Old Skool...

Um.... so after doing that last post, I saw how cool it is that you can embed video in these posts. Here's an older animation I did about 2 years ago when I was still back in school, doing Juggles. This was for the 10 Second Club competition. Unfortunately the club wasn't all that up-to-snuff back then and this entry got lost in the paperwork somewhere :( I'm hoping that after this dance animation is done I can do some more of these for the new 11 Second Club (http://www.11secondclub.com). Enjoy!

She Dances!

Edit (3/04/2008): The foot movement is removed from the beginning.

Rigging is done and it's on to animation! This is a short piece so far, still in progress. This is just a Maya playblast - no fancy rendering (no hair!). It's at about 20 seconds, with 10-15 more seconds to go. Once this is done, it's on to hair simulation, then fx (fire and embers), then lighting and rendering, and then finally putting it all together.

Rigging

So the model is pretty much finalized. There will be slight texture changes, and the hair will need to be done in post since it is driven by the rest of the model. The rig is also done, and is equipped with a fancy inverse foot, IK spine, shoulder/head/wrist locks, and a bunch of other features that should make animating the dance much less of a headache (it is more or less a modified version of the Package Man rig that is floating around the net - I've found it to be pretty robust and well-suited for detail-oriented animation).
The next post will likely be a prototype for the dance animation.

New Pictures

Here are some new pictures of the rest of the body:

The Latest

Here's the most recent picture of the face up close. I'm working on jewelry and other stuff now but the rest of the body is done as well. I'll put up more as I go, but I'm pretty sure the face still needs lots of work to match it more closely.

She's coming along

A lot more is done now. I'm just trying to set up shaders and stuff now to get the look right. Here's a new picture of the head alongside the reference (the rest of the body is modeled as well).

What's next?

I finished Juggles a while ago. The final render is done. Once my friend Troels does music for it, I may consider trying to enter it in different film contests, or just post it on YouTube.

On to new things! I went through a Photoshop primer book to get the basics on texturing. By no means would I say I'm great, but I know my way around Photoshop now at least.

I'm working on a new project now. It's for a friend of mine, as well as just practice for myself. The goal is to make a female character from start to finish, finish being a final 10-15 second animation. The character is a dancer, and meant to be a likeness of an actual person. I'm trying to learn the maya hair and cloth modules as well for this project, so I can integrate them into this character. The actual girl this is meant to be patterned after is here:

http://www.salsawithpantea.com/

Here is a 'preproduction' image of the head thus far: