Fox Run

Being slow at work means more run cycle tests. I'm always trying to figure out and get better at animal run cycles...they are a whole different beast.  Here's my attempt at a fox.

After Effects "2D/3D" Head Turn Rig Tutorial Follow Up - Run and Walk Cycles

So in the post prior to this one I shared a little tutorial I made about created a "2D/3D" character head turn in After Effects.  I played around a little more to see how this would fit into my full body character rig workflow and I was pretty pleased with the results. I even took it a step farther and made a torso turn that was parented to the head turn.  At the end of the day it may not seem like a huge difference, but being able to freely turn a characters head back and forth is a new achievement for me and really opens a lot more doors when it comes to what's possible with some light character animation in After Effects. No tutorial this time, but enjoy a few .gifs of the results.

After Effects "2D/3D" Head Turn Rig Tutorial

Recently I've been wanting to push my animated characters to the next level, and for me that means turning heads. It's the obvious next step in the progression of making your characters that much more dynamic and believable. I've seen many artists rigs and animations with this sort of idea implemented, but I have a tough time finding solid tutorials or guides into how to truly make this rig. However, I did find this video from Ross Plaskow on simply making a 2D head turn.



This is an amazing tutorial to get started and I definitely suggest you watch it before mine; however, this video stopped just 1 step short of where I wanted to actually get to. I wanted to see how to actually take that head turn and then implement it into a full body character rig like one might make using Duik. After some experimenting and fumbling around I ended up creating the tutorial below. It's not the most in depth thing you'll watch all day, but hopefully it unlocks just enough inspiration for you to take this and use it in your own rigs moving forward. Hope you enjoy.

Foxy Walk Cycle

It dawned on me recently that I have never made an animal character before...and this is a huge problem. So I decided to work some in to my most recent project. I designed a little foxy lady and made her walk today, I was pretty pleased with the result.

Moment of Truth

This is an animation I put together for my sister for one of her midwife classes. They were tasked with making a video on the moment they realized that they wanted to be a midwife. I said, "That's cool, but let's make it an animation." So she did the writing and provided the VO while I did the animating. In the end it was really fun to take a story like this and bring it to life in a way only animation could. Getting free creative reign is something you don't find often in client work so it was fun to just let my hair down on this one and not worry if I was hitting the mark or not.



Storyboard Images

Animation Samples

Rooties 2015 Creative Excellence Award Presentation

Each year at my work we have an event where we all get together, have fun, and also give out awards to people who best represent our core values. In 2014 I won the award for Creative Excellence, which meant that it was my duty to preset the 2015 winner with their award. To do this I decided to do what I always do, which is make an animation. Had a lot of fun making a robot...I actually found that I don't do enough random characters after making this piece. It was a nice change of pace for me.

Bun House Film's entry for the Tree City 50 Hour Film Festival: Missing Meow

For the second year in a row my friends and I aka Bun House Films, have entered into Sylvania's Tree City Film Festival. The festival is a 50 hour film challenge, which basically means we only have 50 hours to complete the entire film and turn it in. The genres are selected at random and this year we were given "The Cat Lady". I think if we learned anything from our experience this year it's that cats are straight divas. Please enjoy our entry, Missing Meow, and a view at our Behind The Scenes. Until next year!