[zayats]

Howdy folks...

I had some free time so I decided to do a little practice animation before diving head first into the next big production at work.

This was a "stream of consciousness" piece.
No plan. I just threw together an extremely simple character, dropped him into a scene then started setting keyframes. Next thing I knew, I had 2000 frames (it kinda got away from me).

Anyway, have a look if you get the chance.
Click on the third thumbnail from this page: http://www.zayatz.net/primitives.htm
( it's 4.4mb quicktime Divx )

( And there are some older animations here: http://www.zayats.net/animation.htm )

Thanks & keep up the good work, everybody.

zayats
http://www.zayats.net/

[Francis]

These are really cool. Seems like using primitives like this really shows if you have the animation chops (which I think you do). I really like the square dog "squaring off" thing. Oh and aren't three-legged walk cycles supposed to be really difficult? I'm not an animator, but I've worked with enough who have warned me against designing three legged characters.

You said you just made keys, moved stuff, made more keys, etc. If this was done in Max, do you then go back and play with the track view curves at all, or was it simply hundreds of individual keyframes?

BTW, I loved the Starship Troopers stuff. Those giant bugs were disgusting.

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Francis Tsai
TeamGT Studios

[Nex]

whow thats really really great!

A week ago or something I started to dabble with 3d animation and your square - video is really a small encyclopedia of movements

can you recommend a book/site for animation in general or animation in 3dsmax specifically ?

great work!

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- Nex

http://on.to/nex

[anticz]

Hey Zayats,

Saw the squaring off animation up on CG-char this week. Kick ass stuff. The only thing I found a little confusing was the lack of a ground plane and shadows to connect the characters to the ground. Might make the animation read even better IMHO. As far as the animation is concerned, Amazing is the only word that pops into my head. I'm a big fan of your work.


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Mike B. - Supervising Janitor
anticz.com
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[faustgfx]

damnit you killed the dog fwippetyfwap thingie. bastard. :|



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sky high with a heartache of stone you never see me 'cos i'm always alone

[email protected] /
icq#35983387

[Binke]

Wow neat stuff.
Starship troopers is a damn cool movie
so you did the creature animations?
damn good work I must say.
And really nice lifedrawings as well!



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Art Dimensional

[dreddawg]

Saw your stuff via CG-Char. Excellent. Your piece is one of the best animations I've seen in a long while; full of life and emotion. I can only compare "Alien Song" as something that hits me as powerfully. btw, what software was used for your animation and did you use ik, fk, or a mixture? I'm about to really delve into character animation with Max. Up till now I've always done modeling and texturing but need/desire to expand. Any advice? Regards

[burn0ut]

awesome

[mjmcchesney]

Great job on the animation. I love seeing fairly raw animations (in terms of models, etc) because I feel they truly show what an animator can do, rather than how a model can be animated. Great job

Ah yes...

Didn't Alien Song 2 (just released) use lots of mocap for the raw animation? Although I know mocap helps greatly in deadlines, I feel it is almost similar to rotoscoping in terms of drawn animation. To me, it's another way of getting things done, but it takes away from the overall animation in general. Too bad the Alien model was sold off Sorry, pretty late.


[This message has been edited by mjmcchesney (edited December 02, 2000).]

[zayats]

Francis:
Thanks for the compliments.
Yeah, the purpose of creating these ultra-simplified, non-CPU-intensive, highly interactive characters was so I could just concentrate on their motion.
And yes, it is indeed a pain to make a 3-legged walk cycle. Notice that Mother Nature never invented such a creature. I decided to give myself the challenge of 4 creatures, each with a different number of legs.
I use Maya. Plenty of curve tweaking.
Glad you liked the Troopers stuff. That was a fun project to work on.

Nex:
Thanks for the compliments.
A good book on 3Dsmax is:
3D Studio MAX 3 Professional Animation
by Angie Jones, et al�
(though I don�t personally use that particular software)
And check out Angie�s website: http://www.spicycricket.com/hello.html
Also, check out the Links page on my website http://www.zayats.net/links.htm
I�ve got a number of good online CG reference sites listed

Anticz:
Hey, thanks.
Glad you like my stuff.
Your web page is great by the way.
I did add a ground plane at one point but I was too lazy to go back in and make the necessary animation adjustments based on the shadows cast from the characters before they enter the scene.
I might get motivated to go back in and add some sound FX.
While I�m in there with the hood open, I might add a background. We�ll see.

Binke & burnOut:
Thanks.

Dreddawg:
Thanks a lot for the compliment.
It was all done in Maya with a combination of FK & IK controls.
If you wanna move into animation, my main piece of advice would be to really study and practice the fundamental mechanics of animation (weight, squash & stretch, anticipation & follow through, timing, arcs, etc), then just do lots of practicing & plenty of trial & error. Look at other people�s animations that you admire & study them on a frame by frame basis to see how they handle posing & timing & secondary & such. Good luck.

Mjmcchesney
Thanks.
Yeah, it�s fun to work with really simple characters. I work with a lot of really complicated models at work and it�s quite freeing to go to the other end of the spectrum & be able to focus entirely on motion without struggling with the complexities of a heavy & highly detailed digital puppet.
Doing this was a bit of a response from working on �Hollowman�.
I really wanted to do something simple & very interactive after such a complicated (and tedious) production.

Mentioning mocap to a group of animators can potentially open a giant can of worms & start lots of flame wars. I�ve used it in production on occasion. Bottom line for me: there are times when it�s a very effective production technique, but it should only be used when the goal is to absolutely match reality, especially when it comes to animating a digital version of a specific actor. It�s a great tool when used properly, but by definition, it�s not �animation�, and comparing them is really apples & oranges. Many animators are intimidated by mocap, thinking that it will steal their jobs. Not likely. Illustrators still thrive despite the invention of photography after all. This is potentially a big debate so I won�t say no mo� about it here�

Thanks y�all.

[jamiem]

Very nice animation, Jeremy. Nice and snappy with great secondary. I especially liked the last little twitch of the tail as the cylinder creature passed away. Not being able to loop quicktimes though, my favourite piece is your squaring off anim.

That's a great idea of just tossing some primitives together and animating. I'm between projects right now myself and want to animate, but haven't any fully realized stories yet. Perhaps I'll just start with some posing and see where they lead me.

Also, totally understand the pleasure to deal with interactive models. I went from an incredibly heavy full human on an slow O2, to a box of cereal on a blazing PC. Hehehe, the latter was such a contrast, and a joy, to animate.

Cheers,
jamie

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Jamie McCarter
[email protected]
http://jamie.ice.org

[zayats]

Hey thanks, Jamiem

Yeah, if you're inbetween projects right now, I highly recommend this type of exercise. It's like taking a blank piece of paper, starting your pencil moving & seeing what develops.
It's a great departure from all the constraints and strict direction we have to work under when animating for a client.

I really like the Snowman piece on your site, by the way. Great design & animation. I especially dig the crazy, outta control trajectory of the truck.

My only minor complaint is that the motion blur seems to be turned on a little bit to high. Otherwise, it's great.

zayats
www.zayats.net

[jamiem]

Zayats,

Thanks! And I agree with you on the motion blur. It was cranked waaaay too high. I'd never before used a 3d package which supported motion blur, so I was like a kid in a candy shop. I tend to show much more restraint with blur now.

If you want a full ntsc res version (as opposed to that thumbnail on my site), my tape is probably still floating somewhere around human resources.

Well, I was doodling around today (actually on real live paper) and ended up drawing my mob goon in several teen-girl-on-the-phone poses. Very odd. I think I'll go somewhere with that idea. Should be fun. Though it'll be Mr. Goon O Primitives initially. I'll post the anim here in a bit...

Cheers,
Jamie


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Jamie McCarter
[email protected]
http://jamie.ice.org