This one's for Ken and James

[Paul Forwood]

Recently I had the privilege of meeting Ken Baer and James Hash when they were in London for MacExpo. They mentioned that they are always looking for more promotional material so, when this came to mind while I was playing with some Loons, I decided to just do it. This is pretty rough but not bad for just over a days work on the animating.

 

I hope to refine it, get rid of the camera motion, and add another 5 seconds at the end sometime. And of course there are no textures yet, except his eyes and eyebrows.

 

The attached movie file is pretty low res.

[aaver]

Great Paul!

[agep]

LOL! That was pretty cool!

[Paul Forwood]

Thanks!

 

I made a big boo-boo with this version by constraining the weights to the hands instead of constraining the hands to the weights. That caused alot of problems that could easily have been avoided. I need to sort out his right leg too. I will redo it sometime.

[Dhar]

Great caption "Heavy weight tools. Light weight price"

 

LOL

 

I love it. Excellent.

[Paul Forwood]

Thanks, Dhar!

 

This is the same thing but from a different angle and without the camera motion.

 

Edit: Oops! I just noticed the dodgy left wrist and the lingering shadow.

 

And the dynamic nose needs less freedom.

[KenH]

Nice one Paul!

[Ed Doyle]

What a great animation.

Ed

[Odog2020]

man, i loved it, the expression on he had was great

[Mr. Jaqe]

HAHA, awesome!

[kattkieru]

This was a good one, but I do have a few crits/suggestions if you'll take them:

 

1) The intro text -- wouldn't "fade" in tools separately from "lightweight."

 

2) It's not exactly obvious that he's excercising... the motion is strange for weight lifters. What about if he were doing arm-curls?

 

3) The putting down of the weights and the resulting spring into the air is a brilliant idea, but the anticipation that leads up to those two actions is not quite enough. I think part of the problem is that he looks away before he drops the weight, which moves his attention towards whatever's in front of him. If he kept looking at the weight until he put it down, and then his attention came to the other weight, it might be better. Also, since he's so... jell-o-y, putting down the first weight could squash him forward and then that could turn into the anticipation for the upward motion because he'd already be squashed so far forward.

 

Am I making any sense? I hope so. I can't wait to see the next version. What are you thinking about for sound?

[teh1ghool]

Lol!!!! Great! They aught to use that as a tv advertisement!!!!111!!!

[Paul Forwood]

Ken, Ed, Ododg2020, Mr. Jaqe, Kattkieru and teh1ghool, thank you all for your comments!

 

Kattkieru, thanks for the pointers. I agree about the anticipation and the unrealistic exercising motion. Sounds are going to be pretty basic, just grunts from the character and clanks from the weights. Maybe some drum and bass.

 

I have just tried constraining the hand controls to the weights and it didn't work out as well as I had expected. The hand controls and the weights just pull away from the character's hands. Maybe I need to constrain the hands' geometry bones instead of the controls. I'll try that tomorrow and see how it goes.