blitz reside, or moving to the heart of the industry, London.

So what made me want to become an animator? It all started a long time ago when I was at primary school. I'd draw constantly. Dinosaurs, robots, all kinds of poses and characters doing all sorts of actions. Then I remember watching Wallace & Gromit and being absolutely amazed by what they were doing! So I started to make my own plasticine models as well, and I'd pose them and act things out, but I never recorded anything. Don't think I had a video camera back then.

Then secondary school happened, and they don't nurture you at all. Art class became dull and lifeless for me. There wasn't enough drawing, there wasn't enough doing. It was too much of this artsy-fartsy crap where you study an artist and then copy their work or their style. Sure, getting inspiration from the greats is what all the top artists do, but surely if a kid has already found what they like, they should be encouraged to pursue that path? Anyway, through secondary school I just about passed my art GCSE and pretty much failed in AS Level art, but who cares? I got into university through technical merits (ICT, Product Design, Maths).

Uni turned out to be too much like secondary school though. Too much artsy-fartsy crap and not enough focus on the key thing - animating. We had one module in the first year that was focused on the 12 principles. For you outsiders, that's one eighth of a third of my university education. One twenty-fourth of my entire degree focusing on the most important aspect of the trade. The rest was spent on compositing and editing, sound design and experimental animation. Great if you want to become an animation auteur like Norman McLaren or Robert Breer. Not so great if you want to be a viable and employable animator in today's primarily 3D-driven industry.

Another big mis-step the uni made was letting go of the services of Maya specialist Omid Ghanat-Abady. Omid's work was fantastic and for us to be learning from a man with such intimate knowledge of Maya was really great, it meant we could focus more of our attentions on being creative rather than deal with the struggles of Maya's notoriously buggy environment. After the second year, Omid moved on, and we were left to "fend for ourselves" so to speak.

So I came out of university with a 2.1 having animated approximately nothing that was remotely showreel-worthy. Now that isn't to say that I regret university, it was a great time of my life. I just wish it could have been better. This blog is my way of setting myself back onto the correct path.

2D/3D Hybrid Approach

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:08:00 +0000

So recently I've been working on this model for my long-gestating project (which goes by the working title of Pip Pup), and I finally came to the conclusion that the majority of the project should be 2D, that is the backgrounds and the main character (known very creatively as Pip). However, when it came to actually making the thing move, I realised how feeble my attempts at making a 2D human move were, so I thought maybe I should make the old man into a 3D model, animate him that way, and composite the thing together. Mixing what I feel comfortable and making something unique, right?

Here's a little sample of the sort of look I've got going on:

Now that isn't a final image or anything but it gives a good idea of the sort of look I'll be going with. I think it works rather nicely. Any opinions?

Welcome

noreply@blogger.com (Darren Iddon) — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 20:21:00 +0000

Hello and welcome to my blog!

Now with blogging becoming THE trend of the internet, I’m sure the question begs to be answered: Just why would you visit or keep up with this one?

Well, this blog is here to hopefully show the world just what it is to be an animator. Whenever I tell people that’s my job, everyone seems to have the idea that it’s a very easy job to do and must be incredibly fun. Hopefully through the duration of this blog I can give people an insight into just what I do on a day-to-day basis.

Let me say right from the start though - I’m not experienced in the field, I’ve not worked for a big company and I certainly don’t know nearly enough about the medium to consider myself even close to an animation expert. This is why I shall also be posting links to interesting videos I’ve come across, techniques, tutorials, anything that can help the animation community grow!

Let’s hope this will be a success!