Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown

Found this posted at Seward Street



"Golden Age of CalArts stuff.- enjoy!"

Take a look at it, you will laugh your ass off.

Bring Me the Head of Charlie Brown

Google Moon Map

http://moon.google.com

Try zooming all the way in.

"In honor of the first manned Moon landing, which took place on July 20, 1969, we’ve added some NASA imagery to the Google Maps interface to help you pay your own visit to our celestial neighbor. Happy lunar surfing."

Class 2 Session 4

Here’s my week 4 assignment.

Heavy Push - Rough Blocking - Stepped Mode



Assignment
Video Reference (thanks to my brother for helping out)

Well, for the assignment, I wanted it to look like Stewie was pushing a refrigerator, still in the box, up a ramp and into a truck.
It took 10 minutes to model the truck and figure out the look of the scene with the background etc. So that extra fluff didn’t take time away from animating, but I think it adds just a little to the shot.

I planned, planned, planned for the push. I sketched from my video reference and exaggerated the spine and the weight. It was helpful, but the timing that I had planned for was way off. When I got it to the computer I noticed that the freaking ramp was too long, so my push was close to 500 frames long. So I shortened the ramp, took out some of the anticipation and got it down to 300. The anticipation that I removed was about 76 frames long and Stewie was stretching his arms with his hands clasped…..kind of cracking his knuckles before he grabbed a hold of the fridge. I liked it, but had to scrap it for length reasons.

You may be wondering what the hell happened to my week 3 sneak. A lot happened, the rig went wacko, well, I think it was me not really knowing how to manipulate it during the blocking. But I blame it on Stewie version 2.2. Many, many people had problems with Stewie and he’s an easy target to blame. Honestly though, it was me not paying attention to the rotations on the arms. There were some issues with the rig not remembering keys though. Hopefully, with a brand new version of Stewie, and a better knowledge of the rotation from stepped to spline, I will resolve the issue with this week’s assignment. I have had to really pay attention to my rotations to avoid the dreaded gimbal lock that I got in week 3. No, I will not post the assignment. It’s not something I am happy with. So you will never see it unless you are in AM and access my workspace. You don’t want to see it anyway….well, people do like seeing train wrecks……but not mine.

Kill da Wabbit, Kill da Wabbit

Bugs Bunny on Broadway

I had never been to the symphony. When my wife suggested that we go, at first I thought I wouldn’t like it. But it’s freaking Looney Tunes, and it was fantastic!

I thought it was cool to view the cartoons as they were meant to be seen. It was held at Jones Hall, a big theater with a sell out crowd, enjoying the clips on the big screen. Kind of like they did back in the 1940’s and 50’s, when they would show the shorts before feature presentations at movie theaters.

The big crowd was very robust. I had seen all these shorts before, but I still laughed out loud at times due to the infectious laughter around me. I always tell my wife that Looney Tunes cartoons are timeless and I was proven right by the amount of children laughing. That is one of the greatest sounds ever, as my wife pointed out during the show.

It was totally entertaining from the start. The conductor, George Daugherty, was amazing and had some great stage presence. Similar to Bugs in the short “Baton Bunny” minus the yellow tux……not really. George was great, he was good with the audience too. There was an 8 year old boy there that he gave a shirt to. As a conductor he kept everything flowing, even through the technical glitch during the last short, “What’s Opera Doc?” It seems for the first time in 16 years his headphones went out during a performance. He halted the orchestra, paused the film and went to get new phones. He then rewound it and started over after explaining the situation to the audience. In all, there was about a minute of down time.

The symphony was brilliant. I loved hearing these songs that I already know, with live instruments. The acoustics in the building were great too, of course. I liked watching the timpani players in the back and the violins sounded awesome. The horns were strong and the entire production, music wise, was really powerful.

We had a great time. Thanks to the wife for setting everything up. She rocks errrr in a classical, symphonic way this time.

I Knew MMO Farming Was Big, But Come On!

From sweatshops to stateside corporations, some people are profiting off of MMO gold.

Sack is the low man in these operations. "I work from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. on the U.S. Lineage II server," he says. He works long, boring hours for low pay and gets no holidays.

Wage Slaves

Class 2 Session 2

Last week I had a ton of revising to do. I had some really good comments from DD in my first e critique. He told me that I could have him creep sideways and it would look sweeter, but it’d be hard to accomplish.

I also had to add an anticipation to the beginning of the walk per the assignment.

Well, I am lucky that my wife is the most awesome woman in the world. She let me put a little extra time into it and I really think it paid off.

The animation is still in blocked mode, this week our assignment is to smooth it out.

Stewie Creep

I have a couple of little tweaks I need to make after watching this week’s crit from DD. Then I will start smoothing.

Oh, yeah, and here's the video reference I shot. It was part of the assignment and yes, I suck at sneaking. My Weak Sneak