Nat

changed the walk to a more "normal" walk. Better? sneeze_low.mov

Hey Dhar! Should have guessed you'd be the first to comment. =) Thanks for the comment, and to answer your question about the sneaking/walking/waddling, I'm not really sure what you'd call that. I acted this out and found myself doing this walk, kinda of a "don't mind me, ho-hum" saunter over to the other character. Not a sneak. Anyway, it may not be clear enough for the general viewing public, in which case, I'll change it. Was your first impression, "why the heck is he walking like that?" Did it seem to fit with the character, but you just weren't able to categorize it? I guess what I'm asking is; did it add or take away from the performance? Thanks Dhar.

Hey peeps, been working on this animation the last couple days. Just something for my demo reel. I haven't animated the second character yet, but he's going to be looking at a paper or something. Can you guess what's going to happen next? Yeah, he's gonna wipe it on the poor guy, but in a very discreet manner. Anyway, comments welcome! Enjoy! sneeze_low.mov

Thanks for the comments so far. Couple questions, Rob, did you take Animation Mentor classes? I just saw one of the models they use in one of your animations, which, by the way, are very good. Anyway, I applied last week and am waiting to hear back from them. Not sure what you meant about the hands. I've just been using the open-close pose sliders and all-in-all they're in pretty normal positions. Maybe it's the compression. Dhar, I wasn't sure that she'd work either, but I've been pretty happy so far with what I can get out of her. She didn't have phenomes so I just used combinations of the preset facial poses to freehand it. Thanks again, keep 'em comming.

Something I did yesterday when I should have been working on other things (including TWO). http://media.putfile.com/10sec Cheers.

Hey everyone! Thanks for all the great comments! Just to address a couple of things that came up: The eye contact, oddly enough, is actually an illusion of sorts. You see, the character's eyes were locked onto a null object with an "aim at" contraint the whole time, save the first few seconds and when he throws his head back. So, they were actually looking at the same place throughout the entire animation, but his excessive head movement made it look as if he was looking else where. Funny, huh? Anyway, I reduced some of the head movement, raised the eye level, and opened the lids a bit. A little bit easier to read now. I also added some more facial expression, though the rig still needs to be modified to have more options. Second issue - posture. I added some foot work to keep his center of balance a little more conservative. Instead of a lean back with feet nailed to the floor, he steps back to support himself, and doesn't lean back quite as far. I also realized that I'd paid more attention to the view that I was animating from and when I went to a side view to view the whole thing, noticed that his body needed to be moved forward in several places to center his gravity better. Third issue - "chronic foot throb." This happened because I was having problems making the rig squash down without screwing up some other proportions, so I just scaled the model in the choreography window, resulting in the feet squashing and stretching as well. I took that off and may make a second pass with the rig later. Fourth issue - twinning. At first I disagreed with the comment that his hands were to "twinny" especially after viewing the trailer for Pixar's new movie Ratatouille (spelling?). There's a scene where the rat is talking and doing quite a bit of twinning and it still looks great. But for kicks and giggles, I changed the end of the animation to see what it would look like without the twinning motion. I'll let you guys be the judges of which looks better. So, here's the updated animation: http://media.putfile.com/June-Entry-Update Anyway, sorry for the long post, but I wanted to address everything and let you all know how very pleased I was to log on and see that you'd all taken the time to help me out with critiques! Thank you all so much and keep them coming, I should have a new clip to post in the next few days as I am trying to get a solid reel together to send out this month. Thanks again!

Thanks for the comments! I was getting involved in TWO, but got a bit confused about who were doing which scenes and all that. I'll help out if I can, but I guess I'd like to know exactly what part of which scene to start on. I was sorry that I missed Hash Bash, as I live in Portland, but a family emergency, of sorts, came up.

Hi everybody, here's a link to an animation I've been at the last couple days. Just something to go on my reel. Still need to do more with facial expression, comments welcome. http://media.putfile.com/June-entry-51 Thanks!

Hello everyone. This is a fight scene that I'm working on for my demo reel. It's pretty short at the moment, but I'll do more as I'm able. I'm thinking that this sort of style would be good for getting in with a gaming company, but I'm not sure how to overcome the software barrier, as I am a long time Hash user, and don't really know other programs. Anyone out there doing video games, and have suggestions? Thanks! fight.mov

Thanks for the comments guys! And I agree that some secondary motion in the hair would add a lot, I was just being lazy. =) Ken, I would love to be involved in the Two project, and looked at it pretty extensively the other night, but wasn't sure I'd have time to complete all of the bootcamp excersizes in a timely manner. Any chance I can "transfer a few credits" with example animation like this one? Let me know and I'll hop on board. I actually work in the same city as Hash Inc, and as the local community isn't so strong am anxious to get involved online. Nat Oh, almost forgot to answer the question of how I did in the contest. Alas! I had some last minute trouble converting my file into the proper format and missed the deadline, though my spot was finished. Oh well, I'll be entering next month's as well. Thanks again and keep the crits' coming!

Hi everyone! This is an animation that I did for the January 10 Second Club. Please give me your feedback and critiques! Thanks!!! http://media.putfile.com/10_sec_jan_entry Nat

Hey everyone, I made this just for fun but would love some feedback on it. Thanks!!! laugh.rar

Ok, that's a good idea. If I move him over his right elbow so that his arm's at an angle and the bulk of his upper body is directly over the elbow, it would look a lot better. Thanks for the opinion

Thanks for the comments guys. I do see what you mean about the pauses and I think I'll add some more subtle motion in those areas. Ok, I'm confused about the weight shift too, but can you guys do me a favor? Lay on your stomach and try to do what the character does. I know that sounds a little extreme, but if you actually tried it, it could really help. I did and I was able to do the whole bit without a huge visible shift to my one elbow, the reason being; most my weight was already on the ground from the stomach down. Anywho, thanks for the comments, and it'll be good to get an A:M entry amongst all those Maya users. Thanks again!!!!

SORRY! Here's the link: http://www.falloutmedia.com/nat.htm

Hey everyone, sorry about the last post that only 3 people were able to view, this one will be much better. So, this is my first run at entering the 10 second club animation contest (www.10secondclub.net) and I've already got some feed back from a couple people on weight shifts at the end, but please watch it and give me some replies on what I can improve. Thanks a million!

Hey guys, thanks for the the comments, and I'm sorry the site keeps going down. I'm going to repost this with a new link that lets more people see it. Ok, I did model and rig the characters myself, and they're actually kind of old models, but I thought they'd work for this spot. I read what you guys said about the weight shift and actually got down on the ground and went through the motions, and here's what I found: When one is laying in this position, in order to raise one arm off the ground, there really isn't a hugely visible shift in weight. The reason for this is that most of your weight is already distributed onto your lower half and one elbow. I was able to do what my character does with relative ease, and my abs are not very strong. But, animation is about exageration and I agree the weight shift is not quite visible enough to compensate with how it "should" look. So thanks for pointing out something I really hadn't noticed. I also agree that the squirrel could be tightened up but, as Zach pointed out, the attention should be on the other guy through most of it so I won't worry as much about him, but if you have any suggestions on the weight shift of the squirrel when he raises and lowers the binaculars, let me know. Thanks again and hope to hear more!

hey everyone, I'm currently working on an animation for this month's 10 second club contest. For those of you that have never heard of it, you can go to www.10secondclub.net to check it out. The link below takes you to a page that has a single link on it, the link opens the animation. Sorry if you experience errors, it's through yahoo and I've been having some problems with the server. Anyway, hope it works and hope y'all can give me some good feedback. Here's the link: www.geocities.com/nat_iwata/

Hey people, this is a pic that I modeled and rendered mostly this morning and a little last night. Anywho, I did it to show as an example for a potential client that wants some "room" stuff done. Let me know what you think, thanks. Nat Iwata