Mitch's Animation Anxiety Attacks

I have much, much more work to do on this little child of mine, but for now this will have to do.

I would like to add both run and walk cycles, and the old 'lifting the heavy object'

Also, I'm considering converting the Robin Hood Dialogue into 3D

anyways enjoy!

Games Showreel unfinished from Mitchell Druce on Vimeo.

A very short animation of a guy warming up to a battle stance. I had fun making the sword and shield :D

katana kid from Mitchell Druce on Vimeo.

I'm working on 3 stages of sword swings at the moment, so you'll be seeing some more from me by the end of the week :)

So I've finally finished my dialogue piece as far as I can at the moment without losing track of other assignments.

but ultimately its unfinished and I'd like to work more on it in the future.
Maybe even make it 3D in the near future.


MASTER ROBIN by ~Ludichrist on deviantART

Also, GOD I miss the Animaniacs... Nice snappy animation to music

This is a perfect example of economic animating... OR a combination and laziness that resulted in me having to cut down on complicated scenes... either way you look at it, this is my experimental



I'll probably work on it some more afterwards but more assignments are yelling at me to finish them!


Also for those who haven't seen it yet, I've got a youtube link to a NEW proper trailer of Toy Story 3

I'd have put the embedded version onto my blog but it isn't allowed for some annoying reason

Robin grew some nice boobs from Mitchell Druce on Vimeo.

I'd really like some feed back on my robin hood animation here before I continue on only to find that I've got to go back and delete like 50 frames :P Also I'd like to point out for SOME annoying reason the sound seems SLIGHTLY out of sync... this is not the case, I don't know what vimeo did to my file.

aaand this is a nice collection of my work so far

progression show reel from Mitchell Druce on Vimeo.

Loading part 1 by ~Ludichrist on deviantART

Ever wondered what emotions a game character would be going through while the computer was trying to load him?

in other news here is some Fan Art as a hats off to those wonderful creators behind the Meet The Spy animation.

I can see by ~Ludichrist on deviantART

Blame this flash on kuru for making me feel insecure about my disability. -hides in shame-

Nar I'm quite happy with who I am and this is a nice little attempt at explaining why :)

Nathan and I had an effing great time making this ad. I hope you guys enjoy watching it as much as we enjoyed making it :D

The girls showed me this one at tafe the other day and its far too good to NOT post it on my blog.



and to all the girls out there, when you find sex toys in your guys pants, remember, it can always be worse... WAY worse.

Hey just thought I'd give a shout out to anyone who isn't aware of it already. But Deviant Art has just introduced to the world their new PortFolio system which keeps all your artwork and animation in a profession manner without all clients having to look at all your artwork and having to put up with all the other silly myspace-esque crepe "thats french for crap" that you see on deviant art all the time.

It's completely free, user friendly and you can hold up to 100 of your best work which is a sweet deal for a free internet space. It also has a spot for you to upload your resume for interested employers who know how to use the interbutts... I'd say its the best free online portfolio system I've come across... well I've only come across the one but thats besides the point.

this is a link here that will help you find your way

http://news.deviantart.com/article/86515/

PS I'VE GOT A BUTTON/LINK TOP RIGHT OF THE SCREEN FOR MY PORTFOLIO.

Now let me sleep everyone GOSH!

Once in an every so occuring part of my life I drop my flash and maya for a bit of old pacer and art pad for some good old fasion drawing. Looking around for some inspiration my eyes find the two most dedicated illustrators in the room. With their permission I drew up a little scene with their favourite OCs 'Original Characters' in action.

I'd like to think I pushed myself a little more than usual to see how things could look and I'm happy with the outcome.

Also on the animation side of things I'm teaming up with Nathan to work on a piece of advertising, trying to sell gym membership to couch potatoes. Hilarity WILL be a factor in this equasion.

It's time to say goodbye to another fantastic months worth of holidays of partying and animation... and just going back to plain old animation for the next 4 months or so. The Mitch in me is saying I had an awesome time, but the Mian "mitch/ian hibrid" in me is saying I could have done a turd load more animation.

Having said that, I regret nothing, EAPS were made, friends held hands and were merry. Maya add ons were explored and some people found love, and simulataneously some cried, but HEY what are parties for?

looking forward to coming back to tafe :)



Here's to hang overs that continue to last for more than 2 days :)

Click to Bounce

And this is a work in progress for my second EAP using the TweenMachine add on

Click to play

Working on some animations using a new tool for maya Ian showed me called Tween Machine, it can me found here :)

Its just a little ball I made in maya, jumping for joy.

Will be updating this post with more animations later on.

Many many many many hours went into this ad. I hope greencross is very happy with it.

After a quick meeting this morning we came up with the name Flash n Burn studios to represent us. Perhaps a little wanky in its approach, but that is the majority of our group anyway. For anyone who wants to download a high definition version of this video, you'll need a deviant art login, and you'll find it in my dA gallery

I couldn't help but put this on my blog as a possible great source of audio to animate to later on, it just has SO much potential for action. I was reading a post on animation mentor about getting out of the seat, and acting your scenes standing up. NOW, Sir Ian Mckellen sold that entire performance sitting, I can only imagine what it would look like if he were standing... and a tad more "3D animated"
Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, ACTION, WIZARD! YOU SHALL NOT PASS, cut, Sir Ian, Sir Ian, Sir Ian.

Hey all, Just posting a rough of the first part of my Dua EAPS 02 and 03 of both throwing and catching a ball.

Open for change.

Click to play

The holidays are coming up as everyone would be aware of. so I've stolen Ian's student challenge and turned it into a giant image to keep on your computer desktop at home as a checklist to keep everyone occupied over the holidays. and by stolen I really mean giving Ian a second voice in making sure people get the idea in their heads.

I know alot of us are doing naratives for our end of year assignment but lets be honest when I say it wont land us a job compaired to handing in a show-reel with some of these small potential animation scenes.

If one could manage to cover all of these by this time next year, they would have greater odds landing this job.

I hope everyone considers this.

peace.

To fully understand this scene taken out of my animated short "Pandora's Charades" there is an inivisble heavy weight boxer in this scene which will become abundantly clear.



Now Youtube as it seems, tends to kill a fair few fps in my animations so I've god a download button top left of my blog for those who want to really have a good look at my EAP

Well I haven't posted much recently. Thats all my bad really, I've been rather swamped with ALOT of greencross work and little time for the more interesting things in life like my end of year assignment. It's coming along nicely and I've almost finished the animatic. For now you'll just have to enjoy an image I put together of my chosen character design for the animation.

peace out Animators!

WARNING CONTAINS SPOILERS



I'm a little iffy all round about this movie.

The jokes were hilarious granted, but the visual look of the movie conflicted with my expectations of the film. A lot of the rigs looked like stereotyped charicatures of famous people, but unfortunately with them being fictional characters, the joke of the charicature style was lost. I found I was a little creaped out by the extreme amount of detail that had gone into skin textures of the humans, like dreamworks was trying to prove a point to the world.



As far as the characters go, without Bob, Dr. Cockroach Ph D, and the President, the movie would have been made up completely of very boring characters. Ontop of that, apart from Ginormica and The Missing Link, everyone else were complete 2 dimentional characters. Bob was "although hilarious" very stupid throughout the entire film, he was remained the same right till the very end, every other character was the same "unchanging". Link didn't even NEED to be interesting and yet they showed a rather sad and exposed side to his usual macho visage when he realises he's not as tough as he thought he was. Perhaps these character stereotypes are becoming THAT stereotyped that you don't even need to give them depth anymore. I noticed this with the antagonist, Gallaxhar, At the beggining he was evil for no reason and I was thinking "here we go, generic evil character no. 999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999,999" but then dreamworks surprised me with his wonderful and perhas even deliberately vague and constantly interrupted monologue explaining why he was evil to make fun of the stereotype. I think Dreamworks took us for a ride with this movie, threw in a bunch of stereotypes, some big names to make the fans happy, put in some good laughs, AND some cheap ones "close encounters of the 3rd kind parody, merging with a stolen joke from Space Chimps", and make it a 3D experience.

The movie was hilarious, but the story had the emotion and depth of a rich 13 year old emo's song lyrics.


and now I've got that out of my system, I wanna talk about the animation.
Yeah, it was alright, but I don't think they thought about it enough. Susan is supposed to be HUGE. You'd think with your body becoming larger, the earth would seem ultimately smaller, thus giving you the illusion that there is less gravity. A scene with her being chased by a giant robot through the city, you watch her jump from roof top to roof top, and she seems to jump like a normal person. my understanding is that the bigger something is, the slower it "seems" to fall from a distance. Galileo was probably rolling over in his grave when they were animating this scene. The story has close to no depth but they have a perfect opportunity to make up for that with some well thought out animation and they put together what looks like a normal person running through a miniature city "which may have been deliberate but I doubt it".



Something that seems to be a pattern in dreamworks movies, animals and monsters etc always seem to be rigged and animated much more entertainingly that humans. They squash and stretch more, and they move more convincingly. "eg, mega-susan moved like a normal human being and yet Insectosaurus was moving like a snail, despite sharing the same trait of being massive characters"

All in all very hit and miss. BUT being a biased fan of comedy I'll still probably enjoy it over and over again despite its downfalls.

Or have I missed the point somewhere?

I know this does not fall under animation but once in a while I find its nice to shake things up a little bit. This originally started out as a 3D reference for Jess' end of year narrative, which I kindly put together for her, and then it turned into an experimental journey into the creative side of Maya.


Sky Pirate from Mitchell Druce on Vimeo.

It is SOOO FREAKING hard to make spheres look like bubbles. Thats right, Jess' sky pirate ships have a bubble exhaust system

Perhaps this developing skill will serve me well with my own end of year narrative ^_^

Infusing Jason Ryans Tutorial on easing in and easing out with Franks direction towards snowboarding, our beans battle it out to see who's the best snowboarder amongst the rest.


R Jeremy Snowboarder from Mitchell Druce on Vimeo.

I couldn't help but make R Jeremy jiggle at the end.

So. I was the opening piece to a 4-men-1-woman oral presentation. So I thought I'd give people a bit of a show. Sell my idea of great standards in animation to the fellow students of my class. And what better way of elaborating on that then a display of pictures of high standards and quality. But when I show them a whole bunch of slides which looked like they were drawn with my left testicle, I was applauded. Sure I'll take any compliment thrown at me. But I feel like after all the planning of sweet irony, the joke was on me. Should have my intentions been a little more clear? I feel its patronising to explain intellectual humour. I feel alot like Jim Carrey from 'Man on the Moon'

It's Red... It bounces... and it will tear your room a new one if you take it home. will you adopt him today?


Red by ~Ludichrist on deviantART

as I play around with different 3D rigs in maya I think to myself how I'm going to plan out my end of year narrative. I've decided to go with moom, he just looks right for my idea. I'm sure alot of hardcore animatiors will argue that it doesn't matter what the rig looks like so long as the animation is good, but I've been thinking and its not just an animation. It's a short story. And since my story has a fair bit of slap-stick humour involved I thought it would be appropriate to use a cartoony looking character.

Imagine if you will, a game of charades that goes out of control. you draw a card, it tells you to act out a scene, but as you begin to express to the others what your trying to act out, it becomes an invisable reality. You lose control of the situation but it most certainly puts the message across. whether that message is juggling chain-saws, stepping in the ring with a heavy weight boxer, or even tap-dancing through a mine field. But just like any looney-tunes-esque short cartoon, the characters will be a-ok by the end of the film no matter how many times they blow up.

but the story is still a work in progress.

Embrace The Machine by ~Ludichrist on deviantART

my latest illustrative piece.
done all on graphics tablet.

So we're working on creating our first 3D character in Maya. Bean shaped on the exterior, with a heart of gold on the inside. Will be awesome once its all finished, I'm hoping to be able to render this guy with some fur. Hopefully frank can show me how to do that.




Looking forward to this guy bouncing about in the future...

I would also like to work on my good ol' ninja as a 3D project in the future. He's simple enough to create.



y'all have a good one and I'll be sure to keep you all up to date on my workings as an animator/artist in the future

Jack Black... a personal favourite of mine... God status really. and now I get to animate him... excellent ^_^

This is the rough keys for my 2009 feb 11secondclub animation. enjoy guys :D

I started this course with a clean slate. I thought I knew what it was about... and with a good 4 months of Ian drilling it into my mind I eventually figured it out. I didn't know how to use flash, I didn't know how to use maya, I didn't know how to traditionally animate. I never really thought about how something moved, I was just more impressed with how cool they looked with their spikey blonde hair and kamehameha waves. from day dot at tafe, I was learning something completely new. I didn't want to own up to the fact that I knew nothing about it, mainly I guess because it scared me a little. I decided I was going to do animation for the rest of my life... and then to find out that I knew nothing about it, it made me feel very VERY small in comparison to everything else.

So the first year was all about me learning these bizzar and specifically non-idiot proof pieces of software. So I'd been thinking to myself, "ok, I'm a big bad 2nd year now, watch me roar" and then it dawns on me like an ice cube down your coin slot. I'm back to square one. So when setting my goals I think of what kind of job I want as an animator. The games industy is big in brisbane, but I don't want to keep closed minded. I've decided to work on a narrative for end of year, working with the main focus being a 3D character with simple props to play around with, but I want 2.5D flash characters occasionally interacting with him to show both sides of my skills, one as an animator, and one as an illustrator.
So with my narrative, I'll not only be able to show this to a games studio saying "look at my awsum three-dee skillz"
but I could wander into somewhere like liquid, and say, I can draw, I can animate, I can create a story structure and use more than one piece of animation software.


what I need to do now "because I've realised how complicated these processes can be" is polish up the script and animatic as promptly as possible so I can get to work early in the game on animating my narrative piece. once I finish writing it up

I need to learn how to use the graph editor in maya properly because that will surely be my achilies heel in all of this.

I'll need to install maya "somehow" on my computer so I can work on it at home.

look after Bill "my EAT"

Also I really think its important that I work more on animation with emotion and dialogue. Its something I personally believe I wont be perfecting any time soon, so the more I work on it the better I can be at it. "me thinks the 11second club is the place to be for that"

Ontop of that, I've got my 30 seconds worth of animation to your dialogue thing going on, on my deviant art website
I'm working on a strange UNO joke that a friend sent me... things like this could keep me animating and not playing around with games and watching cartoons.
not sure if its a good idea doing this and my narrative piece at the same time.

after all of that, I'd like to get a little better at my illustrations, but I'm aware animation comes first.

So without talking about other goals to do with outside my life as an animator, it sounds like I've got a long year ahead of me.

BALL IS ON THE LOOSE! SQUARE FACED MAN YET TO APPEAR IN COURT!

late thursday afternoon, a one Linus 'ping pong' Mcreevy went on a rampage in TeleTubby land. "He snuggled up in my lap even after I told him not to... I feel violated" said an emotionally, and sexually scarred Tinky Winky. "He was very disrespectful and he reaked of Irish Whiskey", said Laa-Laa. "He laughed at my hand bag" Said Po. "I'm used to balls, but he went too far", cried Dipsy.
Mr. Daniel Goodman, owner of Linus ergo ultimately responcible for the balls actions refuses to say anything on the matter at this point and time. More news on the Linus case tomorrow at 7.

You'd think 2nd year animation teachers were trying to tell us something about the importance of balls with all the ball animation thrown at us.


Its good being a ball by ~Ludichrist on deviantART

So far being back at tafe has been good... I'm missing Ian's psychic ability to know when I'm doing something wrong, but I'm sure frank will do a good job at keeping me in line.

y'all have a good one.