Friday, December 21, 2007

Shadows and Regrets

As a Christmas present to everyone, I have released my semester long project for my 2D Digital Animation class. It's a music video which clocks in at a little over 4 minutes in length. This was over a hundred hours in the making over the span of 15 weeks.

Shadows and Regrets

Check it out; I hope you guys like it.

Friday, December 7, 2007

Class Final Project

OK so, as I've stated in the past, I've been extremely busy with school projects and next week is the last week of classes. That said, I will be finishing my epic 4 minute long music video over the weekend and into the beginning of next week. I will be posting it on NuShift as it it's a combination of Flash, After Effects, Photoshop, and Maya so the filesize will be quite large. It's around 2.5gb uncompressed right now so it'll be up within the month.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

And Now for Something Totally Different

A few weeks ago, an animator by the name of Pendleton Ward came to visit my school. You may not have heard of him but he created this awesome short called "Adventure Time". He came to talk about the animation industry and how to get in and showed some finished movies and some animatics. He was a funny and cool guy and drew pictures and autographed them for everyone.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Preliminary Drawing and Ink

Here's a screenshot of Sonic vs. Shadow from act 2. It's been a while since I've last worked on this shot so it's not finished but this is always how the first steps come out looking.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Even if it Kills Me

So fall is quickly approaching and the semester is in full force. The leaves will soon begin to change colors and fall to the ground as they eventually begin to die as the weather grows cold. However this is not the case for Cosmic Chase! Granted I have negative amounts of time to work on it these days as I have school projects to focus on. I plan to make an animated music video for my 2D animation class so I will be working on that feverishly until it's completed before the semester ends in December. Depending on filesize and whatnot when it's finished, I'd like to post it on Nushift so you can all check it out. It's going to be drawn in Flash and composited in After Effects and whatever else I decide to use. The backgrounds will be done in Photoshop and I'm working on doing some 3D models to animate and save time on drawing. This is just what I'm thinking so I may or may not end up doing this in the long run.

Since the class is about After Effects, I'm hoping to make it as commercial as possible and really blend the lines between Flash and production quality film. We'll see how it goes. In the meantime, I'd like to post some screenshots of this video as I begin to work on it as well as showcase some CC shots.

I'll finish CC eventually...even if it kills me.

Friday, June 8, 2007

I Am Tired and Hungry and Totally Useless

The spring semester has two more weeks left before summer classes begin. I have literally had no time to work on CC in the past month pretty much due to extensive reading, writing, researching, more reading on top of the daily grind. I stayed up last night working on CC for a short while however, just so I don't become lazy again. I seriously hope my summer class is not as intense so I can get some animation done.

At any rate, Act 3 is looking really good so far. I've got about 18 seconds of animation done on it (or whatever the previous post says) and it's top notch animated quality. Not to say the first two acts are poorly animated, but there has been significant improvements between acts; it simply gets more awesome as the movie continues. No doubt my first year at art school has actually taught me some versatile techniques and that is what is making CC look more and more polished every day.

There are still no plans for release but I hope to do some promo work when that time nears. I know everyone is complaining about how long it's taking for me to crank this movie out it will truly be a spectacle to see. Everyone is like "it's 2007 where is it" blah blah and "why did you make the trailer if it's not a real movie" and stuff. To those people I say this: it's worth the wait.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

SXCC Progress

Overall: 85%
Hours Logged: 1149:15
Animation Time: 6:24
Estimated Time: 7:30

Saturday, May 5, 2007

SXCC News

I've been working hard on CC all week and hope to continue working on it. More detail is going into the final act so there is no telling when it will be finished. I'm still working full-time and I'm only taking a couple courses over summer which will hopefully give me some free time to animate.

Monday, April 9, 2007

SXCC Progress

Overall: 84%
Hours Logged: 1126:15
Animation Time: 6:17
Estimated Time: 7:30

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Spring Time

I've been extremely busy the past few weeks, working on video project after video project while making hand-drawn frames of animation for classes. The semester is coming to an end pretty soon, only about 5 weeks left of class which means I'll get some time to breathe. I'll have about a month off from school before summer classes pick up so that means I'll have some free time after work to do things. I've gotten a lot of valuable skill from my animation class which will be shown in CC.

Ideally, I'd like to work on CC and get that out of the way but that never seems to be the case. Something always comes up i.e. lack of motivation, homework, laziness, etc. the list goes on. We'll see what happens. It may be 5 years from now but Cosmic Chase WILL get finished.

Monday, February 5, 2007

New Tablet Got

I got my new tablet Saturday morning which is like a week ahead of when the estimated arrival was, so I was pretty excited. I messed around with it for a little bit and have used it for a few little things but I've been busy with homework all weekend so I haven't had much time to put it to real use. It's a Wacom Intuos3 6x8 and sits nicely in my lap propped up against the keyboard slideout on my desk. It is way better than I had anticipated and am looking forward to putting it to use on current and future projects.

Thursday, February 1, 2007

New Tablet

Last week I ordered a Wacom tablet and am waiting for it to arrive. I'm pretty excited to incorporate it into my workflow as it's a better grade than my current offbrand tablet. I'm also hoping it will speed up CC production in such a way that it takes out a lot of cleanup time as well as getting sketches done quicker and enhances the refinement stage of animation. I'm looking forward to seeing its capabilities and how it can aid me in animation.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

SXCC Progress

I managed to work on Cosmic Chase for a few hours last night and finishing up a shot. It's a simple shot and is just a camera pan, but either way it looks good.

Hours Logged: 1117:45
% Complete: 84%

Friday, January 19, 2007

First Post

Hey everyone. This is my new blog in which I will be updating the status of Sonic X Cosmic Chase and possibly post tiny bits of information about it in the future.