I mean take a good look at this rediculousness.

Numerous buttons and information EVERYWHERE, and that’s just the surface. There are menus……. behind menus. Eventually you learn to sort of ignore some of them to stop your mind from tripping out.

That’s not what I’m here to talk about though. To quickly preface this: A basic character animation requires a few things – First, a 3D model. Then a “rig” which is best described as the skeleton; the part of the body you don’t see that controls our movement arcs.

Recently I’ve been learning about the joys of rigging; and by joys, I mean relentless complexity. Sure it’s quite simple to do a very basic skeleton; it’s a matter of dot to dot (well, joint to joint), but you will find that it ends up looking completely unnatural. To make something look good is a completely different matter.

Reciting what I’ve learnt is as useful as reciting the bible – Those interested will already know all about it; those not interested don’t need to know about it. So I will simply say this – learning to animate requires you to enter a rabbit tunnel – to which there is an end, but only after a very long and dark journey. A tunnel with many different little paths that require different workarounds and puzzle solving to get through. Put more simply – there’s a lot of different tools at your disposal, but each part of the human body will really only work out well if you use a very specific tool and method of using the tool. Rigging is just one of the stages prior to finally being able to animate too The tunnel just keeps on going.

But hey, Gromit made it through the alright.

It’s been a hell of a long time since I last did a detailed drawing – five years in fact. During that time I’ve seen countless amazing pieces uploaded to DeviantArt by different artists. Finally last week, I decided to try it out for myself.

Now, I’m not particularly a fan of Lady GaGa, but the photo that I used as reference had a great pose. Unfortunately what I didn’t realise was how bad a choice it was! Light, messy hair, along with light smooth skin makes for an extremely hard drawing.

This piece was done on A3 150gsm paper, non-smooth, which is why the shading looks so rough. I have bought Bristol Board paper now, so hopefully my next drawing will turn out better

You can also see this on DeviantArt.

Imagine sitting at the very front row on the farmost left of a cinema theatre. Now imagine the screen being much larger than usual and having a 3D projection. That was my first experience of a 3D film – that was Avatar for me

Needless to say, I’ve been weary of seeing a 3D film ever since – especially one that was “upconverted” (if that’s the correct nerd term) from 2D.

Nevertheless, I finally had the opportunity to see Toy Story 3 yesterday and had the decision of seeing it in 3D. I thought to myself, well this is Pixar’s work – hopefully they of all people can make 3D work. And work it did I saw it in an IMAX theatre, sat right in the very centre of the cinema, between two groups of strangers.

The effect is incredible. Everything had real depth and the visual experience is just far more immense than I could have imagined. The great thing too is that none of the richness of the colour and clarity is obscured by the 3D glasses, nor by the projection of the two slightly offset images that make the three dimensional effect.

I would seriously like to know how the glasses work. The lenses simply feel like two bendy sheets of thin plastic. I would love to have this setup in my house

Books:

• The Animator’s Survival Kit by Richard Williams (Has pretty much everything you need to know)
• Imagine Animation magazine (A year’s subscription includes a huge company directory; unfortunately it’s sorted A-Z rather than by city )

Helpful communities:

• http://www.11secondclub.com/ (also has great free animation rigs to use in various programs)
• http://www.zbrushcentral.com/
• http://forums.cgsociety.org/
• http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/

Podcasts (all found on iTunes):

• Animation Podcast (by Eric Goldberg)
• Frames Per Second Animation Podcasts
• Speaking of Animation
• Spline Cast
• Toon In! …to the Masters of Animation

Blogs

• http://www.animationblog.org/
• http://www.animationtipsandtricks.com/

For a beginner, this is everything you need. It will take you a hell of a long time before you make good use of it all; probably your whole life time in fact. Enjoy

1D = Length

2D = Length and Height

3D = Length, Height and Depth

4D = Length, Height, Depth, Time & Space

Animation = Objects that have length, height and depth, moving around in space (space as in the space around us, not Space up there)

So really the best way to describe 4D is just to say it’s animation Or am I wrong?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/scastilho/sets/72157624438996471/with/4820222525/

#5 They Really Like Stereo Love

You know that weirdly awesome club hit (hear it here). There is such a thing as “killing it” – that is, playing it to death; to the point where you will want to shoot a gun close to your ear so you lose at least some of your ability to hear it (of course, some may simply resort to changing the radio channel). Seriously, in between traditional Portuguese music you will hear this song again and again whenever you have the radio on.

#4 Shopping Centres Are ALL the Same

Apparently despite the beautiful and serene landscapes and coastlines of the country, the people still lack imagination when it comes to commerce. Each town and city we went to had a big shopping centre, but we quickly realised something critical… THEY’RE ALL THE SAME. What’s that about? Same square corridor layout, with exactly the same shops selling the same boring and badly priced things (sometimes to slightly different quantities).

#3 Cliff Richard IS Portugal

Can I just say first of all – when you pick a stage name, it should at least not be boring.

This guy, what can I say, the people of Algarve in Portugal love him. He’s a sort of quasi-national hero without the being born in the nation part. The guy even has knighthood in the country. His sparkling face glistens over multiple magazine front covers and there are streets named AFTER him. What has he done to deserve all this? He owns a winery in the country. Not sure what else.

#2 Barbers, Vodafone Stores and Banks Are Never Open For Business

When I got to Portugal, I realised that I needed a hair cut. What I didn’t realise was that they don’t want me to get a hair cut. During the 7 days, we travelled across the whole south coast and only came across barbers/hair dressers a couple of times. Most of them would be closed no matter what time of the day you went; the rest were too expensive (30 euros a cut? hell no).

Mick Jagger was wrong when he said, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you might find, you get what you need.” When we wanted to get the Blackberry messenger working on our new sim card, we travelled far and wide to find a Vodafone store that could help us. ALL of them were either shut or could only point us to the next store.

As for banks, well they were always too busy endlessly counting huge wads of cash to help anyone. Seriously.

#1 The Place Where Families and Ravers Collide

A super natural phenomenon. How can two such opposing forces exist in one place?! Think about messy nights out in an English town; then think about young families with small children. Now place both these things in one place. WTF? In night clubs in Portugal at late o’clock, you will have these young children running around whilst ravers drunkenly two step all over the place. You think to yourself, is this safe? How is this possible? WHAT IS THIS!!!!!

Here’s the latest work-in-progress of my design for Anthony Campbell’s site. Compared to the last one, it has a more inviting colour scheme, which lends itself well to readability and the layout has changed to better suit the content (although this is still up to some debate between us). Although the changes may seem simple, it has taken quite a lot of experimenting to get to this point.

Procrastination used to be a huge problem for me. What changed? Well I think quite simply, I’d finally saturated myself with procrastination material. I’d seen everything there is to see. There was nothing left really to distract me from the task at hand.

Probably more than that though: I found something that I enjoyed, that I had to work hard towards, that is a huge learning challenge and that at the end of the long road will definitely reward me. I gained a drive.

Last week I found the above image, which perfectly sums up my mentality now and will probably inspire you too

Yehhh turns out I’ve got way too many priorities in the summer to actually go ahead and sit down for ages making a full blown site for myself. Instead, I’ve taken a good few hours to make some big changes to my current skin, which was based off of Infimum. Honestly though, I don’t want a mega site. I much prefer this simple and fast loading skin that’s easy to get around.

You may find the bold title and colouring against the shades of grey a little shocking, but I guess that’s the point The darkness helps to make the content and pictures the main the point of the site, while the other colours stop the site from looking boring. I’ve also made use of the CSS @font-face property, which allows me to use custom fonts for the text (they are: BlackoutMidnight and Lobster). There’s also use of CSS text shadows, transitions and rounded corners, although each browser has different levels of support for them.

Great! Now that my site is sorted (apart from doing the project pages), I can get on with finishing Anthony Campbell’s portfolio website and learning Maya. Also it’s summer

Update (22nd July): I became pretty uncontent with the skin and so spent a bit of time last night changing the colour scheme to this light one. It’s better.