A few things have happened since my previous post earlier this month, several being Into the Woods encore performances, various illnesses (poison oak and the flu), though thankfully not simultaneously, and the much anticipated visit of Kristin and Daniel.

The end.

I put off procrastination today and did what needs to be accomplished: Starting on walk cycles in my animation book! It's rather unfortunate that school starts fairly soon.. but thankfully, there are still a few weeks of vacation left. I consider this to be a sign that perhaps, sometime in the near future *laughs*, I could eventually start posting clippings of what I do throughout the week.

Right. It's off to work then!

Cheers,

Bradley

Flickr

Everybody loves a peek inside Pixar; or at least I think they should. ^^

Hurray for the weekend!

Slow-motion

Discovery Channel has some sort of TV program that films various actions at a rate
of 1000 f/s (frames per second). Time Warp

Apologies...

I really was intending to blog daily about my life, and the art stuff I'm learning;
but that goal was not accomplished. This will (hopefully) be the start of that goal.

In April, I felt very determined to get really good at art when the call for artists was
announced for a play I was in (Cinderella). Since I wasn't good enough at art, I chose not to volunteer, but a flame sparked in me that longed for learning. I did some research on Cgsociety and such and found out about a fantastic illustrator (now dead) named Andrew Loomis, who had published some books that were very good, but were out of print.
http://www.bpib.com/illustrat/loomis.htm

After downloading his books (google "andrew loomis") and a book on perspective,
I was all set. And since then, I've been slowly plugging away at the perspective book (Perspective Made Easy by Ernest R. Norling) and one of Loomis' books (Successful Drawing). Anyway, I hope that by later this year, I will have a good understanding of perspective and also of the general physics of drawing.

While on the subject of drawing, I might as well mention that I'm watching an anatomy course (http://the-structure-of-man.blogspot.com/), and it's very good. I'm somewhat unhappy at the moment because one project is to draw the 3/4 view of the chest cavity (which means I have to use perspective).
The series is such small size that it is hard to see what Riven Phoenix is doing, so I re-sized to double the size and applied a de-noise filter and it actually looks pretty good (the software is KMPlayer).

Last December, I used some birthday money and got The Illusion of Life and The Animator's Workbook since animation is something that interests me [Crazy happy/excited]me wants to learn to animate!![Crazy happy/excited] After deciding to read The Animator's Workbook first, (I'm going to use a different name than "I") [insert name here] began the task of reading the book (thoroughly of course). At the 1/3 mark, I (oh no!) took a break and then decided to start over, so that's where Brad is now (there will be a good nickname!).

Related to Blender, hopefully, there will be a Bounce, Tumble, and Splash book
on my doorstep soon. (http://www.amazon.com/Bounce-Tumble-Splash-Simulating-Physical/dp/0470192801/ref=pd_bbs_sr_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1212258521&sr=8-3)

I actually haven't been using Blender all that much in the last week mostly because my general
plan is to get really a good understanding of 2D art and then move more in the 3D direction. That doesn't mean I (silly nicknames!) won't be using it at all, but just somewhat less.

My current project (started in January) is still crawling. The main things left to do
are to re-do the fluid simulation (half-way done), tweak lighting, optimize render times,
and then finally do compositing (blur out background, gamma and tone corrections, etc). The last step will be most difficult because I have the fluid and background all on one layer (the water needed an environment to reflect and since it was on a separate render layer, there were no reflections) and I still need to de-focus the background (which could be done easily if both objects were on separate layers). Hopefully, some sort of solution will present itself in my brain....

And that wraps things up. Have a blessed Sabbath (not that anyone reads this =)

~Brad

Put the Ipod down sir...

This blog has not been updated in awhile, but I just came
back to it today, thinking I will probably start writing here.

On the 21st of December 2007, I received The Animator's Workbook by Richard Williams
and The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston
(I bought them with birthday money).
I have decided to go through them, one at a time, taking them slowly, savoring
each few pages. I will probably blog on that here.

On the section about timing and spacing, Mr. Williams suggested sliding a coin
across a video camera in 24 seconds, first in an even pattern, and then
in an ease-in-ease-out. I ended up holding my camera in a steady spot and taking 24
pictures (25 on the second ease-in-ease-out video).
Then, I loaded the images into Blender and rendered
to AVI (using Xvid). You can download them below.
http://www.mediafire.com/?32iyvzj92jj
http://www.mediafire.com/?fkxyjaxmozt


Today, I was reading lesson 1, where Richard Williams describes how he asked
Milt Kahl if he ever listened to music while animating, and Milt blows up, yelling
"Of all the stupid ideas!!" Compare that to another explosion, where he was asked
how he planned a counter-action in some Disney movie scene and exclaimed
how that was not the right way to think of the scene. Even when he was yelling,
Milt still gave wisdom (I find this rather funny).

So, Ditch the headphones, sit up straight (about a 135-degree angle),
and focus on one thing at a time.

Signing off,

~Brad