Term 2!!

So my second term has just finished (well almost). We had our presentations this past monday. Our presentations are a way for us to compile all of the "best" work from the term to show to all of our teachers at the same time. The whole class goes into a room with a projector and we watch everyone's twice. On the second run, each teacher gives critiques and makes comments about every little thing within the presentation. Its actually pretty cool, but getting everything ready for the presentation is extremely stressful. So, it would seem like a load is off of my shoulders, but, we still had three assignments to complete after the presentation, due monday, tuesday, and wednesday. I finished them all, but cant seem to properly render my model. You'll see in the video a model of a nude male which we had to complete in a bout a month or so. After that, we had one week to model an entire Conquistador in full armor... Its kind of insane.



Here is a picture of the Conquistador:
One shitty thing is, we had to model the pistol that you can barely see in a weekend. Its extremely detailed, but, you wouldnt be able to see that from it being hidden in its holster. You can see the full thing in the presentation though. This stupid conquistador is irritating me because I cant seem to render out a rotation of it. It renders 1 frame of 250, then crashes... Huhh, oh well.

So here's the presentation: Extra points for those who know the title screen reference!!!




Ok, well, Tell me what you think of everything.

- Michael

Where have I been?!

So its been a while, hasnt it. Sorry about the not posting in two months. Well, I don't even know if anyone is still following this, but thats ok. I had my Christmas break back in December and was home for two weeks. That was a good time. Getting back to school was interesting. The second term started up and the seemed to increasingly consume my time exponentially. What that means is, I have no social life :( Thats ok though! I don't need one right now. I need a job.. hah So my days usually go like this. Get up at 7:30, get to class by 9:00. Have classes until 4 (or sometimes 10 depending on the day) and get back home by 11:00pm. This is on the weekdays. 9-11. Weekends might be 11-1 or some crazy time like that. Ill show the results of the work when I have everything completed. Which should be in a couple weeks. So I appologize if I havnt kept in contact with anyone. I have to start setting an hour aside to go through e-mails and whatnot. Ill post again soon!

Presentation and junk

I had a brief presentation yesterday at school. It wasn't so much me presenting anything, but a video of my work being watched by the class and 2 teachers. I got feedback and critiques on everything I have been working on. Some people were going crazy this weekend from my class (i.e. not getting any sleep over this thing). They had really nice presentations, but in the end, the teachers focused only on our work. Its great to hear what needs work and what is looking alright. I suppose during my 2 week break I should continue practicing.

So as for how our classes work, I am with the same 30 people everyday for my classes. We are like a family. Our class is 3D77. Since I was at school for about 20 hours this weekend (I slept between saturday and sunday, dont worry) working in the lab, I had a chance to meet more of the people from the previous term, 3D76. They are pretty interesting people! Everyone is incredibly nice and it is good to interact with eachother and ask questions.

一人の３D７６の人はYoutubeで、日本のゲーム番組を見ていた。私そこに行って、見ながら、紹介した。面白いことに、その学生は日系カナダ人で、両親は彼に子供のころから、日本語を教えていた。びっくりしたことに、彼も名古屋に住んでいた！なぜか聞かなかったけど、面白いだ！日本語を練習できて、懐かしい名古屋について話せる！いいね。

Ok, I just wanted to practice a little Japanese. I dont feel like translating it though.
So here is the presentation:

Animation! continued

There's one more line test that I wanted to add, I just forgot to upload it. It is a front walk cycle. I like this guy a little more than the others.



Finally, I wanted to give out the links of my instructors. They are all really amazing.

Pat Heinicke My Classical Animation teacher

Emily Nguyen Pat's teacher's aid (who is effing only 20 years old!!?)

Mike West My Character Design teacher. Very talented artist.

Animation!

Remember how I wrote I take classical animation along with the 3D? Well, I finally have some (crappy) animation exercises that I can show. They are really simple and quite standard (nothing to be excited about) but I think it is a good way for me to look back later on, and see my progress (if there is any of course).

The first is a stick guy cracking a whip. The exercise was to teach us about secondary animation. The guy's arm is driving the whip and we had to figure out how to make the whip look like it is following the arm correctly.



This next one is a walk cycle of a boring character from the side.

Almost break time!

Ive been pretty busy at school, getting things done before the end of the term. I have about one and a half weeks left before I finish. I have to compile some of my work from each class to present to my instructors for critique. So, I have been staying at school and correcting much of my completed work. Its going fairly well; but there seems to be so much more to do. I will keep you updated on my progress here.

In the meantime, AJ sent me this link. http://www.playauditorium.com/

Its amazing. Its a simple game but it combines audio and visual so well. It is addicting and challenging, but rewarding simply to hear what music will be created. Definitely check it out.

American Thanksgiving in Canada!!

On Saturday the 29th, I celebrated Thanksgiving. As you know from the previous post, I had school all day on the 27th, so no time for turkey. I made the suggestion to the American students that we should try and get together on Saturday for dinner. Everyone in the class was invited. Well, it turns out that many people really wanted to join! So, Cecilia was a gracious hostess and hosted the dinner at her apartment.

During the day before the dinner, we decided to go to Costco to get food. Cristal has a Costco card from Mexico and it works here too. We checked for turkey, but Canadians celebrate a Thanksgiving holiday in October and it was still too early for Christmas turkey. So, we decided to get 3, 3-4 lb. chickens and roast them. I got some ingredients for corn bread too.

I went to Cecilia's apartment after that and started to cook the chickens. I made garlic lemon butter to put under the skins of each chicken and topped them with lemon slices. They smelled really good as they cooked. People slowly started to show up at that point. Everyone brought a little something too, food or wine, or something to share. Once the cornbread was done (it was started after the chicken, only one oven) it was time to eat. I have to say, everything that everyone made was really delicious! It was a great dinner all around. It was really cool too because this was a first Thanksgiving dinner for probably half of the people that came. There were 14 or 15 people that went I think. Great! I have many pictures from the night, so take a look.


Andrej seems pretty happy about Thanksgiving.


I think Cristal is dancing?

This picture kind of looks like a 90's sitcom intro. All we need is Cristal's name in yellow at the bottom.

Here's some food.

Getting ready to eat.

Cecilia wanted a picture of all the shoes.



Cecilia serving desert. It was very good.


TEXAS!