Short Film Complete (in robot voice)

It is done.... so it's been 2 years since graduating Animation Mentor.  The old curriculum was such, class five was Short Film: Pre-Production and six was  Short Film: Production.  The trickiest part of coming up with an idea was the time restriction, keeping it under or right around 30 seconds.  Otherwise there was no way you'd finish a short film in six months.  Not sure the actual percentages but very few went on to finish their films, myself included.  As my second anniversary was approaching, getting it rendered off and putting some final touches was looming over me... I felt compelled to complete it, I had to.  I was really tempted to go through and do one or two more polish passes on the animation.  If you're in Animator you know you could literally spend the next two years doing that... Another major factor causing a delay/procrastination was my Maya knowledge (or the lack there of), having just learned Mental Ray for 3DS Max over this past year I had a bit more confidence then before.  I was finishing up the latest version of my demo reel (see below) when me and my buddy got to talking about  the final touches and what more my reel needed.  He suggested that I render all the shots to give it that finished, professional touch.  The two shots that weren't rendered, I had previously tried to render them and had no such luck.  I spent the good part of a weekend up very late and early in the morning learning tutorials and getting my hands dirty in my Maya files trying to figure it out.  Granted there is so much to learn (just like anything when dealing with 3D Animation) but I finally felt confident enough to go back and revisit and finally finish my short film.  You can CLICK HERE  to visit my Short Film Blog and see the animation pipeline from pitching the story to my Mentor to layout through animation.  It was a great project and I learned a lot from it.  Part of me was sad when they got rid of those classes, but I understand why they did..

TRT: 01:57:00

Modeling/Texturing: 3DS Max and Photoshop
Animation/Rendering: Maya (Mental Ray)
Post Production: Sony Vegas
Bishop rig provided by Animation Mentor
A special thanks to the entire staff and student body at Animation Mentor.

My 2012 Character Reel...

After a long weekend of tutorials, trial and error, countless espressos and perserverance I finally feel comfortable rendering Mental Ray out of Maya.... Also, after almost a year a half of completing the animation on my short film I am finally rendering all 17 shots out.  Look for it later this week.  I was going to add a couple more shots and polish some more animation, but at some point you have close the book on the project and move on to the next... I'm already looking forward to my next animation.

Responsible for all animation.

Bishop Rigs: provided by Animation Mentor
Car Rigs: provided by Sparkplug Entertainment, Cars Life 2
Music: Beck - Timebomb