smudgedragon: watercolor of dragon cleaning its magic pearl (Spit & Polish)
2015-11-09 05:28 pm
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Patreon - Smudge continues to post WIPs and stuff.

Just a reminder - I do have a Patreon account up and running! And it's not Barons. ^.^;

Right now, my at production is light so I have it set as $1.00 per upload. I tend to only post one to two pieces a week, and of those, they tend to be works in progress of bigger, more time consuming works. At the moment, I'm trying to squeak in art production around all the business management stuff I'm doing for Baron as well as relearning lots of things I've forgotten from my days as a 3D animator. Because, dang it, I want to start producing animations again and I can't do that by simply wishing it. So it's roll up the sleeves and dive back into Maya/Vue and produce a lot of learning crap that's not worth showing to folks here, but gets me the knowledge I need to make stuff that *is* worth posting here. ^.^

In the meantime, enjoy the works in progress and sketches while I set up my next *big* project.

https://www.patreon.com/smudge?ty=h

smudgedragon: watercolor of dragon cleaning its magic pearl (Spit & Polish)
2014-09-01 07:42 pm
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Draco Offering Hand on YouTube


So I wanted to test out the current version of ToonBoom Studio and I downloaded the 15 day trial. This was the final* result of my 2 weeks of poking around. Mostly all traditionally done, just via digital inputs. My bacis opinion is the program rocks, but at this point in time, it'd be a really expensive toy that I simply cannot afford, money wise nor time wise, as I really need to get onto other projects.

Also by the end of two weeks of solid animating, I am pretty much ready for this to be DONE. I am finding I have little patients for going the extra step to make it sparkle now a days. Use to be no issue, but my work docket and me being a complete stress monkey this year has left me in a "hurry up and get things done" mental state. Not a good place to be for animating. Nice to know I can still do it when needed though.

Well, onto other work for me, mostly coloring the next issue of "To Kill a Dragon".

* While I could probably put it into better shape, and give it a lot more inbetweens, I've run outta time.
smudgedragon: (Anime Smudge)
2007-07-13 06:34 am

New Shot added

Did some minor tweaking and re-rendering. Stupid me, I've actually been not rendering Shot 2 so I've re added that. Also tweaked with Shot 3to get rid of the jaw twitch and have added the final background to shot 10.

Hoping to get into some more animation fixes next week.

... crud'ola, the suns coming up. I should get some sleep...

YouTube - Stage6
smudgedragon: (Anime Smudge)
2007-07-05 03:06 pm

More animation tweeking

Yesterday was Lazy-ass day. Spend most of it playing WoW and eating hotdogs and IBC rootbeer floats. Today, it's poking at animation.

Updated film posted on YouTube - Stage6

I cracked down earlier this week and worked on the shot of Rose pulling out the Recorder. While it is still "not accurate" it's at least in the ball-park. I can now comfortably move on to the rest of the piping animation and get that polished up.

Snagged Pat online and talked to him a bit about the star-field. We'll see how things go on that. *hope* *hope*

Also started painting the background mat for the grassy field. 'Bout at the 2/3's mark on that and it's officially in it's "OMG this looks like CRAP" stage. But I've had other painting I've done that hit that and came out A-okay so I haven't written it off yet. ^.^
smudgedragon: (Anime Smudge)
2007-06-28 05:02 pm

Don't Mind me .. I'm just gripping about my own Animation

So ... I've finally feeling well enough to start poking at some of my animation projects again. Digging though the archive, I deleted a bunch of non-relevant test anims to try and squeak a few more megs out of my too-full hard-drive and finally dig up the last render of "Longing for Home". Well, that's as good of a place to start as any.

Here's the current move as it stands --
And here's what I started with back in 2005 --

Current to-do list for the film

Backgrounds/Texture maps --
1) Star field needs to be replaced. I had originally asked Baron to paint a nice one up for me but RL nixed that. Maybe I should bug Pat Duke for one instead. Hummm.

2) Need to paint up the grassy field too. Have a drawing of it that I need to scan and then its Photoshop O' Rama time and pray I just don't destroy it entirely. As you can see, I have great confidence in my painting abilities. ;p

3) Forest needs to be replanned. As you can see in the video, there's a weird error that's occurring with the toon line where it intersects the transparency of the tree models. Not good. I'll probably have to render the shot with three separate passes: The background trees, Rose, and the foreground trees that pass in front of her, then compile the entire shading-ding in my editing program. Oh, and I should think about repainting the trees and background too.

4) Cliff painting. Right now it's just a bare model with a flat colored surface for a place holder. Need to pant a nifty sky too. Maybe with some little puffy clouds... and pray I don't look like crap.

5) Need to texture the ship. Badly.

Animation --
1) Well, I new that I needed to "touch up" the recorder playing animation, but on review of the file I suddenly realized that it needs more than a touch up... since I animated the hands in the opposite position from how you play. DOH! Not so bad for most of the shots, but for the first shot where she pulls the pipe out... Oh-boy, am I in for a rough time. That first shot has a lot of constraints that it's dancing between and it mean I'll have to redue most if not all of those connections. Fun, fun, fun!

2) I still wish I could find the sheet music for this music. It'll make animating so much easier. But alas, for now it means that I need to try and match the notes with my own recorder that I can barely play and hope that I'm not too far off. Because I guaranty you, that within a month of putting a fork into the project and calling it done, some wise-ass piping fanatic on the internet will come forward and tell me all the thing I did wrong with the piping. My only consultation is that I'm not trying to do a train ....

Let's see how much farther I can get this thing. Done would be nice. But RL has a nasty habit of getting in the way. Dang, I wish I could make money at this. It would solve a lot of problems and keep me focused on finishing these much better. Alas - like in most art endeavors, there is no money in being an independent animator doing your own thing. Doesn't mean I can't wish, can I?