justin owens

I’m in the computer lab at school right now, once again working on my ZeroG animation. I’ve never put so much time into an animation before; I’m excited to see how it turns out, but it has been a daunting project. I’m hoping to have it finished enough to submit it to the spring show.

I have all the main animation blocked out on the character, now I’m working on blocking out the food. I’m creating reference curves for each piece of food to help get a natural looking arc as they fall and then bounce around. Once I’ve got that finished, I’ll finish blocking in the facial and hand motions. After that I’ll have some minor adjustments to make, then I should be able to convert all my curves from stepped to smooth. At that point I get to dive into the graph editor and tweak all the curves like a mad man.

I’m not sure how much I’ll get done today, but hopefully I’ll get to the point where I can convert the curves so I can adjust all those tomorrow.

I feel pretty good at the moment, I’m fairly focused though a bit tired. I’d rather be working on some personal projects today, but homework it is. By the by, it’s another wonderful day in San Francisco. The weather has been amazing the last two days. I’ll probably take a lunch break in an hour or so and sit in the park.

I’m working in the animation lab right now. I’ve started to block out the basic parts of the animation. Sometimes this stage is a bit overwhelming, I’m not always sure how much time to put into each section. It’s the whole idea of creating something from scratch, versus editing something that’s already roughed out that slows me down.

I have the basic walk cycle finished and most of the trip roughed out, though that still needs work. I’m just starting to block in the gravity change/gravity “swimming”. The anti-grav section is a little tough. At this point I’m just worrying about the key poses and I’ll add the inbetweens later (I really need to get the objects he’ll be interracting with in there, as they’ll be affecting how and where he’s moving towards).

 

 basic blocking: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I’m working on a new project for my animation class. The basic idea we were handed was to create a story around eating food, using the Norman rig. My idea was to have him carrying a tray of food, trip and fall, accidentally hitting a button that controls the gravity of his ship/spacestation. Initially I was going to have him struggling to try and get his food when in zero-g, but after some critique from my teacher, I’ve revamped it so he’s having fun with it.

I’ve blocked out the walk cycle, next I’ll be working on the trip and then I’ll move on to the weightless section. I’d like to make the trip happen in slow motion, so I can really exaggerate his expression. I’m not sure how much working time that would add to the project though, so at this point I’m just considering it as an option.