Good News at the BFA Gallery Show!

Too many smiles: Paul Abadilla, Don Ta, Rebbaz Royee, Corey Tom

The BFA Gallery Show this year looks amazing. Not only is the work amazing from all the students, but my good buddies Rebbaz Royee and Chris Palmer really put together a great show. While I was at the Gallery Opening night, I received some fantastic news! I don’t want to jinx anything, so I’ll share if and when the time is right...but trust me it’s good news :)

My New Website

andrewharkins.com

I started a new web site with my newest 3D animation reel on it. It's still a work in progress, but please check it out. I won't be updating this blog anymore, so all my newest stuff should be on my new site.

Update (2009.09.02): I've decided to start the slow process of bringing all my new blog posts back to this blogspot. My other work and website will still be up and running, but the blog portion will stay here.

Sarcastic Surgeon Revision

So I took a break from the hippie test, and I went back to my “Sarcastic Surgeon” dialogue piece. It’s one of the tests that I think needs the most work to get it to polish. My main goal this time around was to get a better sense of mass and weight in the the movements, and to clean up actions. I think it’s getting better, but like any test, it still needs work.

D-Day

photo by Anne Utter

Another year, another D-Day. This will be my last though, but it’s been fun. This year, I was Spock in Star Trek vs. Darth Vader. I recycled my Halloween costume from two years ago. Of course I cut my hair and wore the ears! I even did some last minute makeup in the setup room. Here’s a rundown of the D-Day skits I’ve been in:

2009 Star Trek Crew vs. Darth Vader

Kirk - Steve Hirt

Spock - Me

McCoy - Colin King-Bailey

Uhura - Renee Carty

Sulu - Michael Fong

Scotty - Craig Kitzman

Red Shirts - Jake Panian, Paul Nguyen, Jake Baker

Darth Vader - Phil Wanardi

2008 My Futurama Head vs Micah Sibert;s Futurama Head

2007 My Muppet Self and Januel Mercado’s Muppet Self vs. Jennifer Corker and Lauren Andrews’ Muppet Selves

2006 Brokeback Mountain with Januel Mercado vs. Andrea Rhodes (country girlfriend/wife) and Paul Abadilla (cow)

2005 Magician vs. Rabbit (Fumi Nakamura)

Professional Project Finished!

We finished the opening sequence for the “Imagination Station” PBS Show today. It still needs some minor tweaks, but for all intents and purposes, it’s done! It was such an amazing experience getting to work on a professional project before even leaving school, and it was a truly special experience getting to direct my first project. I learned a lot about management and I hope to apply it to future projects. All of this couldn’t have been done without a lot of hard work from my classmates. My friend and fellow animator extraordinaire, Corey Tom, was a trooper in getting all the animation done, and stayed up countless nights making sure it all went smoothly during the many, many renders. I wish I could show you the work, but for now, you’ll have to catch it on your local PBS station when it airs!

New Blocking Pass

This is my latest blocking pass for the Hippie/Businessman pass. I wanted to clarify the characters a little bit more. One of my main concerns which I also tried to address was in keeping the characters’ actions distinct enough so as not to distract from one another. For that I tried to play with pacing and timing of the overall scene. I think I still have a ways to go in playing up the business man’s frustration. I will go back and reshoot reference for that soon. I hope to get this portfolio ready in the next few weeks (if not sooner!)

DreamWorks Q&A, Gallery Show

Yesterday I had a once in a lifetime opportunity thanks to my professors. DreamWorks is having a gallery show at school called “DreamWorlds: The Inspired Concept Art of DreamWorks Animation”. Tuesday night was the opening and I was given the chance to interview Production Designer Kendal Cronkhite and Head of Character Animation Rex Grignon from PDI/DreamWorks. It was so amazing! The interview took place in front of almost 500 people in a filled auditorium. I have to admit I was nervous, but I felt comfortable knowing that my friends were in the audience as well. I asked Kendal and Rex about their past and present in the industry and touched on their trip to Africa to research Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa. Overall it went well and I will never forget my experience.

Hippie and Businessman - Updated Pose Test

So I got some great feedback on the last pass of my pose test and reshot some reference before going back to posing. I think it’s stronger but I know I can push it more. I was recently watching the Spline Doctors “Bale Contest” tests and I really saw the power of pushing poses. I would like to get that into this test before I move on. At the same time I’m also gearing up to work on my demo reel to polish up my current tests. With all the other projects going on it’s getting busy but also exciting!

Hippie and Businessman - New Pose Test

Back from London and back to work. After getting some good advice, I reshot some reference, and reblocked my characters (I’m also now using referenced characters which will make modification much easier later). I like the direction this is going in now. The businessman’s attitude is now in line with what I originally intended, and the hippie is more fleshed out. Right now I need to take step back and get more eyes to look at it to tell me if it’s going in the right direction.

Back Home

Me looking serious in London

London was amazing! I just got back home I can’t wait to go back someday. I’m always amazed at how old London is and how much history and art are present in everyday life. They have everything figured out because it’s been there so long. Take the Tube for instance. You never wait more than 5 minutes for the next train and you’re always within a few minutes of a station by foot. Amazing. There’s so much to tell, but I won’t go into all the boring details. If you’d like to know, come talk to me.

Pose Tests - Hippie and Businessman

So I thought before I head out to London, I would post an update on my new shot. These are a few early pose tests just trying to get the right timing and entertainment out of it. Right now the biggest note is that I’m playing the businessman out of character. He needs to be more angry and resistant to the hippie’s help. I have some video reference that my classmates and I shot which will help me play that up convincingly.

New Shot - Hippie and Businessman

This new test is really exciting for me. I often gravitate toward more controlled acting in my animation, and I now have a chance to really amp up the physicality, as well as practice my dialogue. I’ve thumbnailed out my basic idea, and cut it to time. So far I think this could be a good character study, but I’d really like to make it more entertaining. There’s a chance to get some classic physical comedy here, and right now I’m just scratching the surface.

It’s pretty impossible to tell from the rough sketches, but the young man running up is a hippie, and the man in the foreground is a businessman who has just been stunned by the hippie’s frisbee (the ellipse in the foreground). I have to give credit to my friend Scott for coming up with this one.

One of my own self-imposed constraints is to keep from having too much dead air before and after the dialogue. I’d like to jump right in without wasting time at either end. Other than that, I’m all ears on amping this up!

Bar Scene - Curves Pass

Here’s an update of the test I’ve been working on for BFA. All previous passes can be found on my old blogspot sketchblog here. This latest pass is at the curves stage, and I’m starting to get into polishing, with some areas working better than others. The man in the scene still needs a lot of work, as I’ve really been concentrating more on the girl. I got some great notes from ACME Transmission and of course from Rex and my classmates. In the coming weeks I’ll be fixing up this as well as some other tests to update my reel. Only two months left!

LONDON!

Hey Everyone, this is my first real blog post on my new web site (not counting the link to the old blog)! I’m excited to start it off with a life event.

On Wednesday, I’ll be going to London for 9 days! I’m going with the school, and we’ll get to visit several commercial production houses there that specialize in animation. I was able to go on the trip a few years ago and I’m so excited to be able to go again.

Last time we were able to visit Framestore CFC, Double Negative, and Studio AKA among other studios. It was so fantastic to see smaller studios producing such great work! I’m so ready to go again...well besides the packing...

A Bar Scene

So I've been working on a new shot this semester, and I wanted to show my progress so far. I won't get into any of the details, other than I'm really trying to nail the emotion and keep the personality consistent within the girl. I'm having fun with this test, and it's really pushing me to know my characters. Here's some video showing my latest pass, along with some videos of my progress up til now:

Here's my latest pass, where I've taken it into curves (it's still rough):

An earlier refined blocking pass:

An even earlier blocking pass:

One of my initial posing passes:

Fall 2008 End of the Semester Wrap-Up (Part 2)

What a fantastic semester. Not only have I seen my work improve, but I've also been fortunate to meet and work with a number of great animators throughout this semester. One of those great animators was my animation instructor, Rex Grignon. With his guidance, I learned so much and felt myself making breakthroughs each week. I learned how to properly shoot reference, block, refine, and polish my animation. I learned the finer points of lip sync, and subtleties of acting. I learned the importance of good mechanics. Rex was also able to give me and my classmates key advice on how to control curves once we passed the blocking stage. Even now during the winter holiday I'm still distilling a lot of the information I learned this semester. As per Rex's advice, I'm taking a week off, but I'll be back soon to get things ready for my reel. For now, here are my tests from the BFA class.

Object Interaction Test

Mechanics/Chair Test

Object/Phone Reaction Test

Fall 2008 End of the Semester Wrap-Up (Part 1)

My 3D animation class was chock full of animation tests, which was great in getting mileage. My instructor, Primo Navidad was super helpful in working one-on-one with me, and in helping me improve my tests along the way. We had a wide range of tests, all the way from a humble ball bounce to a dialogue test. Some are more finished than others, but I wanted to put them all up for display, the good, the bad, and the ugly. What I like about showing each test is that you can see different levels of finish in each test. Each test bears the scars of days and weeks of work, and while there's some I'd like to move on from and never see again, I'm proud of each of them in their own small ways. Eventually I'd like to take some of them to polish for my reel.

Dialogue Test


Expression Test


Mechanics Test


Walk Cycle


Sack Pantomime


Ball Bounce

Acting Test

In the senior class, we're so fortunate to be working with Rex Grignon, a world class senior animator from PDI/DreamWorks.  He has been nothing less than amazing and incredibly helpful.  Over the past few weeks he's given us a challenging test to take on.  In brief, we have a boss-type character who responds to some news on the phone.  At the same time, he reveals part of his character through idle action with an object.  The whole test must be 5 to 6 seconds in length.  Here's my take on it.  I can see that a lot of my motions are still looking mechanical rather than natural, so I need to figure out what's going on there.  After that, my next step is to start polishing and getting in the subtleties and details.  As usual I'm open to any advice or comments to help me improve this.

Biomechanics/Weight Test

We've been working on biomechanics in my 3D animation class, where the goal is to get a sense of weight with our character.  Here's what I've been working on this week.  It has a couple different elements to it, some of which I'm still working on.  I think the basics are there though.  Lately I've been working on getting my overall pacing and timing better by returning to my reference with an eye on more realistic timing.  Any comments/advice is always appreciated.

  

3D Animation Class

This semester is really exciting for both the San Jose State and myself.  With an increased focus and commitment to improving the animation at San Jose State, the department has set up world class partnerships which brings us a world class education.  I just wanted to highlight a couple projects we're starting in those classes.

In order to get better at 3D animation, I'm taking a couple different classes.  The first is focused just on 3D mechanics and animation itself.  We're starting with basic tests but ramping up quickly.  We'll have the chance to go back and fix up the test to get them portfolio ready at the end of the semester which is great because our animation eye will be more tuned by then.

The first  job was the classic ball bounce:

I like how this turned out, but the staging makes it hard to see because I had to zoom out so far to see it all.

The second job was a sack pantomime.  We used a rig off of highend3D and it was pretty good for the most part once we removed the dynamics which tried to animate parts for us.  The knees bulge quite a bit and that's a product of poor knee controls, but the general feel is still there.  Here's my take on the sack pantomime:

There are a lot of funny shapes going on in the turn and the run which I need to address.  I've also gotten a critique on ACME (www.acmeanimation.org) about the weight shift being off so I will address that when I address the other issues.

That's all for now, I'll talk about the other class in the next post where we're working on a 5 week project.