This animated music video is my university FMP. For this I had to model, rig, weight and animate the character and scenery... so quite a learning curve for me!!
It was made using Cinema 4D, Apple Motion, Adobe Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro.
Well, after an epic battle to get the YouTube upload system to upload this without crashing, I am pleased to present my first test of a professional rig. This is my very short animation experiment undertaken as part of my research in to rigging and character animation for a college project. The animation is not perfect but I think it gives the impression of weight and mass to both character and object.
This was great to animate and I absolutely loved working with this character.
The model I used for this was a prerigged model called Whimp that is included for non commercial use with Maxon's Cinema 4D. The copyright for this character remains with Glenn Frey (Bonewire)
Thought I'd share some of the concept work I've created for the college character design project.
These are my character turn arounds:
These were hand drawn then coloured using Photoshop - I have always shied away from that dreaded program before but I confess I'm a convert, I guess there is a reason it's become a verb! Who knew?!
The final character will be created, rigged and animated with Maya. Hmmm... wish me luck with that!!
This is a trailer for the vampire novel, "Craving", by young adults author, E.F Morris. I made this using a combination of Cinema 4D and Adobe Premiere Pro, both of which I have really grown to like.
Ok, so I know I should be doing the truck load of other things that are piling up in this final sprint towards the end of my college course, but sometimes you just need to step away from the weighting tool and go back to basics... and so I did and this was the result!
Please let me introduce... The Biped!
The Biped - part frog, part freak and all mine!
This is part of a project I started ages ago and left because I wasn't really familar enough with the software to get him finnished. But since recently I've spent a lot of quality time on Cinema 4D it seems I've skilled up enough to get him finnished.
Sad as it is, it looks like there is every chance that this year could hold another crop of animated sequels and spin offs. I’m not saying that that means there’ll be nothing to look forward to, I’m personally quite excited about the new Kung Fu Panda and I know there will also be plenty of those queuing to see the sequel to the Pixar film Cars, but still the lack of brand new titles doesn’t inspire that much enthusiasm.
That said, there are some lights of innovation and originality in animation in the years ahead!
1. Tangled – Disney’s re envisioning of the Rapunzel story sees the studio turn its hand to 3D CG for this musical fairy story. Watch the trailer
2. Rango – ILM venture in to the land of CG animated films. Johnny Depp stars as the chameleon who has to work his way through a wild west of dessert critters. Watch the trailer
3. Rio – The makers of Ice Age bring a similar style to this story of a domestic Macaw who must face his fear of flying after being taken to South America. Watch the trailer
Sometimes a film comes along that gives hope to all of us struggling to break in to the world of film, VFX or animation and Monsters is one such beast. Made on a shoe string budget the film is the brain film and directorial debut of Brit VFX artist, Gareth Edwards.
Reminiscent of movies like Cloverfield and District 9, Monsters again takes a look at how humans would deal with alien guests. However unlike previous films, Edwards attacked his idea with a tiny crew of 5, an even smaller cast of 2, a camera, a van, a laptop and the beautiful and distopian vistas offered by South America. There was no script, no storyboard and no huge team of post prodcution staff waiting at the other end! Instead what editing and VFX wasn't done on his laptop on the road was done on his PC at home.
Were they crazy? Possibly. But in these times of austerity, where smaller studios are finding it hard to support themselves and big studios are happier to sequels then risk huge investments on new ideas, it will be film makers like Edwards who make sure that cinema isn't left to stagnate.
The film is released in cinemas on 3rd December in the UK and is already available to download on itunes.
