The Panda! It walks

So in an effort to say thanks to my friend Stuart Coutts for inspiring me to get my butt into gear, I decided to model and rig a Panda he designed. I decided to teach him how to walk as well. This was all done in one weekend so a lot of tweaking needs to be done.

Thanks for inspiration Stu!

Yes, the rig broke. Yes, I will fix it. No, the panda did not receive any injuries.

The phases of layout

Continuing the layout theme I did some quick basic modelling of a building. The idea is to eventually have the complete layout done and then texture it! So this is a start to bigger things.

New anim reel

Like I said in a previous post, my old reel was hideous. Most of it was from 3 years ago *shiver*.

But now I have this. Still need to tweak but it's a start, and a start is all we need sometimes.

Quick layouts

I decided to just doodle some layout sketches. I decided I might use them for animation later if I get round to it.
This first one is a quaint little town. The proposed camera move is shown on the second image.

Next is a Savannahish scene.

Here is a quick pre-vis for the first pan. I used my friend Stuart Coutts's Houdini rig again just so I had a character in scene.

The cat! It jumps!

My friend and colleague Stuart Coutts decided to have a go at rigging a basic quadruped in the form of a boxy cat. I decided to test it yesterday by creating this simple animation. I spent a couple of hours on this so no major polish but was fun to play with the rig. Check out Stu's blog here. It's cool, I promise!

Line tests

Because I have spent the last year and a half stagnating in my previous job, I realised I have very little animation that I have done recently. To remedy this I have embarked upon a quest to create some animations to replace the old (and very crappy) stuff on my reel. 

This is the start of a walk cycle. I plan it to be a Ben10 walk cycle because I love the original show and his name is Ben, so we have a connection already. Hopefully I can add a transformation or two in there eventually.

The second test is something i'm playing with for maybe an intro animation to my show reel or something. Just a round creature thing doing a flip. Yay for round flippy creatures!

It's ALIVE!

Well looky here. The first post of a new blog and similarly a new phase in my life. To comemorate this event I thought I'd chuck up a few sketches from a drawing group in Jo-burg. Let it commence!

These are from the first group I attended. Just trying to feel out poses...

 I don't know why but I like the flow of this one.

Some other sketchy quick ones. Yoga people are so damn stretchy.