Animation Articles

AnimationArena

Very useful website, this article offers advice on breaking into the world of 3d animating, although i suspect its become a little dated when they suggest presenting your work on betamax rather than vhs. There was me thinking dvd was the way forward?

Skillset

Useful web resource that has a relevant page of articles regarding the animation industry. Loads of information and relevant links to go on. I have spent a lot of time reading through this resource and will continue in the future. See article "Jobs in 3d Computer animation" for a comprehensive list of job titles and roles. Really useful to have the correct vernacular when finding information.

Career Coach: Foolproof Your Career

Link to article by Pamela Kleibrink Thompson. She writes a lot of advice regarding recruitment and career tips.

Useful Links

FatCat

Directory of British Film and Television Production and Post Production. Quite a handy list that will springboard further enquiry. Useful information regarding each company such as Phone numbers and relevant email addresses.

GamesIndustry

Recruitment agency that specialises in the Games industry. Appears this site caters for vacancies around the world should feet begin to itch.



Highend Careers

"Find Hundreds of the Best Jobs" - Offshoot of Highend 3d, advertises jobs regarding 3d, Game, VFX, Film. You can also upload your own profile so poential employers can view your work. I have done a search to see whats about in term of rigging and i has confirmed my suspicions of availability up North. 



Animation Mentor

Animation Mentor is an online animation school who have been sending me their free monthly newsletter that features loads of up to date information regarding the industry. There's also a lot of useful links and free resources, as well as introducing you to new talent.
Dave Warren

Link to Dave's Blog address - both he and and I are looking inthe same area of work so would be foolish to overlook the opportunity to collaborate.  

agcas

Mammoth resource, only apage in length but put together with loads of useful links of information regarding job advertising, news and sources of vacancies. UK based so exremely relevant!



Tech Artists

Online community designed to update and sharpen the skills of technical artists and animators.

Visual Effects Society 

Looking though their website it becomesapparent this is where the big boys in Visual effects hang out. To become an active member you have to be in the VFX trade for 5 years minimum and provide evidence of your portfolio. Membership offers loads of fringe benefits such as cheap insurance, screenings, discounts, free dvd's, seminars, publications, educational seminars. One for the future - a must if your intending to secure a place with the VFX elite, not to mntion the possible networking opportunities.

The House of Curves 

London based VFX/ animation studio company, established by Andrew Daffy (originally of Framestore) and Matt Estella. As well as providing VFX, animations and pre-vis wor for film, they are committed to providing educational seminars to colleges and universities and write articles for 3d based magazines. This link directs to a really handy 'advice for students' pdf which featured in September 2008 Imagine Magazine. Well worth a look.





Animators Guild

I was directed to this site via a monthly newsletter sent out by Animation Mentor. TAG stands for The Animation Guild and proclaims responsibility for negotiating fair pay, health care etc for animators (They are a US organisation). This link to their blog is a useful resource, as it gives up to date industry information from across the pond, but also has plethora of useful links down the right to investigate.


Animation World Network

One of the links I found from the above blog address, this is a huge resource. They publish a regular Animation and separate VFX magazine (to which I have subscribed to both). There's also blogs, jobs and an events calender. Definitely worth checking on a regular basis.

Building a mesh using Curves and Birails

Right, I have started playing around with the few of the techniques introduced in a previous post and taken screenshots along the way:

The first step I took was to create a rough profile of the model by creating curves and resizing them in the relevant orthographic view to achieve the bodyshape. I am not using imge planes in this instance, the purpose of this exercise is not to stringently follow a shape but to create a two legged character that has good edge flow and smooth interpolation between points. And to do this using Nurbs. I will be converting this to poly's at the end but I want to use the powerful curve diting capabilities to achive that smooth hard edged look.

Next step was to connect up the curves. Bearing in mind the Topology should consist of four sided shapes I used the Edit Point (EP) curve tool to establish the flow. I displayed the edit points on the curves which gave me a visual reference of division points on the curve. This is a massive advantae because I can now see precisely where ponts such as the halfway point etc are aln the curves and figure outhow they need to connect in relation to each other. The rebuild curve option allows me to add and subtract spans whilst maintaining perfect spacing, rather than pushing and pulling verts around by eye like you would when poly modeling.

Close up of the proposed topology. This method allows superior interpolation between points asa bi-cubic spline will adjust the two points top and bottom side of the control vert you are pulling about.
Next step is to break apart all the curves so they are individuals. This is easily done by using the CutCurve tool (under Edit Curves menu). Now the cage is ready for the birail tool. As you can prably see there are a few issues with consistency regardiong the edit points but that can easily be corrected using the rebuild curve option.

I've started to create the patches using the Birail 2 tool which works by selecting two profile curves and two rail curves and then effectively lofting a smooth surface between them. The Birail'd surface still has history connecting it with the curve, so if you move the edit points of the initial curve around the surface will deform with it. Very useful indeed!

 

 

 

I've gone around the mesh and Birail'd all the curve and created the shape I was after. In some places where the patches are a little stretched a bit of pinching has occured, and the whole thing looks a little faceted because it is made out of seperate patches. This will be overcome in the next stage where I can begin to attach patches together and begin th rebuilding process.

creature reference

character development

DEAN: After discussing about the initial characters with Jim i have created some more. The character below is one that would eat up all the dirt in he rug, living like a skip. Initial ideas are that they would live under the fridge and some of the dust mites would delivery the rubbish to them.
I will pass this over to Jim to so he can model a mock up.





Jim: Nice one Dean. I've been having a look at microscopic photographs online - there's a few above to look at. Loads of really weird shapes, textures and colours to consider. When I originally thought about this characeter I had him down as a cow type figure that would just stand around all day chewing the cud so the mouth movements are really important. Like most agricultural animals (farmers included) they have a sort of rotaional motion to the way they chew, where  the bottom jaw seems to dislocate from the top and then grind back with the teeth to complete the loop.

Also scales quite importamt - how big are these characters in relation to the rest of the characters? We associate cows as being big docile slow creatures tha remain pretty stagnant all day - they only move as far as they can chew, but are still quite powerful and physically intimidatting.

Textures - creature could have the sort of mottled patches like a Friesian cow. Ill post a few examples to give an idea.

Jim: Taken from Google images - the size comparison between the woman and Friesan is immense, I would certainly feel intimidated stood next to it. The first thing I notice from this picture is that cows are all about body, and how its front legs appear to be almost buckling under the weight. Cows are not built for mobility.

Reference Images

Facial muscles

Hyperlink
Nice diagram of the facial muscle structure. Very important to have a good grasp of this because it determines how the topology should be arranged to allow for realistic deformations and facial expressions. Good topology is always defined by the lines proximity to muscular flow. If the character is an animal then the topology should follow its biological makeup, unless it is anthropomorphised then its down to the artist discretion to create a blend.

Anthropomorphism
On the subject of Anthropomorphism, here's a series of videos with drawing techniques for drawing animals.