CTN Animation Expo: Thoughts & Experiences

this weekend i attended the CTN Animation Expo, and i feel compeled to blog about my trip and share with you my experience thier. Some back info, for those who are unaware, the Creative Talent Network put together thier first 3-day animation expo this weekend in Burbank CA, at the Marriot Hotel.

http://www.ctnanimationexpo.com/

After registering, the first thing we (we = me, Jay Mitchel & Alex Lashomb) did was strole through the exibit floor. as we walked, we passed a booth with amazing caricatures and illustrations of pop culture icons and who was standing behind the booth, none other than Mr. David O'Keefe! while we stood thier admiring his work, we began chattin' about small stuff, like where we were from and what we were all into ya know. i remember him sayin something along the lines of, "it's amazing that they were able to get all of this talent under one roof!" he was sayin that he visits the blog of the guy in the booth next to his (Diasuke Tsutsumi) all the time and that he was a fan of his. i think David was awed almost as much as we were at the magnitude of talent in attendance, which was humbling to see. check out the work by Mr. David O'Keefe! this dude is bad ass! http://www.davidokeefe.com/

i managed to snap some flix of his sculptures. check em out, i'm sure you'll recognize them!

After walking around the exibit floor, we went to our first pannel of the weekend, "VFX in Animation @R+H." The animation directors from Rhythm & Hues Studio discussed the a little bit of thier history and some of their experiences working in Animation. They also shared valuable info on sumiting demo reels and becoming apart of the process. On the pannel for the dicussion, there was Keith Roberts, Kristin Solid, and Matt Shumway. Keith Roberts is an Animation Director, Kristin Solid and Matt Shunway are Supervisor Animators @ R&H. After the pannel discussion, I was able to pull aside Mrs. Kristin Solid to ask her a few questions, and in all honesty, i was quite nervous! i remember standing their wide eyed saying to myself in my head, "keep it cool Jay, she's just a pro that's worked on several films i've seen befor, that's all!," but in seriousness i was wiggin out! i was so shook, i wrote down my questions that i wanted to ask her so i wouldnt forget them! My first question was, "How much animation do you think you do in a week?" i was always interested in the workload of a professional animator, with animating being so tedious at times. Her answer was not what i expected at all! 7 seconds! A WEEK! i imagined an animator would at least be doing 1 or 2 min of animation in a 5 day work week! at first i was kinda shocked, but then as i thought about it, it began to come together. The animation quality of R&H is at a realistic level of entertainment, so 7 seconds a week for a solid realistic animation sounds about right. I'm sure there are several variables that im not taking into consideration, but im sure all the animation is scuritinized with an eagle eye so there would be several alterations. As i digress, my next question was "How was animating the characters in Transformers movie?" I assumed that the characters in Transformers had some gnarly rigs to them, but i guess i was wrong. She said that they were relatively simple, they'de give her a low res rig, more simple animation, and a high res rig more detailed animation. This led to my next question. "Do the animators and the riggers work together to creative the rigs?" She said that would be the most ideal situation, but the pipeline isint set up like that.my last question was one that i'd like to ask all professional animators, "What do think of mo cap?" Her reply was "I hate it!" and that answer told me she was a real key framer vs a mo capper who uses mocap info to animate. i suppose there's no way around using mo cap tho, sometimes pose to pose animation doesnt give you the "real" performance of the character the director might want, so mocaping the animation would help that process. i dont know what it is, but i always felt that mocap was the shortcut in animation and that it takes away the performance the animator was trying to convey. it just seems like mocapping takes away the job of the animator, considering the animator still has to clean up poses and make adjustments, they really lose the intuativeness of animating and fall into a system of entering mocap info. after our short chat, i was still nervous and i couldnt come up with anymore questions, so i ended there, even thought i wanted to pick her brain for another hour. here is Kristin Solid's site! check it out! http://kristinsolid.com/

blog still in progress....

Bagage Handlers???

here's one my most recent animations that i am currently workin on. i found this super kick ass facial rig @ school and thought i should animate it. i still got alot of cleaning up to do on it, but i thought i would be cool to post some progerss stuff so you can see where im at and where im goin with my work. keep posted for a final rendition of this animation, but until then...

anyone know where that line is from?

Work Out

hey guys, here's a jog cycle i did with a fat character that i got from rigging class! this guys rig is pretty good, so i decided to animate it. i did the jog cycle first, but then afterwards i thought that it should have some props of some sort, so i added a treadmill and a swinging donut for some conflict. look at his face, he's pretty pissed being teased by that donut!

Jog Cycle

Here is another animation of the mannequin jogging!

Character Animation: The Mannequin

hey ya'll! got another post for ya! these are my character animations from last quarter. I really enjoyed the class as well as the instructor, Ben Norcross. He really gave us alot of class time to work on and figure out each animation. I personally thought that was a good idea because i'd rather animate then listen to a lecture about how to animate, but some others did not feel the same way. the main things i took from character animation class was that the graph editor in maya is my friend that is there to help, strong key poses make a strong animation, and all 12 principles of animation apply to cg animation, so use them! i really enjoyed the class and and its assignments. it really helped me develope a method of animating that i feel comforable as well as confident with! anyways heres my work!

DREAM 11: Featherweight Grand Prix Final Round

what it is ya'll. finishing up my finals for this quarter and i thought i might post one of em. this is my Intermediate Motion Graphics class. i decided to do my project on dream's upcoming grand prix, Dream11: Featherweight GP. dream is Japanese Mixed Matial Arts Fighting League, which encorporates fighters from all over the world. I am a huge fan of MMA and i thought it would be fitting to do a promo for thier upcoming event. check out the story boards.





now check out my piece.




i cant wait for this card. my predictions, Bibiano Fernandes will win the Featherweight GP, Minowaman will win the Super Hulk GP, and Shinya Aoki will win the Lightweight Championship Belt.

i added some stuff that was not on the storyboard, like the fighter stats and the dream/heiwa logo background. i think they added a nice touch to the overall piece. I love After Effects! theat program is the shiznit! im taking intermediated compositing next quarter and we'll be using shake. im looking farward to learnig a new compositing program, but i sure am gonna miss after effects!

Project: Resident Evil Previz

another bright idea...

howdy folks, got another one for ya. this particular project was for my Intermediate Motion Graphics Mid-Term. for my project, i decided to go dark. i normally like to keep my subject matter on the lighter side, but i really wanted to see if i could pull off a much darker look. i also wanted to flex my storytelling muscles because i rarely excirsize them! for the stylization of the piece, i decided to do something that i was giving alot of thought, but never really gave myself the time to do. a while ago i was thinking about designing a 3d set in After Effects and animate some camera's through it to tell a story, kinda like a pre vizualization for a story.

Storyboards:
here are my storyboards for my idea.


Previz:
here's a pre vizualization i did for timing and for overall feel.



Set Design:
basically i scoured and collected photos from google of buildings in new york. then i imported them into Photoshop, turned on the legacy of the brightness and contrast and brought up the contrast after, giving me a "cutout" look. after that, i scaled and skewed each building into a one point perspective. i decided to go black & white because i really didn't want to spend a lot of time color correcting all of my images. After all of the "imagework" was done, i imported the images into After Effects and began designing a 3d set। i took a while to get each image in the right position, but it was worth the while.

Characters:
the character's that i used were actually fonts from Dafont.com (a site i highly recommend!) i decided to go with the font based characters only because they went so well with the set stylization. selections of the the fonts wernt very giving, but i managed to cut and paste what i needed together. i laid all of the characters out in Photoshop, added a stroke, cropped em, then it was off to be positioned within the set in After Effects!

Camera Work:
after the set and the characters were positioned, i added 10 camera's with different animated movements for each shot. i had the initial idea of what direction each camera was going to be moving in, so the entire thing came together pretty well. my idea was to pace the camera's movements together with the soundtrack to pull it all together. it was kind of a challenge getting the timing down but i manged to work it out.

Compositing:
after the characters were set in the scene and the all the camera's animated, i rendered out 9 different shots into mov.'s, then imported them into After Effects and began laying them out onto the timeline. i also imported and added the soundtrack. (AK1200 - Use of Weapons, fitting track) by this time i was starting to get the overall flow of my piece, each shot positioned and on cue with the music. this is also about the time i began cleaning things up, adding garbage mattes and overlays, tweaking the brightness & contrast, and adding my fade ins & outs. after my first pass, i decided that it was time to start incorporating some additional elements into the project. if you notice, i added steam clouds rising off the buildings, as well as a moving cloud clip for the sky. for the fog effect, i just blended and keyed the position of some stock footage of a wind tunnel over the individual clips on the timeline.

Final Render:
here is my final render. i felt pretty good after completing it. i felt like i really expressed and executed a well thought out plan. i did come across some unexpected issues along the way, but my decisions were on a time frame. my original idea was timed out for 30 seconds, but my final render came out to 40 seconds. i was aware of being deducted points for going over the 30 seconds limit, but i did not want to compromise the story. each shot was integral in telling the story so losing 5 points for that didn't really bother me.



Last Thoughts:
i had a real fun time actually designing the set and animating the camera's while developing the project. i think pre visualization work might be a good avenue to pursue when i get out of school, but who knows?! i really liked coming up with a short story then using the camera's to tell the story, rather than having a dialogue track because it is more challenging to tell a story without words. don't believe me,? try it!

Logo's

Jay Caguioa

this is some recent work i've been doing for my portfolio fundamentals class that i am currently in. im working on a logo and i thought it would be cool to have a little mascott of myself to represent my work. this is still in development, but i figured i'd post it for fun. hopes you likes,

the top image is a color comp i was messin around with. check out the black me, I look like Luther Vandross! (RIP)

The Law Office of Kash & Pyles

this was one of the funnest projects i've ever worked on. this particular project was my final for my editing techniques class last quarter. the assignment was basically to come up with a 30-1 min video clip of whatever we wanted, we just had to edit it. my partner Zeon Santos and i put together a commercial for the Law Office of Kash & Pyles. i originally came up with the idea, and Zeon wrote the script. check it out...

L&M Final

this was a final project for my materials & lighting class acouple of quarters ago. the hallway scene was given to us and our job was to light and texture it. my main focus on this project was the lighting. i was going for a high noon lighting effect, and i was really happy with the results. i used environmental fog effect to highlight the light rays within the hallway. as for the lens flare, i added that in post with an after effects lens flare effect. some of my fellow students really thought the lens flare was a nice touch, but my instructor Steve Schultz critiqued the lens flare as "cheezy," by industry standards. eh, i thought it was cool, but i respect his POV. the guy knows what he's talking about, for reals! anyways here it is...

Barona Video Contest

my good friend Jay Mitchel and i decided to enter a video contest held by barona casino. the theme of the piece was what we liked about barona. we decided to keep the piece short, about 30 secs, and use 3d animation as our medium. unfortunatlly we didnt make the semi finals, but we finished a great piece, imo.

i did the prop designs for the craps and roulette tables as well as the animation. Jay did the card fanning animation and the falling chips simulation, along with all of thier props. Jay also did the intro and outro and i composited everything. i had alot of fun hangin with Jay workin on this project. this was my first time working on something outside of school and i must say, i feel alot more confident in working with others and telling them exactly what i feel will benefit the piece as a whole, and vice versa. i feel confident in the critism i get from my peers, knowing that they too have good intenesions for the progress of the project.

3d props

these are some prop designs i made for a background i was helpin with at school.
i think i went overboard with the amount of props i designed, but it was fun makin all this stuff. google is the best for reference's! the theme of the bg was an inventor's workshop. i modeled all sorts of items such as a rotary phone, a phonograph, an alarm clock, a steam powered fan?!, test tubes and glass containers, books, a richter scale, and the list goes on.

i heard about a toon shader effect in maya and tried it, check out the outcome, pretty cool!

Hard Surface & Organic Modeling

these 2 models were made form my final in HS&OM. the final was to build tools from photo reference with a rendered image and a wireframe render. i chose to make a level and flashlight.

this is a firehydrant i modeled.

Mid-Term Challenge

one day i was sitting thru one of grady classes, i think it was hard surface and organic modeling and it happend to be on his mid term day. i wasnt in the class, but i decided to take his mid term just for kicks. the midterm was to build a lamp by photo reference in 2 hour with a rendered image and a wireframed turnaround. i finished with time to spare, and i think i did pretty well, but i didnt get graded on it.

"Miss Magician"

this was a character i was messin with for intermediate 2d animation class. i really like this set of sketches i did of her so i decided to post em.