Ever since the release of Metal Gear Solid 4 I've had this project brewing in the back of my mind. It's a spin off of my original model for 3D modeling. There's more of a story behind it now, which really lends itself to the development of the character, and the general way I'm approaching the project.
As far as I'm concerned, Hideo Kojima, the creator of the MGS series, is a flippin' genius. The fact that he didn't even know the story behind the last two games prior to making them just astounds me that much more. So I'm dedicating this particular portfolio project to him.
Now that I have a few deadlines set for myself, I'm actually getting some constructive work done. Just to keep everyone on their toes, I'm not revealing anything until each deadline has been met. Lucky for you, I just met my first one as of about 10 minutes ago. The soundtrack for the trailer... is finally finished. Ah, the wonders of GarageBand.
I would love to share it with you all, but unfortunately Blogger doesn't support music files. Such a pity. If you would like to hear it, I will gladly email you the MP3.
Take it easy all, and have great 4th!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
More Lt. Dan
In addition to finally getting my flash animation finished I also finished a pretty good Maya animation of everybody's favorite, good old Lieutenant Dan.
He's really more of an acrobat than a Lieutenant in this one though. : )
He's really more of an acrobat than a Lieutenant in this one though. : )
Back in Action
Things have been quite hectic lately, especially with the finals being next week. I've gotten quite a bit, well not quite a bit, but some, stuff done. Most importantly I finally finished my "Geeky Trio" animation. I ended up calling the animation "Get Cool" since I couldn't think of anything better to call it. If any of you have something better, please share it. I could really use the input. Anyway, here it is:
Please excuse the poor quality of the video, I had to really cut back on the quality to make the file small enough to upload. If it doesn't start playing right away give it a minute. The file is still about 14 MB (way to big in my opinion) so it's going to be slow on the start (especially if you have a slow internet connection). I hope you guys like it!
Please excuse the poor quality of the video, I had to really cut back on the quality to make the file small enough to upload. If it doesn't start playing right away give it a minute. The file is still about 14 MB (way to big in my opinion) so it's going to be slow on the start (especially if you have a slow internet connection). I hope you guys like it!
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Walk Cycles
So I switched back to working in 3D for a little while to catch up on my walk cycles. I figured rather than just show you the end result I'd show you a little bit of the process as well. Walk cycles begin with a simple two step forward walk, beginning on what is called the "extreme", where both feet are as far apart as possible. Otherwise when you go to turn the walk into a cycle you get the funny frame where the model is standing still (which never happens in real life). The basic two step walk ends up looking something like this:
You might notice the circles and arrows around the actual model. These are handles that I grab and manipulate to animate the model. They are part of the rig which is built into the model and prevents the animator from destroying the poor innocent model with things like scale. Oh, and just so you know, the model in these animations is known affectionately as Lieutenant Dan.
So once you have the two step walk complete it's time to turn it into a cycle. To do this you grab the master control (which selects all handles on the rig at once and also moves the entire model as a unit rather than moving the individual pieces) and drag the model back to the starting point at even intervals throughout the animation, making it look like Dan is walking on a treadmill. It looks something like this:
This is just a very basic walk, one that doesn't convey much character, so I decided to go back and give it another try- this time adding in the third dimension (depth), and some rotation. The second walk came out like this:
After this we'll start working on runs (and no I don't mean diarrhea) and run cycles, but for now we're sticking to conveying character through walks.
You might notice the circles and arrows around the actual model. These are handles that I grab and manipulate to animate the model. They are part of the rig which is built into the model and prevents the animator from destroying the poor innocent model with things like scale. Oh, and just so you know, the model in these animations is known affectionately as Lieutenant Dan.
So once you have the two step walk complete it's time to turn it into a cycle. To do this you grab the master control (which selects all handles on the rig at once and also moves the entire model as a unit rather than moving the individual pieces) and drag the model back to the starting point at even intervals throughout the animation, making it look like Dan is walking on a treadmill. It looks something like this:
This is just a very basic walk, one that doesn't convey much character, so I decided to go back and give it another try- this time adding in the third dimension (depth), and some rotation. The second walk came out like this:
After this we'll start working on runs (and no I don't mean diarrhea) and run cycles, but for now we're sticking to conveying character through walks.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
The geeky trio lives!
(Well after having spent over a half hour trying to upload scene 1 I've decided that its not worth my time and yours so we're just gonna skip it.) So I have finally gotten Patrick, Stewart, and Junior up and moving, although not as gracefully as I would ultimately like (ah gotta love those deadlines). I'm quite surprised, I must admit, at how different Flash animation is from Maya's 3D animation and I'm not just talking about the additional dimension. Yes they both use key frames, but the tweening in Flash is so peculiar compared to the tweening in Maya that it takes some getting used to. If you couldn't tell I prefer the tweening in Maya more- it's much more natural, Flash tends to be very logical and literal. So far I have no sound (that is still in the works) but I have the first scene completed and part of the second- enjoy!
This is scene 2. Patrick disappears simply because I haven't nested the trip movie clip yet, but four hours working in Flash is a killer. I swear I'll get on that one tomorrow!
This is scene 2. Patrick disappears simply because I haven't nested the trip movie clip yet, but four hours working in Flash is a killer. I swear I'll get on that one tomorrow!
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