Roundhouse Kick

roundhouse kick from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

I officially hated 3D animation whilst working on parts of this. I came to understand just how TOUGH it is to get a dynamic pose when the model and rig you're using isn't really capable of being twisted in such ways. Then there's all the interpolation stuff! Sheesh! Anyway, I'm really happy with how this turned out. It was our first real body mechanics exercise. I used one of the kicks in this video I found as my reference. The only thing I wish I'd done differently was exaggerate it a little more. I shouldn't have stuck so slavishly to the reference. Below are the prelim drawings I did...

Big Dreams

Some concepts for one of the characters in the final film I wanted to make this year. But seeing as making and animating this character decently within the limited time frame we have would be nearly impossible for one person, these concepts are gonna have to be put on ice for a while :(

Run Cycle

bee boy run cycle from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

We were given a spot test where we had only a few hours to present a fairly finished piece. We were given a few options of what kind of piece to do. Seeing as I felt character animation would cause me less pain than all the other options, I chose the run cycle option. My first thought after finishing this was that it looked completely horrendous. But after seeing it again after a few days, I thought it was decent. Obviously it still needs a LOT of refining....

Full Walk Cycle

bee boy happy walk 2 from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.

So after having got the basics down, we 'graduated' to animating a full-bodied character. This is basically an adaptation of the 'Milt Kahl type strut' (the animation nerds will know what that means). After having completed this, I felt a lot more comfortable animating in 3D.

Pendulum 2

pendulum 2 from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.
We had to hand in two pendulums, so for this one I referenced a USB drive dangling on a lariat, because I wanted to get that sense of weight hanging on the end of a string.

Pendulum 1 (3 section staff)

This was actually done before the walk cycle. Its just a basic pendulum swing, but I made my life a little more difficult by actually making it stop. If there's one thing that's definitely missing in this, its OFFSETTING! If I'd offset the various sections of the staff the animation would have felt a lot more limber. Alas...

Bot Walk Cycle

bot walk cycle from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.
Our first walk cycle exercise. Seeing as we needed to understand how the legs and hips, the most important parts, function during a walk, we were given a character without arms to animate. I was pretty anxious about this, so I'm pleased it turned out the way it did.

Bouncing Tennis Balls

bouncing tennis balls (show reel) from kwabena sarfo on Vimeo.
Its amazing; no matter how advanced you think you are, the more you realize how much you're not when you have to go back to the basics. That was definitely the case with our first principles of animation exercise; the good old bouncing ball. The foundation of any animation education. So simple, yet SO crucial. I'm basically happy with this, though it took me a lot longer to do than I'd anticipated...

Lighting!

The next thing we had to do was light the room in a variety of ways. Seeing as I'm a sucker for drama, I tried out a bit of mood lighting :)

Victorian Room

This was our texturing project. Our lecturer gave us a fully modelled room, and it was our job to fully texture it. As with modeling, I had some texturing experience before this, but I'd never done anything on this scale, so the learning curve during the week spent doing this was still pretty damn steep.

I went for a Victorian-esque feel, so I picked as many ochres, browns, yellows and maroons as I could to get that look. The painting on the wall is one of Keith Thompson's, another hero of mine.

3D Hover Craft (I think?)

So, my first semester of the Masters 3D animation course at Wits is over, and I figure I may as well post everything I've done in these past 5 or so months. The course has been EXTREMELY intense, which is why I haven't had any time for regular updates, so I'm just piling everything in one go.

Anyway, here's how I went about our first proper project: modeling. Although I wasn't exactly new to 3D modeling, this was still a real challenge, because it was one of the first pieces I did without the aid of a tutorial. Also, learning how to model in a new 3D package (Softimage XSI) posed it's own challenges. Anyway, as the first piece I finished without a tutorial, I'm pretty happy with it :)

We didn't have to texture it, but I wanted to make it feel a little more 'finished'.

These are some untextured versions of it.

horse study

Kitty Kat

A study done as prep for a 3D tiger I wanna create at some point. Though there are some proportional issues with this, I think it's alright.

Another One for Kerran

R.I.P Kerran Yates