I started digging into the 3DS Max modeling tools this evening by doing a pretty nice Digital Tutors lesson. The product of my efforts is this glorious shark. Dominance War here I come. And yes I am a Maya guy, but I don’t subscribe to the whole Max sucks, Maya sucks debate. I love CG.
Look out! I'm a shark.
I recently had the honor of attending a one day class hosted by Ed Hooks. If you don’t know, Ed is the author of Acting For Animators. Get more info on his work by visiting http://www.edhooks.com/
Ed presented a number of extremely informative insights into the art of acting, but tonight I want to focus on one observation that is sure to have a considerable impact on the way I rig and animate the human face. There is a theory going around that the human is at all times displaying two mental states. It has been observed that while watching someone speak, our eyes first go to the speakers right eye, then left, and finally the mouth. The eyes tend to continue in this fashion through out the duration of the conversation. In what is perhaps an evolutionary trait we developed to accommodate this eye movement, we generally display a different state of mind on both the left and right sides of our faces. On the right side we display our projected state of mind; on the left our true selves slip through. Ed introduced this theory by showing us a series of photos featuring some well known faces. The photos were folded in half so we could clearly observe this phenomenon. In similar fashion, I have prepared some images for you to browse through. Pay special attention to the face of Charles Manson. Keep in mind that Charlie was a sociopath. Notice the complete lack of presence on the left side of his face. I apologize if the images get out of order.
I recently had an opportunity to attend a great online seminar hosted by Image Metrix. The topic was sculpting the face, and I was certainly impressed by Ryan’s knowledge and skill level. The real take away for me was more a lesson on how to learn and teach the complexities of human anatomy.
Often times artists will shy away from adopting anatomical names in favor of taking a purely aesthetic approach. What Ryan points out is that we need a common language to help us draw a mental map of the human form. This can apply to any discipline. If you are an animator, you need to know the basic principles of animation so you can describe the type of movement you are trying to achieve. If you are in to writing tools with a language like Python, you will need to understand terminology like classes, functions and strings. This may seem like a pretty simple idea, but I suspect it is often overlooked. I have spent countless hours studying anatomy books as a create my character rigs, but I rarely take the time to memorize the names of the muscles and bones I am trying to represent. I could probably draw a fairly complete skeleton and muscle system from memory, but I lack the terminology to explain what I am doing. Because of this weakness, my drawing would be missing some pieces, and the overall relationship of those parts would appear inaccurate.
As an instructor, a common language becomes even more important. An instructors job is to teach a student how to achieve some result. You may have years of experience performing a task, but you will be useless to your student unless you can develop a common and consistent language for relaying that experience.
If I understand correctly, Anatomy and Form with Ryan Kingslien will be available on YouTube shortly. I will post a link when it goes up. The video got me thinking about the way I work and teach. I suggest giving it a look when you get the time.
You may have noticed a lot of videos on this site that talk about face rigging. As I made those videos, one constant regret haunted me. I should have used a more interesting mesh. In an attempt to rectify that, I took a stab at making a new head mesh that is a bit more interesting. It was a blunt stab I assure you, but I think I came up with something marginally better.
My attempt at a cartoon head.
It seems I have been working on this model off and on for a long time. Overall, I am getting the look I want, but I feel like I am stuck on the hair. I hope someone out there might have some suggestions for me. I think something simple would be the way to go.
I threw a quick rig on the elephant model I am making. This is a great way to get an idea of how things are deforming so I can make smart topology changes later. I just thought I would throw up an image of the elephant in a pose.
Some friends started a photography project where the participants take a photo every day. The photo is meant to adhere to a theme. For instance, this week was “forgotten”. I will be running the Flickr stream on the right side of this page all year long.
Not much to say here. I am doing some concepts for a character I would like to model, rig, animate, blah, blah, blah.
ApeStudy01
I just bought a copy of Artrage 3 for my tablet PC. I like the programs simplicity. Unlike other digital drawing programs, Artrage does not need to load a million plugins. The drawing tools provide a very “pen and paper” feel with little to no tinkering with the existing brushes. Best of all the price is only $4o.
I hope to produce a few quick drawings every week so I can try to maintain what limited drawing skills I have acquired in my lifetime. I will be adding these drawings to the gallery in my side bar, so drop by once in a while and tell me what you think.Shashin error: Photo not found.
