Just signing in to drop off a video of some animations I’ve done for a lil’ video game that my team and I are working on in a class of mine. I guess you could say we never did agree on a name for this character– we started off calling it the spider demon and somewhere along the way it became the manspider (since spiderman is, of course, already taken and very well-known), so I tend to compromise by calling it the manspider demon. Anyway, I rigged and animated this spider guy and have had a bit of fun doing so!
11 Second Club February 2015
In my animation class this semester (3D Animation IV) our first major assignment was to participate in the February edition of the 11 Second Club competition! This marks my first time as a participant, and to be honest, well… I really wasn’t a fan of that particular month’s audio clip. It was a line spoken by Matthew McConaughey on the TV show True Detective. You guys, I don’t even know. I had a difficult time generating an idea for this line, and before I knew it we were 1.5 weeks into the competition/assignment and I was still storyboarding, so in the end I had to just pick something and go with it. Anyway, tried out the Morpheus rig this time. He isn’t exactly my favorite to work with, but I liked him well enough. Anyway, enough about all that. Here’s my animation.
It finished at #88 of 205 entries, so 11 Second Club was kind enough to stamp a little “Top 100” ribbon on the video, hah. It’s funny, a classmate and I actually placed just two slots apart from each other. Pretty neat! I’ll be keeping a closer eye on 11 Second Club from now on, and if one of these months they post an audio clip that really grabs me, I will absolutely go for it. I’m confident that I can make something much better given the inspiration.
Here’s the storyboard:
Couple ‘o Anims – Technomancer and Pteranodon
Just as the title says, I’m reappearing after almost THREE MONTHS of inactivity, wow… Wow. And I’m just here to drop off a few short and simple animations that due in my rigging class at the end of this past semester. Nothing fancy to see here, just a human fidget animation and a pteranodon doing some idle, fidget, and attack animations (the pteranodon rig was a little sketchy but it got the job done). But hey, this is better than nothing, yeah? …Yeah?? Okay.
Floursack Animation!
Ahh, it’s time for my rendition of the good ‘ole floursack animation test. The point of this exercise was to show acting and emotion in a character that lacks facial features… hence the floursack. Thanks to Joe Daniels for the rig!
Lioness and Horse Animations
Just dropping off a couple of animations today. First is a lioness walk cycle. This was an in-class assignment to animate a quadruped walk cycle, which I was totally happy to do because I adore four-legged critters and creatures of all kinds… real and imagined. I had done a horse walk cycle before, so I decided to do a lion this time to try and capture the fluid, relaxed way that they move (a horse’s locomotion is typically more controlled– not stiff, just not as free as the felines tend to be).
Next up is a series of horse animations that I’ve been playing around with lately, on and off. Really, all I set out to do was a quick animation of a horse scratching an itch on its hind leg– from there I just kept on adding to it because, well, I love horses. That’s enough, right? 🙂
Begin Fall 2014
Wow, I let the entire summer pass me by and didn’t post a single entry here. For shame, Rachel.
So I just thought I would drop in real quick and mention that though I didn’t take any classes over the summer, I have begun school again for the Fall 2014 semester. Only taking two classes this time around: a rigging course and the next animation course in my degree plan, 3D Animation IV. Really looking forward to it.
In the meantime, I’m sorry to say that I don’t have much to show in the way of animation right now… I’ve updated and improved some of the animations in my demo reel after receiving some quality feedback from another animator. I’m still fine-tuning here and there when I can find the time, so you can expect the reel to be updated again in the near future. Gotta keep things up to date!
I have also been posting some artwork at my DeviantArt account in the last two weeks or so, which is… a really good feeling for me. I’ve been in a dry spell of sorts when it comes to artwork, lately. Anyway, if you’re curious you can check some of it out at this link.
Attack & Death Animations
Well, that’s another semester of school down. And with that said, it’s about time I swung by here again and dropped off a couple of animations that I finished the semester with. My demo reel has been updated with these animations, and I cut one or two older animations out: http://vimeo.com/87644571
VGA1 – Wall Set
In this entry: a modular wall set for my Video Game Art class. Was supposed to be a “sci-fi hallway”, but as you can see… well…
Below you’ll see a screenshot taken within UDK. Behind the “Read More” tag you’ll see additional UDK screenshots, plus screenshots from within 3DS Max, and the wall set’s diffuse, specular, and normal maps.
I’ll confess, I’m missing a few of this assignment’s required maps at this time: specular power and luminosity. Also haven’t yet managed to build the proper lighting in my UDK scene/level. In other words, it ain’t quite finished. 
Push/Pull Animation
This is a render of a recent push/pull animation assignment for my 3D Animation class. One of the primary goals of this assignment was to become familiar with working with constraints. This wasn’t entirely new to me as I had done a little experimenting with constrained objects before and already had a push animation in my demo reel… however, I think this animation is an improvement over the other.
As you can see, there’s quite a bit happening; seems I didn’t know when to stop! I definitely wanted to get both a push and pull in there, then I threw in a few objects to react to the movement of the bookcase. Then a classmate suggested that the bookcase collide with a standing floor lamp, so I threw one of those in there too. I should mention that none of the objects used in this animation were modeled by me.
You can see a playblast version here. It isn’t all that different or special, but hey, why not?
VGA 1 – Simple Crate
Simple crate model done for class… It isn’t yet finished as, unfortunately, 3DS Max and I are not quite in agreement with each other yet. The maps could all use a lot of improvement; even painting in some scratches/scuffs on the diffuse would really help, but I’ve just run out of time. I may update it later when I can find the time and will post up a better version here. Honestly, I wouldn’t be posting this publicly if class didn’t require it as I am seriously not satisfied with it.
UDK screenshot:
3DS Max screenshots, front view and back view:
Rachel Ahern 