What I like about animation.

This, far too short, animation is amazing to me! I know it really does not look like a lot, but there's so much there! The first place to start would have to be the modeling. It's freaking amazing! I use to own a chameleon and man they got it dead on. The surface of the skin is so realistic I can feel it under my fingers. I know most people would prefer animation or see it as something that is extremely exaggerated, but I don't think it's entirely necessary. I wouldn't say this is photo-realistic, but it's hyper real for an animation.
I would love to pick the animators brain just to see their process. I tend to dive into things with a little unorganized pre-production. The cuts and compositions are awesome! I just want to know how much planning went into this animation, and why a chameleon. Then again, why not? I'm also curious as to what program they used. I've worked in Autodesk Maya and this project seems possible with Maya, but I hear Studio 3D Max is easier to use.
Probably the one thing that draws me into this is the chameleon, although extremely well animated, I can't seem to get over the fact that it's a chameleon...with Chris Farley's voice.

Junior Final

Well this film is my junior final, and it's hard to believe I finished this a couple of weeks ago. This was my test of how I want to create my senior thesis. It's a multimedia film about zombies. These zombies are not necessarily the flesh eating kind, but instead they are just boring creates with no purpose to live. They live very ordinary lives...like most of us. Until one of their own kind is hit by a car and "dies." Upon her death she transforms into a living creature and is not excepted by the other zombies. My partner and I took this film as sort of a social commentary on humanity...not too sure of that shows through but none-the-less. The overall theme(s) are people are dead beats until something tragic happens in their lives and suddenly they feel alive and are aware of it, and most people tend to not except others that are different. I took this project as a learning curve. I conquered most if not all of my technical issues I've had in Maya and After Effects. I set up each background in Maya and used the cameras for each camera zoom through the environment. I did a little compositing in Maya but found it to be a complete head ache. Instead towards the end I did the rest in After Effects. I also enjoyed this project because I got to do a little bit of text animation and found that I really want to learn more about it. AND I found an awesome way to hinge my puppets so that they don't fall apart as most paper puppets do. All my puppets where animated analog, because I frankly just don't dig the After Effects look. Although I want to learn how to rig a puppet I've made analog in Maya. That would so awesome!!!!!! Reminds me of Flat World.

More Maya...with lip sync

Skipping over tons of Maya projects used to learn technical skills, I present my lip sync. I find myself very proud of this project for many reasons. I modeled everything in the scene, except for the character, and created the lighting. Also, this project highlights my digital animation skills, that I am still continuing to work on. I choose a clip from "The Shinning" because everyone else seemed to pick screaming clips from various movies, and I just wanted something calm. Even though it turned out a bit depressing.

A Chameleon Story

This is short stop motion collaboration that I worked on second semester of sophomore year with a classmate, Ronny Cuxun. This animation in particular was more work then I thought it would be, but with a huge pay off. Although it should have been a lot longer the overall look and feel of it is pretty nice. Again, this project was an assignment but for me I just really wanted to do some stop motion.

Maya

While signing up for electives one semester I took at Maya class, and man it was tough. This program has presented more challenges for me then I would ever expect. But within the past year I would say I've gotten a lot better and maybe conquered May, at least enough to work my way around the program. ( Which you will see in my work from this year.)

Learning stop motion

Where else to go after cut outs....stop motion! Well this is really short but for a first try I'm not to upset with it. It was fun to make but I must admit I did not learn that much from it...well maybe a little modeling.

Yay for cut outs!!!!!

This was my first cut out animation and I loved it! This was a huge turning point for my animation interest. I started to love stop motion and that love is still very strong and alive.