Andy Stifel

Sit Stand Has Begun...

2010-02-09T11:40:00.000-08:00

So I've got my character and my story nailed down for the sit/stand project. Here's my model sheet for my character who is a chameleon and is, as of yet, unnamed.I've begun Modeling the head as well. For those who aren't familiar with the process, I first divide up my model sheet and load it into the MAYA interface to use as a reference when shaping each part of the character.

So when I start, I begin with building a generic head, and progress as shown.
I hope to have the head modeling done this weekend, then I'll have about 2 weeks to model the rest of the body which should be plenty.

Blast from the Past

2010-01-26T07:18:00.000-08:00

So I am now in the third week of my spring semester, sophomore year. Toword the end of last semester, I didn't have a bit of extra time to organize and post my work, so this update includes animations I completed last semester, as well as in the first to weeks of this semester!

Traditional Animation

One thing I havent posted very much of here (infact I don't think I have posted any of), is my work in traditional, or hand drawn animation. Here, at Ringling, every animator starts with a foundation in 2D animation, to learn the basic principles that carry over to the computer work. Most of the early stuff isnt too terribly interesting, or sometimes not very good on my part, so I just have a few of the final projects to share.

Pantomime

This assignment had us design a character, then have them enter from offscreen to interact with some object or part of the environment. They then had to show a change in emotion, and react. I'm fairly happy with it, but they ending gets a bit choppy because I was quite rushed, as it always seems with animation.

(video not uploaded yet, will update ASAP)

Dance Collaboration

This was the firsst and only project, where as a class we all worked on a common assignment. I was a lot of fun, and was the grand finale to our education in traditional media. You'll recognize the third character that comes onto screen as the one I personally animated. The others were each done by a talented member of my class.

Simple Polygon Character

The Simple Poly project was our introduction to a jointed-leg ring. We designed and build these character to use for 3 final exercises to close out the semester in Computer Animation. I have chosen to show them in the reverse order in which they were completed. They were turned in without doing a final render, in what we call playblast format. We only have a week for each animation, so rendering was left no time. However, I have gone back and rendered the last animation, the jump, so that you can see all the work I put in to textureing and lighting my character. Here are some still shots of him, then a reel with all three animations.

So that was it for last semester, I'll soon be posting work from this semester in about a week or two, so chack back soon!

Primitive Theater

2009-10-23T21:09:00.000-07:00

Here's the latest! This assignment is referred to as Primitive Theater. The idea is to introduce us to basic character modeling, rigging, and animation with a simplistic character of our own design. Here's the basic character parameters:

Create a motivation that can be expressed in terms of an action verb and devise a motion that communicates that motivation. You must accomplish this without violent or destructive behavior. REMEMBER, CHARACTER DOES NOT EQUAL HUMAN. Your character or characters can only be made from primitive objects or simple revolves, extrudes or lofts. They are not allowed to have legs but they can have any other kind of appendage.

And of course the final result of roughly 4 weeks of planning and working:

Now that it's done I'm quite pleased with how it came out. Of course there are little things that, given the chance, I would g back and tweak, but it's time to move on to the next assignment.

The Infamous Ball Bounce

2009-09-20T12:36:00.001-07:00

So tomorrow is time to turn in my very first computer animation project. I've just finished putting the finishing touches on it, and for those of you who are not familiar with the assignment, here's the criteria:

Length on animation is 240 frames, no more no less.

You may have a short pause at the start and end of the piece (less than a second).

A single scene with one realistic ball bounce and one self-motivated ball jumping.

The size of each ball can be different.

The motion of the two balls can be simultaneous, can overlap, or can be sequential.

The realistic ball can enter from off screen but then cannot leave the frame and must stop on-stage.

The self motivated ball may leave the frame at the end.

Staging and composition are a very important part of this assignment. Think about where is the best place to put the camera. Think about foreground and background colors (color and design).

It would be very beneficial to create a camera and lock it into place and then work from that camera.

No moving cameras. Camera shake for a really heavy impact is ok.

No objects in your scene should be default gray (Lambert1). Use simple shaders (solid colors) or textures. Keep the textures simple.

You will use a basic 3 point lighting setup.

Use Depth Map shadows and not Ray Traced shadows.

No Motion Blur or Reflectivity

You may use an environment with walls made out of primitive planes or half of a cylinder. Some of you will have sets that are more elaborate, that is also acceptable.

This project will be rendered in standard resolution with shadows, and it will be due as Maya ASCII file, and as a Quicktime movie.

Please refer to the class calendar for Critique and final deadlines

So here is what I have come up with.

I have to say that I'm quite pleased with my result. I put to use some of the modeling skills I learned over summer which I think gave me a bit of a boost. I also am very pleased with the texture I made for the surface of the globe, which when not stretched over the surface of the ball looks like this:

So up next on the CA list is the NURBS primitive theater. Time to generate some ideas for that.

2009-06-22T16:37:00.000-07:00

Finished the modeling tutorial, so here's the completed jet bike

Now I start learning rendering / shading

Im also going to see how much I retained from all this by building my own version of the jet bike from this tutorial.

And It's Off!

2009-06-08T19:05:00.000-07:00

So to begin, here's what I'm workin on at the moment:

This is the bike I'm building through a series of tutorials. Trying to get a jump start on learning how to model for next year. Wish I could say that I designed the bike as well, but I didn't. When this is done, I'll be attempting to model my car to see how much I actually retained from the videos.