Animaniac!!!

Taking a break from my weekend of actual animation so I figured I would update my blog. Man let me tell you that this crap is tedious as hell. I tried to do pose to pose animation, but I am just not experienced enough to get the inbetween actions to flow smoothly, so I am sticking to straight ahead. I did find out another big helper, and that is right clicking on the time slider and selecting Key Ticks and From Channel Box. I was getting so many ticks that it was impossible to adjust keys back and forth and I hated going over to the graph editor to do it; saving me a effort of time in getting the timing down. I am focusing on the basic body movement right now as it drives all other movement and it seems to me that a majority of the other body parts such as the head and stuff will be mostly secondary actions (If I am using the terminology right).

I will have to do a bit of tweaking to textures and a lot of work on the lighting but I am very happy with they way this is all coming out. Man I am happy I took this class. These projects may seem pretty simply, but buzz and Zak are really good at showing you a million point three ways to do everything and it has really given me a firm grasp of Maya. Actually I find myself not really having any trouble with it right now, well nothing that I can’t quickly fix. Example would be that I tried to throw in a blink and his eyelid shot through his forehead, which would have surely killed him if I hadn’t went into inputs and moved the Blink Cluster above the blend cluster at the bottom of the stack without a second thought.

Anyway, time for a beer and to get back to animating my little guy. I am so pleased with him that I am not going to upload any more pics until this is finished, I don’t want to ruin any of it for anyone following along. Zak’s critique really pushed to a level I didn’t think I could achieve yet. Although there are a few thing I would like to work out, they are minor and I think I can live with them; live and learn right.