Demo Reel Update

So it's time to update my demo reel. I recently asked my former Lead, Mikkel Caiafa, if I should include animation tests that I have not officially taken on my demo reel. He said that id frowned on my demo reel because of this. Oops. Well lesson learned. I am reworking my demo reel to have similiar sequences but without the Hell Knight or other IP characters that I "do not have the express permission of the creators to use." So I'll be sticking to freely distributed rigs. The Tiny rig will replace the Hell Knight rig and I have a few other not-so-freely-distributed-rigs that I have animated on but will need to be reworked in light of this new insight.

As far as my cinematic projects are concerned, they are slowly making headway. Slowly but surely locking in armor and weapon designs as well as environments and sequence brainstorming.

I've recently begun to think of my layoff as a blessing in disguise. It has freed me up to further on not only my own projects and goals but to improve my animation and rigging skills as well. Go figure.

Ramping Up

In preparation to my cinematic shorts and after feedback from several industry peers, I have decided to work on animated clips by entering into the 11SecondClub's monthly contest. I'm hoping that by doing so will help me add animating emotion to my skillset (seeing as how I didn't do a whole lot of that at Paradigm). Admittedly I entered this month's contest while it was half over; but it poses a refreshing challenge that I am meeting head-on.

In preparation to start these cinematic shorts, I have also started collecting materials and contacting people whom I feel may help in my endeavors.

Getting Organized

So now that I'm officially a part of the CoD:FW mod team and animator for a Robotech fan movie, and reworking my Demo Reel; I need a way to keep all my tasks organized.

Enter past experience...

So keeping in the spirit of Sprint Meetings, I organized my own stories and associated task lists to help me keep track of my original goals and work I've completed. So far I have only compiled a list of Demo Reel tasks, seeing as how the CoD:FW team is attempting to create an online Task Database (per my request) and my art director/contact for the Robotech fan movie has not contacted me in several weeks (5 weeks).

Amonst my personal tasks are creating more "Short" sequences; focusing on character interaction and acting, environment animations, particles, dynamics, and one major cinematic short that I will definitely need help to complete. So far the task count comes to 32, of which I have completed 16 (17 by the end of tonight). Unforntunately, the other tasks are biggies: planning for the major cinematic sequence, building and rigging environments to animate, building mechanical objects to animate... lots of work, but I look forward to it.