Moving to Berlin!

Hey guys!
Sorry for lack of posts lately, but I just moved to Berlin! On Wednesday I started working for Studio SOI as an animator on the really fantastic project "The Gruffalo"! So far I am super happy :). I love Berlin, Studio Soi is great, people are great, project is great! What can I say, lucky me :). Woo-hoo!!!!

Special thanks goes to Tobi and his girlfriend Alexandra for helping me to organize my move from Poland. Thanks guys, you are awesome!

My trip to Warsaw and Yummy post production

I spent few days in Warsaw working with guys from Film Garden on my short. Finally we were able to find the color scheme and overall look that I was happy with. My goal was to end up with something warm and really nice to look at and being able to direct the viewer's eyes on the important parts of the image like eyes and spoon with the food. This week we should be able to complete all the shots and the last thing is to finalize the audio for the shortfilm. Woo-hoo! I am waiting for the day when I will open the cold Corona, sit down, relax and just play the final piece :).

I also had a chance to meet Zbigniew Rybczynski. He is the polish artist who won Academy Award in 1980 for his shortfilm "Tango". Really awesome experience to meet him and listen to his point of view on film making, technology and what can be created in the future. Really mind blowing experience.

Gesture drawings

Some quick sketches, just to feel the flow and practice some gesture drawing. I really love dancing figures, there is so much rhythm in them. Too bad I can't dance myself.

Walkcycle Maya

I animated the walkcycle assignment in Maya. I love to tweak the knee pops ...;P

2d runcycle

Just another 2d test.

Stewie's icons

Hey folks,
I spent some time doing small icons for Stewie for my maya shelf like Jason Ryan did for Boris in his video tutorials. The cool thing about having icons on the shelf is that you can hide curves in the viewport and you also can turn off selection highlighting, so you won't see any highlighted geometry in the viewport. Very handy and helps in keeping your workspace clean. If you want you can download the icons and create your own shelf for Stewie. There is even photoshop file with layers, so you can easily create any new icons you might need in the future.

Walkcycle - Flipbook

Ok, so here is my walkcycle test I did in Flipbook for next assignment from Jason's course. It's just a walkcycle but I had a huge A-HA moment once I get the idea what the thirds are all about and how the constant speed works in inbetweens...funny, I have the feeling that for the first time in my life I finally started to REALLY understand inbetween charts. Now it's time to animate Stewie in Maya, without opening GE that is ;). It's so much more fun to work this way, woo-hoo!

Jump test

I just animated one of the assignments from Jason Ryan's course (The course itself is simply awesome, I highly recommend it!!! You can find the link among the banners to the right). It is really simple little test, but I have already learnt a lot. I didn't open "spaghetti editor" even once. I animated for the first time in real pose-to-pose way. I tested tradigiTools, which are awesome! And I used IK spine for the first time (I think I am going to forget about FK spine, IK is just so much more fun to work with!). And I didn't use any arc tracker, I did all by eye. So overall I am quite happy with this assignment :). And I actually animated it in just one evening, so it's quite fast for me. And I tested how the animation looks with motion blur for the first time, it's cool :).

Sketches done with the Namiki Pen

How to make a baby :)

Check this out! Awesome small little educational movie created by my former AM mentors.

Shortfilm, one rendered frame ;)

Just wanted to show you guys one test rendered frame, to give you an idea how the render of my shortfilm will look like more or less :). It is not really color corrected, and there will be more depth of field etc., but it gives you rough idea. You can even see that there still is no texture on the plant ;). I love the eyes by the way :). All rendering, lighting, texturing and environment models are being done in Studio Film Garden from Warsaw.

I am second - cool video ref.

Cool site for awesome reference. It's a "little bit" religious, but it doesn't change the fact that you can find a lot of fantastic reference! Check it out.

New Dialog Assignment

Since I am pretty much done with my short (now waiting for final renderings), I thought I will do a dialog assignment. Actually this is assignment that I screw up when I was in animation mentor. I thought I could animate it better now. I spent some time trying to figure out how to set up my own lighting in Maya. It's kind of complex, but once you get the basic idea it's getting easier and easier :).
Just few words about my short, it will be available for watching in February, finally :)!!!!

Happy New Year 2009

Hey folks!
Happy New Year 2009 !!!! :)

Plankton Invasion

Check this out! Really funny! Great poses and awesome timing. Great example of pose to pose animation with a ton of appeal!

Happy Holidays!

I would like to wish everyone Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! Woohoo!

One really REALLY GOOD question to ask yourself.

Thanks Bartek for the link! This is awesome! Brilliant idea and it simply makes you think about really important things.

Fifty People, One Question: New Orleans from Benjamin Reece on Vimeo.

London 2008 - more pictures

Some more pictures from London. Thanks Guillaume for taking photos! I had two cameras and I didn't take a single picture.....stupid me...but it was so much fun that I just simply forgot about my canon.

London 2008 Gathering

Wow! What a great time I had in that awesome city. Great people, great beer ;), great place, great time! Thanks Kris for organizing everything. I love the studios we had a chance to see, especialy Double Negative. I was really impressed with that studio. London is a magical place, for sure.

Paul Dateh - awesome music!

I just love the music produced by this guy:

Recording audio for my shortfilm.

Woohoo! Today I am going to Warsaw to record voices for characters from my shortfilm "Yummy". This is gonna be a lot of fun! Can't wait to finish that film and see it on the big screen. Still some work has to be done, but we are getting closer and closer to the end of production. Just couple weeks more and we will be done :).

By the way, I am going to London next week for the AM Gathering. Can't wait to see you guys and drink several Coronas with you :). This is gonna be fun, I love London and I am glad I will have a chance to see that great city again. See you next week!

Drawings.

Just some drawings I did today.

Awesome!

Just check it out! Super mixture of sounds :).
link

Silver's Character Design Class - Week 1 Fat Joe

Hey guys,
I decided to take Stephen Silver's course in character design. I just started it this week and I am already loving it! The lecture was just amazing. Our assignment for this week is to draw a design of Fat Joe described in the assignment this way: "SCENE—The bar of a low dive on the London water front—a squalid, dingy room dimly lighted by kerosene lamps placed in brackets on the walls At the far end of the bar stands Fat Joe, the proprietor, a gross bulk of a man with an enormous stomach. His face is red and bloated, his little piggish eyes being almost concealed by rolls of fat. The thick fingers of his big hands are loaded with cheap rings and a gold watch chain of cable-like proportions stretches across his checked waistcoat." I have drawn some black poses and one design so far.

Last painting from the course

I just completed bobby Chiu's course. It was a lot of fun! I highly recommend it!

Freedom!

Hey guys,
I just did one of the best things in my life. Thanks to my friend Krystian I jumped in the tandem from 4000 meters. Instead of words I will give you pictures and the movie :). Pay attention to my face at the beginning of the movie if you need a reference of a scared guy :)))). This is definitely the best reference you can get on the internet :)))))))
MOVIE NR 1 :)
MOVIE NR 2 (It's quite big, around 80 mb)

Zbigniew Lenard's Animation

Hey guys,
just wanted to share with you a great animation done by Zbigniew Lenard. Check it out:
http://www.zbigniewlenard.home.pl/fishes.html

Painting hair

Another exercise I did on the bobby's course.

Bobby Chiu course

I am taking Bobby Chiu painting course. I have to say that it simply rocks! Here are some paintings I have done so far:

Back from FMX.

Hey guys,
I just wanted to thank everybody I had a chance to meet last week in Stuttgart. I had such a great fantastic time! Can't wait to meet you guys again! Maybe next year in Stuttgart? Maybe sooner somewhere else? Who knows :).

Maciek

FMX/Stuttgart - I am coming :).

Ok, I know, it happened again...lack of posts for a loooong time. Sometimes I completely forget that I have this website. Anyway, I am just packing my stuff for the FMX! Yeah, I am going to visit Stuttgart again. Can't wait to meet all of you folks, I love that energy when a bunch of animators hang out together :). I am sure we all will have a blast!

See you soon!

I got a job at DreamWorks Animation!

I got a job as an animator at DreamWorks Animation in Glendale. Starting in October! Oh boy!!!! WOWOWOWOW!!!!! Dreams can come true :).


EDIT: WELL, LIFE SOMETIMES IS SIMPLY UNFAIR :(. GUESS WHAT, I DIDN'T GET THE VISA. WELL, NEXT YEAR IS ANOTHER YEAR SO MAYBE I JUST HAVE TO WORK HARDER AND WAIT A LITTLE BIT MORE. SOMEDAY I WILL MAKE MY DREAM COME TRUE!

Oscar for polish animation!

Woohoo! Peter and the wolf won! I am really super happy they won, the film was directed by british Susie Templeteon, but it was fully created in the polish studio SE-MA-FOR. Great job guys! Look forward for more great movies!

New Carlos Baena's Website!

Check it out -www.carlosbaena.com

New Wall-e animation!

Check it out:
http://disney.go.com/index
Really amazing animation, this character is so simple and so appealing! Fantastic animation.

Kevin Koch's website - check it out!

Hey guys,
I just wanted to let you know about Kevin Koch's website. I have a great honor to be one of his students. He has got many many many fantastic posts about animation on the website, you definitely would want to read all of them. And check out Kevin's demoreel, jaw dropped, didn't it? :))))

Here is the link:

SYNCHROLUX.COM

WOW!!!

Hey guys!
Oh wow! I didn't post anything for a long time....you know how it is, you start to work on your shortfilm and you forget about everything else :))). Anyway, there hapened so many things in my life that I don't know what to start with :). So first thing, I graduated from AnimationMentor.com! Yes, I am officially an Alumni. I had a chance to go to San Francisco this month. I spent the one of the best times in my life there. I had a chance to visit Pixar (thanks Victor!) and DreamWorks (thanks Mark!). It was such an amazing experience! Seeing my dream studios in real! WOW!!! I had a chance to visit AnimationMentor.com office which was soooo great!!!! And of course the graduation was absolutely fantastic! I had a blast, AM prepared something that I won't forget ever! I was so excited and if that wouldn't be enough...I won "Mentor Choice Award" !!!! I still can't believe it! I just want to say here, that it is great honor to have this award, especially since there are so many talented people in Animation Mentor. I am not sure if I really deserve this award. To be honest it never ever crossed my mind that I can win something like that...I had a hard time to say a word once I had to tell my speech...emotions were so great that I was about to cry at that moment. I will never forget that feeling. I had a chance to meet so many friends from Animation Mentor, and there were so many people from the industry that I had a chance to talk to! You know what, if somebody would tell me two years ago that I will have a chance to have such moment in my life I would say that it is just impossible. But AnimationMentor made such things possible to all of us! If you have a passion for animation everything can happen! That's absolutely amazing! I will upload some photos soon. I could write about that 4 days of my life probably a book :). But I have to work on my shortfilm. I took additional term in AM in order to finish it because it is just way too loooong - 1:40 . But I think I am on the right track. All I have to do is just keep animating :) and having FUN. I would like to thank so many people here, Animation Mentor, all mentors and students I met. Thank you guys, I had the best time of my life!!!

What a day....:(

I was nicely planning to do one shot today but my pc literally died. Namely graphics card and mother board. So I have to wait till thursday for a working pc :(. I am just going to friend to copy the files from hard drives to my usb hard drive, so at least I can copy some files to my mac and work on something on the Mac...man, it couldn't happen in the worse moment. I will lose two,three working days in which I could block two or three shots. I will automatically be behind. Damn!

End of Week 1.

Hey guys, sorry for lack of posts but production of the shortfilm takes all my time. I did the blocking of 4 shots. Shot nr 4 was super tricky and is still kinda off. It will need much more love, but I have to go on and leave as it is for now. More shots waiting for blocking (18 shots to be exact :) Anyway, here is the blocking I did this week BLOCKING Oh, and by the way. My new mentor is Kevin Koch. He was working for DreamWorks. I really like his attitude, "no spoon feeding, this is 3 months of production crunchtime guys" :))))). And to be frank, this is soooo true, crunch time, that's what class6 really is :))).

Mac

Production Day 1&2

Hey guys,
so I started the production of my shortfilm yesterday. Oh boy, it really is a lot of work. Of course I had issues from the beginning. I realised that in almost every single shot bishop character is imported instead of referenced. Well, it's not that big issue since I noticed it that early :). I had other issues with Windows etc. So in fact half of a day I wasted on crappy technical things and clicking. Anyway, I did make a blocking of first two shots, so I follow the schedule so far.
Here is the link:BLOCKING

I will upload pictures from London as soon as I find the time. Production of my short really takes most of my time during a day. Let me just say, that it was absolutely fantastic to meet all those crazy people out there :).

London gathering.

Woohoo! Tomorrow I am going to London! I will meet a lot of students from Animation Mentor and other friends :). And the cool thing is that I am going to see the Framestore, Double Negative, MPC and Uli Meyer studios! WOW!!!! Those are the greatest of the great UK studios. Too bad Aardman is located in Bristol. The trip haven't started yet but there are some issues already. The plane from Bydgoszcz to Warsaw was canceled, so I have to take a cab at 3am and go to Warsaw to catch my plane to London. Going east to go west. Anyway, I can't wait to meet all those crazy people hehehe, I know I will have a blast! Just like in San Diego. WOOHOO!!!

Video reference.

hey guys. So as I said I have been collecting video reference for my short film. Hahaha, I must say that few ideas were really bad. First of all, I thought I would be able to record myself for few shots with the baby, actually I did for the very last shots when baby is going to behave a little bit like adult person. For all other shots my performance simply sucks. There is no way to pretend a baby once I am almost two meters height, there is just NO WAY. So I decided to cruise the youTube a little bit. Thank you God for youTube! I found few clips that I am going to use and I realised that baby can't do few things. For example, it can't just spit like a normal person. But I found a clip that it does something different that will be perfect for my shot nr16. Like a completely different performance that I wouldn't even think of if I wouldn't see it. So one big advice for all the people who are going to start class5. If you will have the rought idea for your short film, cruise the youTube, find something familiar to the subject, you never know what you will find. Great source of inspiration! I should do that much much earlier. Anyway, I have vid ref for most of my shots. Overall, it is around 1:20 of vid ref motion data. This is bad, much more than the 60 seconds limit, but I always end up with shorter blocking than actual video reference so I hope in the end I will have something shorter. I am still not sure how I am going to animate baby in the shots where we can see both characters and audience's attention is focused on dad. Held pose is not really going to work I guess, baby tend to move here and there all the time. Will have to solve that somehow. I have three days before I will go to London for few days, so I will use all that time for analyzing reference. I am going to see Framestore, MPC, Double Negative, Uli Meyer's studio and the best thing is that I will meet many fantastic people.
I am starting to feel the pressure related to the production of the short, every single time I look at the schedule it makes me think how I am going to all that in the short amount of time. I can already see that without video reference and really solid planning, knowing what exactly you have to do in maya, there really is no way o finish this kind of project. Respect to everybody who did finish any kind of shortfilm!

Maciek

What's next.

Wow, this was a great time on working on my story. Now it's time for the BIG TIME. Next class is going to be damn hard. Real production schedule. I have 22 shots, short is going to be around 70 seconds long with the potential of being even longer. I just prepared entire schedule for class 6. I have 3 months - 12 weeks to complete my short. I was thinking about taking class6 twice, but Robert Barros gave me advice to push myself as much as I can, set tight deadlines. So from my calculations it seems that I will have around 4 days for each shot, for some shots maybe day less, for some shots maybe day longer. I have never been working that fast, but if I will make it, learn to work that fast, I shouldn't have problems to work in a professional studio. I am pretty sure I will have to work 10-12 hours a day, and I mean 12 real production hours without any slacking, talking on skype etc. It is kinda overwhelming when I think about it now. But I should be prepared. I do my planning, analyze video ref, do some research of the baby movements etc. I truly believe in my story. Big note to myself is to public my work on a daily basis, so if you are interested in seeing the progress of my short you will have a chance to see every single step I will make on my blog. I saw few of the shorts that people did in class6. It is amazing how much progress people did. And it is amazing how hard people really work in AM. My computer science studies were piece of cake in comparison to AM. I hope that once I will drink the beer on the graduation party I will be proud that I did something solid, something that is truly mine, and hopefully, something that will be really entertaining to other people as well. I have big request to all the people who visits my blog. Please give me feedback on my shots once I will post them here, on my blog. Animation is not a single person effort even if we do short film all alone. The more pairs of eyes, the better. You never see everything, unless you are one of the nine old men hehehe :). Wish me luck next term, I will need it a little. But on the other hand, it's all about how much of the heart you can put in your work.

I believe I can put a lot.

CLASS 5 - THE END

Sorry for being quiet for last couple days. I am realy into the planning for my short film. Basically I am trying to collect video ref, do some research, some planning, and prepare every single shot for animation which is soooo time consuming. But it has to be done, otherwise I will struggle in class 6, so I prefer to use the time I have as well as I can. And frankly I have no time for anything else at the moment :(. I will tell you very soon about cool software I am beta testing at the moment. It helps me to do my planning, allows me to make notes on the video reference, re-time it completely etc. Very very cool tool. I also signed up for the e-mail demonstration series by Glenn Vilppu. Very very cool stuff! I wish I had more time, especially since I am going to London soon.
Anyway, few words about class 5. I had really nice class. It was quite calm I should say and quiet :). My mentor was really great. Several times he gave me critiques during q&a sessions which was awesome. Overall I am happy with my story and layout. I think it is solid and has potential to be funny and have a lot of appeal. I am glad I decided to change my story ideas in the middle of the term, because the previous one really sucks from today's perspective :))))). I think I have learn a lot. Funny is that many people actually don't want to do short films, they just want to animate. I realized that I am much more story teller. My story is super simple, because of the time constraints, but I am sure I will do my other much more serious ideas in the future. And that production experience I am going to learn during production of my short will be priceless! Animation is cool, but without storytelling it's just moving body parts around I guess. What is cool about doing shortfilm is that you have to learn to look at shots from the much wider perspective and that is something I had no real idea about before class 5. I am looking forward to class 6, I am a little bit scared but I hope that with good planning and enough "sit on that damn chair" hours I will make it and will be proud of it.

Glen Keane in action....

Super interesting. It's not only great to watch how Glen Keane draw each pose, but i t actually is even more interesting to listen to his thought process. When I watch something like this it becomes obvious why traditional animators were so much faster than cg animators are.

Sketch

I was just listening to Bobby Chiu podcast. They are awesome!

Layout

Here is the new version of layout.

Ohhh myyyy GOD! This is the masterpiece.

Well, in short....this shows how much you can push cg medium. I think we just scratch the surface of what can be done in CG and this is the best example of that thesis. Just watch it!

Short film planning board.

I just made planning board. Actually it was cool and fun to do it :). Finally I can see entire short film from a little bit wider perspective......it is gonna be a lot of work in the following months :)))). I think it will help me to keep track of the production, that's the main purpose of it. And it is cool to see your ideas on the wall near your desk too :). Ok, I need to tweak two shots today and I guess my class5 job will be done....well, not exactly....I still have to record and analyze video reference for EVERY SINGLE shot, before class6 will start. I will have about 10 days to do it so I should be ok.

Layout almost there.

Hi guys. Here is the layout for my shortfilm. It took long trip actually. Many shots were cut, many ideas changed :). Anyway, here are the things I am going to implement tomorrow:
shot15 - in this shot dad will show the baby how to chew (right now there is just one crappy pose...)
shot 16 - in this shot baby will have different performance, will be more cute and will really try to eat the food, but because it is so ugly baby will spit it out, not intentionally like it is right now.

Any feedback always super welcome!

Words of wisdom.

I found this great article about student shortfilm production. I think it is really interesting. If you are going to make your own shortfilm, start with this article :).

Meet the engineer!!!

Another cinematic from TF2.....it ROCKS! Every single one is great, but this one is pure gold.

Cg, or not cg?.....MUST SEE IT!

I just saw that commercial done by MPC (great studio located in London). It is absolutely fantastic, camera is great, and the gorilla is....real but not real in a good sense. I think in most of the shots it is not CG, rather a costume, but frankly I am not sure. Animation is great, it's very very subtle, but at the same time totally appealing! This is that kind of motion that really inspires me, top notch work! Take a look at it:

My new super toy :)

I just get my cintiq today....well I am going to pay for it for the next 12 months, but it is standing on my table right now :). And I tell you this, it is freaking awesome tool! The experience is absolutely fantastic. Anyway, back to work, my layout has to be finished asap.

Super inspiring animation

Hey guys. My friend Olivier was telling me about tvpaint lately. It is really great software and actually students can buy it really cheap if they buy it in a 5 license pack. Anyway, I was just cruising the tvpaint website and I found this:



This short is absolutely fantastic. Everything is so cool Animation and poses is sweet and very, I MEAN VERY, appealing. Story is very unique, backgrounds are so nice. I really love this short because it is different. It tells about life in such a unique way. And yeah.....it is French......no wonder ;).

Edit: Well actually it is a video clip for a music, but works brilliant as a shortfilm.
Edit2: Just changed the link, so the animation has got better frame rate, not that crappy youTube quality.

Animatic and part of the layout

Ok, I have to apologize for lack of posts lately. There is a lot of things I have to post about. But first things first. Here is the animatic and part of the layout for my shortfilm. Still very rough, but I have to post something :).

layout
animatic

Interview with AM founders, so called...ANIMATION NINJAS :)

Check it out. It is really great interview, worth watching!

Poland welcome back.

Wow,
that was the adventure! I had one of the best weeks in my entire life! I think I will post really long post telling you how it was, but the jetlag is still killing me, so I am going to post it later. For now, here are the pictures:
photos

Siggraph 2007 - San Diego, I am coming!!! :)

Woohoo, tomorrow I am flying to San Diego! I will spend entire week there, meet other AM students, mentors. Wow! What can I say, I am going to have a blast! :)))))

Environment

So I decided to model basic shapes for environment. The reason why I am doing it now is to have overall idea of the interior, where will be all the models located etc. so I can play with the camera a little bit more. So instead of drawing everything from my imagination for animatic I am going to use basic model of environment and cg cameras in maya as a guidline for my planning. So basically here's what I did today, simple render with ambient occlusion.

While I am waiting for my e-crit

Hey guys,
still waiting for my e-crit. I drew a little bit, more box forms and some drawings after preston blair. I also did research some lighting techniques from gnomonology, because I am planning to use them for my short film and additional commercial project that I am going to do (basically it's the interior visualisation, I can't tell anything more). Anyway, here are some drawings, lighting test I will post tomorrow.

Away for a weekend

Hey guys,
I am making a party on my parent's allotment, so I won't be available till the end of the weekend. Have a great weekend guys and see you all next week :).

Cheers,

Maciek

Story pitches - NEED YOUR FEEDBACK!!!

Hey guys,
hereare my story pitches. I really need your feedback. Which one do you like the most and why? Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

Maciek

Box forms

Just some gesture drawings using box forms That I drew yesterday.

This guy is animation NINJA!!!!

Well, I don't know what to say really, this guy is just freaking awesome, that's all what I have to say...super inspiring work !!! Check it out - link.

Wow. Mirek Urbaniak old drawings!

I just found this blog today. A TON of SUPER inspring work that Miroslaw Urbaniak, fantastic polish artist, drew long time ago. Just go take a look, you WON'T REGRET IT!

Some gesture drawings

hey Guys,
I drew some gesture drawings in my spare time. Still they lack a lot of force and form, but practice makes perfect right? ;)

Some quicksketch

Just some drawings that I drew today. Hope you like them.

Class 5

Yeah yeah, I know. I did promise to update my blog and then completely forgot about that. Anyway. Class4 is done, well not completely, still have to finish my multiple character assignment, that's why it is still not in my progress reel. I will try to work on it during class5. Frankly I started to hate those shots somewhere in the middle of the process, but I will return to them, that's for sure. Anyway, it is class5, time to think about my short film. This is the final test, this is going to be that piece of animation that is supposed to give me the job in the dream studio, so there are no jokes now :). I have few ideas already, thing is to make them doable. Anyway, today I had a q&a with Matt Russel. He is my new mentor. I must say he is very energetic guy, kinda similar to Cassidy Curtis which is GREAT! I think he is going to be fantastic mentor. Here are some pictures from the q&a with new and old friends on them.

401

hey guys,
wow, 401 session is done. I had q&a with Victor. He is really great mentor. I really do like his e-crits. I am waiting for mine still, but some folks from the class already have their e-crits. Victor gave them really detailed notes. Anyway, here is my first facial pass. There are few things in terms in of body mechanics that I have to fix, especially right hand.

Class 4 !!!!

Wow!
Class 4 just started. Guess who is my mentor :)))))...Victor Navone!!!! Yeah yeah yeah!!! I am so lucky hehehe. Can't wait to meet him in the q&a. I am simply super excited! WOOOHOOO!!!!

Nick Bruno's BLOG

I was just watching Nick's e-crits today and I must say that they are awesome! I found his BLOG with really great content on it. You can find great info how to plan your shots. And don't forget to watch Nick's demoreel....just one word....WOW!
Nick Bruno's BLOG

301 - brainstorming week :)

That was quite difficult week. I mean, it is all about idea that works in the 250 frames limit. Sounds simple, but it's not. I had couple ideas that were really cool, but I can't use two characters, and again, 250 frames limit....I tried to talk about my ideas with members of my family, and suprisingly they all were very cooperative, and what's even more important, they had so many diffrent ideas than I had! Anyway, here are the ideas and vid ref. I think "the checkers" are the best.

vid ref

Back to AM

Yesterday winter term started in Animation Mentor. It is great to be back in AM. I had a long break from animation and now is the time to set some good poses and keys :). My mentor is Raquel Coelho! I like her very much and am really happy to have her as my mentor. I also have many talented people in the class. Woo-hoo!!! Stay tuned, I am going to post my progress on a regular basis this time. Wish me luck!

Mac

Drawing week

Hey guys,
this week I was supposed to refine my shot but I was drawing instead. Here are some of my sketches:

Blocking+

Here is my blocking+, the feeling is still a little bit weak. I am going to start splining the piece 30 frames by 30 frames and push things some more, checking the silhouetes of poses etc. Any feedback and advice how to make that piece stronger super appreciated.

More drawings

Some more drawings I have done lately. This is really entertaining to draw people around. I have some problems describing the forms, still the drawings lack that strong sense of volume, but I am working on that trying to develop my drawing skills.

Tuesday's lifedrawing

I am trying to draw from life everyday. Here is what I have for today.

My few notes about feature animation

This saturday I was in the cinema on "Open Season". It was really funny. Especially polish dialogs were amazing because they were related to polish internal politics which is like a big comedy anyway. Animation was really great. Not that cartoony like Madagascar, but it had it's own nice style. Acting was amazing, few characters were just brilliant. But there is something off about the story. I mean, it is once again the story about animals, story full of gags. Which is fine, but there is definitelly the patern, kind of template for almost every feature animation. I had the feeling that I was watching Shrek at some point. Mostly because the characters were so similar to Shrek and Donkey, or two main characters from Ice Age. The same contrast everywhere, big guy-small guy, strong guy-weak guy. Don't get me wrong, I really had the great time in the cinema watching that movie, I think it is one of the best feature animations, but still it is nothing ORIGINAL in terms of story. Designs are fantastic, animation is very strong, maybe except the lady in that big green trousers (I forgot her name), she was stiff and kind of dead in most of the shots. Can't wait to see the movie which will change the feature animation into something new and fresh. I think there is no more room for the movies about animals. This year there were more then plenty of them.

Blocking

I was working lately on the blocking of my new shot. It is not completely finished yet. I am planning to finish the blocking stage tomorrow. I would love to hear some feedback.

Some lifedrawings

I went outside today to sketch some people. Here are results:

Planning my new shot

Hi guys,
after small break it is time to get back hard to work. I decided to animate typical body mechanics shot cause body mechanics were problematic for me in c3. I decided to do animatic first and stick to the rule 50% planning 50% animating. It is amazing how much fun I have when I do this small litlle drawings. Is it great animation? obviously not, but it is a great roadmap. Timing is more or less established, so are arcs, spacing, poses. I still can change what I want in the blocking, but I have the roadmap, and for me it is super important, without it I would be lost in blocking. I am going to start blocking on monday. I wonder how fast I will be able to block out this shot. Any feedback always welcome. Thanks in advance.

End of class3

Wow, it is almost over. Only few more days and then three months of break. I am not that happy with what I did this term but on the other hand, I have learnt a lot, and I know exactly what things are problematic to me. Anyway, I would like to say thanks to everybody from my class, you guys rock! I am sure you will do great job in c4. Good luck!

Mac

My showreel

Hey guys,
here is the link to my showreel which shows some animations that I managed to finish:
showreel

Last days

Hey guys,
so far it was interesting week. First of all I was in Warsaw to visit People Can Fly. I met few great people there and saw motion builder in action, they use it almost exclusively for animation. I was quite impressed, mostly because of the realtime feedback in that application. Maya - I hate your playblasts! Anyway, I came back home and started to play with Motion Builder to get the idea how to animate in it, was trying to find similar options that I normaly use in Maya etc. So far I made few basic walkcycle poses in "constant/stepped" mode and I will try to convert everything to splines and refine it. But that will come later, now I have to refine my AM shot, which is driving me a little bit crazy. I am dissapointed with the quality so far of my c3 assignments. I know I can do much much better, I just need some more experience, that's why I decided to do some animations for People Can Fly - to get experience. I am also thinking a lot about the break. I will have three months that I will be able to use for animation. At first I was thinking about redoing entire c2, work with ballie, stewie without arms etc., but on the other hand I already have some experience with full body character. I made the basebal pitch which is not that bad with full Stewie character. So probably I will do all c2 assignments but with full Stewie, instead of ballie etc. Ok, I am going back to Maya to refine my curves. GE I am coming, please don't make me cry today! ;)

Good and bad news. There always must be some contrast

Ok, it is another day I am trying to refine my dialog shot. It is so so hard to do it. Animation is hard, that's so true. I decided to take next semester off. So I am not going to class4, no way. My idea is to redo entire class2 on my own and establish my workflow better. I did really good assignment in c2 when Stewie throws the ball. I was really happy with it, because I was able to really polish that piece. Somehow in c3 I have problems with my assignments. I very often just don't know what to do next, I have few poses here and there, some breakdowns here and there, and just can't go with it any further. So the plan is to redo class2, going back to ballie, and focus on basics some more before I will go to the really advanced part of animation - ACTING. You just can't do acting if you have problems with body mechanics, don't you? Many people told me that I am to hard on myself, but the truth is that I struggle a lot with basics in more advanced shots. I have to be honest with myself, I have 8 months of experience, before I had no idea what animation really is, I haven't learnt everything I should, so I just can't go any further. Glen Vilppu wrote in his drawing manual that you can't skip steps, because that will only slow you down. I belive that is very true. I know that if I would go to class 4 I would struggle even more, and have no fun at all. I love animation and I want to have fun with it, but when you try to bite more then you can chew you are in trouble. Don't get me wrong, it is not coomplaining, it is rather objective self criticism.

Anyway, good news are that I will probably get a part-time job. I will be able to work at home and do animations for "People Can Fly". It is the games company, well known here in Poland. They did Painkiller, I remember that I couldn't play it though because I had really weak computer at that time hehe :). I am going next week to Warsaw to talk with the lead animator from People Can Fly a little bit more about the details, rigs, etc. I am quite excited about that. I also think that this part-time job will really help me to learn body mechanics even more.

Other news is that I am going to draw much more once this AM term will be over. I am going to plan my time better and do everything better. Ok, I have to go back to Maya and refine my shot some more. JUST DON'T THINK, JUST DO IT. IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING!

First post

Woo hoo!

This is the first post on my brand new blog! I finally set up everything on my own ftp. I am still working on the template to adjust it a little bit, but most of the things are set up already. I am planning to post my daily drawings, paintings, and what most important all my work related to animation. Any comments always welcome!

Maciek