Interactivity and Newsflash

Gee, everytime I come back on my blogs site I feel kind of bad for being lazy with updating and posting...

But anyway, quick newsflash: I officially graduated! Went to beautiful San Francisco at the the end of January to receive my diploma and had an absolute blast over there meeting all my fellow AMers. And I fell in love with that city, what a beauty!
So my Animation Mentor journey has officially come to an end, but my journey as an animator is just beginning. As we speak I'm sending out tons of applications all over the world, got New Zealand, Canada, America and England on my list so far.

And here's another thing I'm really excited about: Recently I started picking up on Unity3d, a game engine that allows you to create your own video games. So after a bit of playing around with it I came up with the idea to create sort of an interactive music clip.


So this is a screenrecording of a test I've been working on for a while now. The idea is to move the passive music video format to an interactive experience and by enhancing the music's mood with a visual and interactive layer create a more immersive connection between music and audience.
Software used: Unity 3D, Cinema 4D and zBrush
Music: The XX, Fantasy. The music is only temporary for this test, final version will work with a different song.

Thanks for reading and watching
Take care
C

Animation Mentor: Over And Out!

Took a while to get this post up, I know. My Animation Mentor studies have come to an end last week and I guess I had to relax and reflect a bit before writing down anything.
It's been a great journey, fun times, tough times, a ton of input and inspiration and I've met so many great people along the way. Congrats to everyone who finished the program! It's hard to describe the collaborative and supportive environment AM provides for their students. I'm certain without the ongoing support of fellow students and mentors I would never got so far in a mere 18 months.
So here's a humble 'thank you' to everyone, be it at school or in real life, who kept supporting me through my studies, provided feedback and encouragement.
Well ok, this starts to sound like a cheesy oscar speech, lets better move on...

Lets briefly talk about news and plans instead:

First off, I've updated my homepage with resume and demoreel. Feel free to check it out HERE! (This is an order!)
My Reel is still not entirely finished, I need to polish different parts and especially the last shot needs some more love. So I'll plan to finish my reel by the end of the year; add a couple new body mechanic shots to it and refine the ones I already have.
However, the unfinished reel didn't keep me from applying at Disney Animation, ha! It's not like I seriously expect anything to happen, but the goosebumps when I hit the 'apply now' button felt great!

Oh yes, so here's the reel:


Ok, so I think I'll leave it with that for now. I didn't post often during the last three months, so I hope I can make up for it in the future. Thing is, that when you're polishing your shots, there's not much to show or tell. So I hope I'll be able to finish up the existing shots and then come up with some new shots to show very soon.

Ok, thanks for reading & take care
C

Whaaa... only four weeks left?

Wow, class six keeps me on my toes even more than I thought it would. I'm sorry for not posting as often as I'd like to. But there's, to be honest, not too much to show either. I'm learning a ton though, have a lot of fresh food for thought, new workflow approach... Just tons of new stuff to learn and digest.
We've been working on our pantomime shot (remember the smoker?) and the monologue shot and now finally we're tackling the dialogue shot. I'll be sparing you all the weekly updates, but for now, I'll present you the finished monologue exercise:

Pretty sweet, hmm? Guess this is easily the best piece of animation I've produced so far!

So there are only four weeks to go until my Animation Mentor Journey comes to an end and no demo reel in sight... With Kenny Roy providing so much great input there's really like no time to apply it to all the shot's I've done so far.

When school's over I'll be taking a short break and then get to work on some more shots. First of all I'll be finishing up the Vader Shot and then I want to come up with one or two new body mechanic shots. The acting shots I have so far are quite physical and the body mechanic shots I've done so far don't really show something that isn't executed in the other ones already.
So I want to do something really extreme, like climbing a tree or something along these lines.

So my plan is to have a sparkling shiny reel ready by the end of this year and then start looking for a job. Well, we'll see what's going to happen, wish me luck;)
It's probably going to take another four weeks until my next post.
When my 18 months of Animation Mentor training are over.

Wow, this is going way too fast!

Take care
Christoph

Subtle vs. Low Energy - Part 2

Ok, now we're up for part two. Back in part one of my venture to solve the mystery of low energy vs. subtle I didn't really know what to make of the notes my mentor gave me for the Darth Vader shot.

Now I at least got a slight idea. Last week we started polishing our monologue shot. Check out the version I finished back in class five:



So, I really like this shot! It's fluid, smooth, good looking animation (on a student level, at least). And it has some sort of believable touch to it, it looks sort of casual and like something a person would do in this sort of situation.
Here's the thing though: Kenny asked me to lower down the volume and look at the animation without sound. When you do so, you'll find that you have no idea about what is going on in the shot. He even went so far to speak over the muted shot. Try it, it's fun: Mute the clip and go "Hey! .. You know what?... I think everybody blahblah" and so on. It totally works as well, right?

So I reblocked the whole thing in a matter of days. Which by the way made me feel super confident; I took the shot to this stage in 3 days, whereas the same took me four weeks just half a year ago!
I tried to really make the body language go along with the dialogue. Not to say that the body has to express what the character's saying, but it has to be related to what he's feeling! If a character tells one thing but his body language tells the exact opposite you have some great opportunities for interesting acting choices.
Anyways, here's what I came up with:



This is a lot more expressive and has so much more energy. Maybe even to a level that looks all cartoony and overdone, I'm not even sure if I like this version better or not. But I know it's communicating a lot better, and in the end I guess this should be all about communication. I think I'm on the right track with this. Even though it might feel a bit too snappy-happy and all over the place, it's a huge step when it comes to learning process and I'm really really satisfied with it.
In subtle animations, it's a challenge to get the emotions to stand out and vibrate when you have to stay in the boundaries of a character who's not moving a whole lot.
The thing I will have to try to work on in the future is blending: blending my feel for subtle animation with the newly discovered communication skillz (and yes, they're so mad, they come with a Z!).

If I'll be able to make this happen, the Vader Shot will stand out! Can't wait to get to work on it once AM's over.

Take care
C

Deathstar Single Dads update

Voilà, here's the first pass of my break week project. I think I pretty much nailed the performance, I'm really happy about how it turned out.

Next up is cleaning up and a proper lipsync/face pass and then hands & fingers. Feedback and critiques are most welcome, as always!

New shot approaching fast!

Hey everybody, how's it going?

I'm in the middle of my break week (I spend most of it saving Hyrule from Ganondorf) and I was planning not to make one single animation-related scratch and enjoy my time off.
Nice try! Of course yesterday I started with another Bishop 2.0 mod for a shot I want to finish in class 6. There's so much polishing to do with the rest of my shots, I don't even know if I'll have the time to approach another one. But just in case, I wanted to get a little ahead of myself.
I just started working on the animation today, so I'm only halfway through with the first pass. I took a more open approach workflow-wise: rather few poses in steppend, went into splines very early and am now working on the details and fix the final timing. Check it out:



Funny, eh? Your feedback and comments are most welcome, as I'll be working on it for another day, before Class 6 starts.
I really feel like I should put another, more subtle shot in my reel. I think this is actually one of my strong suits, conveying the emotions and feelings of my characters. But my mentors always pushed me to make something more dynamic compared to a rather quiet, subtle shot.
And they were right, of course! The Vader shot is relatively uncomplicated from a technical point of view. There's not a lot going on, whereas my two person dialogue is really challenging with a lot of physical stuff going on, and I'm happy that I'll be able to complete it under the supervision of a capable animator;) The learning effect is so much bigger than if I had just two guys sitting on a table and casually talking to each other!

So let's see if I can make this one happen while working on my reel in the following three months. If not, I'll just complete it afterwards.

Take care
C

Feinheit Showreel!

Here's some work related stuff for a change! A couple weeks ago we produced a showreel at Feinheit, my employer. It's not strictly animation, but also some scenes from an iPhone Game and website content, as we produce all kinds of multimedia stuff.
Was a lot of fun putting it together, and I certainly learned that putting a showreel together is an art in itself.

Here you go, hope you like it:

FEINHEIT Showreel 2011 from FEINHEIT on Vimeo.

Later
C

Class 5 Weeks 10 and 11

Class 5 is almost over, can you believe that? Time's running when you're in Animation Mentor, I still didn't get used to it!
This is what I submitted this week:



Arghhhhh.... This is nowhere near finished and I even feel sort of embarrassed to submit this as a final assignment! Well, I guess frustration is just as much part of the learning experience, so I will just have to deal with it someway. I mean in the end, after some more time spent working on it, this thing will shine. I feel like this is a really fresh piece of animation and has the potential to stand out if it's executed properly. So, cheer up!

I CAN ALWAYS MAKE YOU SMILE by Shaun


I worked the entire week on the bosses performance after trying to get the writer to work. Didn't get anywhere with him, so I decided to put his performance on the side for the moment. We will get some time to wrap up the shot in class 6 so I can work on him with a set of fresh eyes and new ideas and energy.

I'll write a more detailed post next week to wrap up the term and my learning experiences.

Allright I'm off to the weekend, talk to you next week!

Have a good one
C

Class 5 Week 8 at Animation Mentor

You might have read in my previous post how I came up with an entirely new idea for my dialogue shot. This is how the animation developed over the past two weeks:



I'm having a blast animating this, I feel this might turn out quite nicely. Three weeks left, so let's just see.
It's a real physical shot and very time consuming to animate. I really hope I will get time to work in all the subtleties in the face and hands, and get those smooth arcs. If not, there's still class 6 to work on that.

Take care
C

Super Great Blog Post by Jason Schleifer

Found these blogposts by Jason Schleifer via Spungella.

Check them out, they are a great read:

• Animation Quality vs Quantity - The Great Debate
• Animation Quality vs Quantity - Learning To Focus
• Animation Quality vs Quantity - What About Quality?!
• Animation Quality vs Quantity - Intent

This is just the right input before getting back to work on my dialogue piece. Will update you on that soon too.

Have a good one!
C

Acting Test done!

I havent posted any updates since I'm in class five of Animation Mentor, so lets fix that right now:

If you read some of my older posts you might have seen the early stages of my acting test assignment. We had six weeks to get the body language right. Now, in class five, we got access to the full facial rig and had three weeks to get facial expressions and lip sync done. Wow, what an update! Check out how it looked before and after:



And the final version (I removed the glasses so the facial expressions are easier to read):



Facial animation and lipsync are a pair of brand new shoes. I'm at a point now where I feel quite confident in my understanding of body mechanics and am able to apply them to my animations without having to painstakingly wrap my head around it each time. But then with the whole facial stuff, I feel like I'm thrown back to class one. This is brand new stuff to learn.
Until now, almost everything we've learned has built upon the previous experiences and lessons. But with lipsync it's different. There's of course the technical aspect and it's really fun to learn what shapes the mouth actually produces when we speak. There's definetely some unexpected stuff going on. Ha! But I will eventually get to understand that too, just as it happended with body mechs. It's but a question of practice, practice, practice.
What's really interesting and gets me excited about animation, is that we now have the full spectrum unlocked and are able to create full body/full facial performances. Which means proper acting. Put all the technical things and challenges to the side and think about the character and what we need him to convey. This is the thing to master; breathe life into a stiff puppet, make his actions believable, his thoughts visible and make the audience empathize with the characters feelings and emotions. You can think about Megamind what you want, but this scene blew my mind. That's exactly what I'm talking about:



Man, I love animation..

So next week we start our two person dialog shot and I'll keep you posted on how it's coming along.
take care
Christoph

Animation Mentor Weeks 9 & 10

Here's the work from the past two weeks. I went from blocking into splines and made a first pass of polishing and cleaning up. It's not where I think it could be, but still, guess it's coming along quite allright, mainly lacks polish and attention to detail.





I had a little struggle at work in the past couple weeks, so I wasn't able to invest as much time as I wanted, or when I did, sometimes simply didn't have the energy to give it that extra love it deserved. Well, but for an exchange I should be able to show some cool stuff I'm working on at Feinheit sometimes around the end of april.
I still have another week to work on the body performance, and I guess I should pay extra attention on hands and eyes as I go. And then we're already done with class four. crrraaazzyy..

Animation Mentor Week 8

Wow, week 8 already! Now, it feels kind of emberassing to put this out on the internet where it will be up for everyone to see for errm.. forever!! Well, but this blog should serve as a document of my progress at Animation Mentor, so whatever. Here's how far I got with the monologue shot so far:

It's still very rough around the edges, but I'm happy with the overall performance. The next steps will be all about working the arcs, adding more poses and really get the body language to convey what the character is saying. So this is what I'm going to work through the next few weeks.
After that -at the beginning of class five-, we're getting to do the facial animation.

Ok, time to watch this week's lecture.
Cheers C

Animation Mentor Week 5

Wow, I finally finished my pantomime shot. Overall I guess I'm quite happy about how it turned out, but there are still bits and pieces I feel like I could do better. Well I'm still a student after all, so no hard feelings..



Most of the body mechanics work pretty fine, but here's the major thing I'm not happy about. Check out the second part where he runs in: It's all; run in - grab smoke - light the smoke - stand up - sight down - smoke/breathe/relax. These are really separated actions whereas they should work together as a unit.. I think I succeded in the first part to create a believable set of movements as they are the result of what the character's thinking. In the second part though you can really "hear" the animator behind it. "Ok, first I have him run in, then he grabs a smoke and lights it. Next I'll make him stand up, and then he sits down on the drawer...etc".

Jeez, so this means week 6 is going to start, already half of class 4 is over. Now we're entering the real acting stuff, a monologue piece. We'll have to pick a line of a movie and make our character act accordingly. Wohoo, this sounds like fun, right?
Check out this example made by fellow Animation Mentor student Albert Barba:


Albert did a really great job on this, hope I can keep up with him;)

ok, back to watching the lecture now. See you around
Cheers
C

Class 4 Weeks One and Two

Two weeks of Animation Mentor have already passed and I barely even noticed. It's so good to be back and working on my shots.
Our first assignment is a pantomime shot in which the main character experiences two different emotions (and acts accordingly, of course). Here's what I've come up with so far:

Week 1, Planning:

Week 2, Blocking Pass:



I know, I keep telling it over and over, but the break I took was great and definetely the right decision. I can see now that all the animation principles and teachings of my previous mentors had time to sink in. At Animation Mentor they fill you up with information and knowledge (and motivation!) right until you can't take nothing more. Well, at least that was sort of my experience.
But during my break in which I didn't care to read too much about animation or did any studies on the subject (except for the usual forum zapping) everything sunk in just nicely. Now as I did the blocking I was thinking about a lot more things then I did before. "Oohh, don't forget to add that overlap! Ah, where's that arc going?!" and so on. Lots of things that I would spend time on fixing/polishing later on in the process I sort of naturally include in the early stages. Now that's a welcome progress!
Ok, I'm back to watching the video lecture now, new animation weeks starts in five minutes.
have a good week, cheers
C

these ten minutes of film have changed my life

It was in 2006 when I saw Jojo In The Stars at a local film festival and was blown away by it. I had never thought that some computer generated film might be able to touch me as deeply, to convey the characters feelings so convincingly. And they barely had faces. So much for effective character design.
Back then I was selling guitars at some store and was all devoted to music. But this short film turned it all upside down.
I came quite a long way since.
I was able to get an internship which lead to my first 3D job some months after the screening, went to school, learned and learned and learned. Then I got my job at the company where I'm still working today, Feinheit. I'm still learning new stuff every day working on the job.
And then of course there's Animation Mentor. Best school ever. Short, focused, hard animation training with great people and the best teachers you could imagine.
Tomorrow the new term is going to start and I can't wait for it. The batteries are recharged after my three month break and I'm ready to dive back into my studies.

It's crazy to think that these the minutes lead me to all that change..
Enjoy.




Happy New Year
C

The iPhone Game is done!

Awww, finally I can show you a gameplay vid from my latest project! Our team made a real effort in getting this thing of the ground in time. It's available in the appstore for free, so check it out if you get the chance.
Cheers
Happy C

why you shouldn't animate dramatic escape-runcycles while listening to reggae music:

Done rigging the main character!

Phew, I'm finally done rigging my main character for the short. Took me a while due to some technical hickups, but now it's all working, even the fingers work splendid.
I should call him Clint Eastwood or something like that, what do you think?! As you can see I made some retouches on the model, too, it looks a lot more natural than in the earlier version below (if you could call this guy natural looking).

It was kind of a weird evening, modelling & rigging characters for my horrible heartbreaking horrorstory. But then it's horrorstory with sort of a positive message. And I was listening to old reggae and ska all night long. Jeez, I feel even weirder now that I think of it.
Well anyway, I'm tired (guess you noticed...).
Tomorrow I'll be animating him, that's going to be fun! Run Clint Eastwood, Run!
C

I've got a candy store for a brain!

When it comes to having ideas and then making them happen I'm very much like a kid in a candy store: Going crazy and running from a shelf to another without touching anything, because as soon as I see something that looks appealing and approach it, something much tastier catches my eyes and I turn towards that new shiny piece of candy.

I always felt kind of depressed about my unability to bring all my brainchilds to life and being lazy when it comes to making things happen. But I think my time at Animation Mentor was kind of an eye opener in this aspect.
It's the getting it done part where I'm struggling, and Animation Mentor is really all about getting a huge pile of work done in a short amount of time, week after week. Learning under those circumstances is probably the most valuable thing I'm getting out of my studies apart from the exquisite animation training.
Once you're wrapped up in work, executing one of your ideas, you don't bother about all the other things you might come up with in the future. You just care about getting it done properly and then move on to new things.
So it's all about deciding, executing and moving on.
And as soon as I'm done with one thing I've got a bag full of candy to choose from. Pure luxury, ain't it?

Talking about getting things done: Here's a new still from my 'make it grand' short. have to get it done before I get back to my studies at AnimationMentor in January, or I'll never get it done. Tight schedule, but I guess it'll work out somehow.