ZOMBIE TUESDAY

Last night my Zombie project was due, and it is just a coincidence that today, the day I'm posting the animation, is June 6, 2006 (6-6-06). Back in Washington, we would have called this "All Satan Tuesday." Don't try to understand that. You had to be there.

Anyway, this was my coolest project for school yet. The assignment was to build a digital 3D model of a zombie head, texture it, rig it for animation, and create a lipsynch animation. We each had to pick a line of dialog from a movie that was between 10 and 15 seconds. I had a lot of different clips that I wanted to use, but I finally picked Danny De Vito from Batman Returns because it was a great line, and it had the best visual reference.

For me, building the model was much more difficult than creating the animation. I'm not saying this is a perfect piece of work, but for my first attempt at facial animation and lipsynch, I'm very pleased with the results. So, turn up your volume and click on the link below the see my animation.

Obviously a project like this takes a lot of time and it is the reason I've been M.I.A. lately. Every once in a while I get an e-mail asking if I'm still alive, and of course the answer is yes. I really wish I could take a break and go visit the family, friends, etc. but my schedule isn't going to let up any time soon, and I've made a lot of good friends down here.

Not much else to report right now other than it's the beginning of summer, and the Florida sun is really getting HOT. I haven't melted yet, but the summer has just begun...

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APRIL?

Did you ever have one of those weeks when you feel like you lost a day? That's how I feel about the whole month of April. It seems to have just come and gone. Well, April has been a very busy month for me, with the constant juggling act between school and work. Everything is going great, except for the steadily growing bags under my eyes. There's just not enough time in the day to do everything I'm trying to do, and so things like this weblog are constantly on the back burner.

About a month ago, the company I'm working for had their 10 year anniversary. To celebrate, we all went to Sea World to party with the fishes. Unfortunately, a bunch of us had trouble getting in because there was a big music festival happening at the park, and due to overcrowding, they closed the gates for a while. Eventually, we all got in and all was well.

Things at school are going great. At the end of March, I finished up block 1 (the first quarter) with a big final exam and by turning in a demo reel of my first quarter work. This is by no means a reel intended to get me a job, but rather it's just an exercise in making a demo reel. We're required to make one at the end of each quarter, and that way when it comes time to make the "money maker" reel, we'll have had a lot of practice. To view the demo, turn up your volume and click the link here.

The second block at school is all about character modeling and animation. We're already on to our third project (yes, I really am that slow to update things here). The assignment in the video below was to first make bouncing balls with different weights and behaviors. The first is a standard bouncing ball. The second is a bouncing ball that deforms (squash and stretches). The third part shows three balls interacting with each other, and the fourth part has three swinging pendulums which slide and swing to a stop. This was a fun project for me. It really got into the fundamentals of animation, and that experience really helped me with my walking character.

Behold Pinkeye! He's a supervillain in spandex! We had a basic template to follow in order to model a human figure. Each person in the class was then able to put their own spin on their character, with the idea being that they'd either be a superhero or villian.

Once the character was modeled, we had to rig it so that it could be animated. The rigging process involves putting invisible bones inside the character that allow it to move and deform just like a human would. The process isn't easy, but the results are cool and allowed me to create this walkcycle.

As I mentioned before, life for me is very, very busy right now. I'll try and post more frequent updates, but school and work have to come first (and that pretty much leaves no time for anything else). Even posting this update has taken precious time away from my current school project... A ZOMBIE HEAD.

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