Throughout the course of placement my main role was a Technical artist, where my responsibilities primarily revolved around rigging and animation (Key frame/mo-cap clean up) and as a result my interest in these areas have only grown.
Placement Reel
Although I’m interested in these areas and have some experience with them commercially there’s still a lot I want and need to learn for the sake of the project, in addition to benefiting my own reel.
Animation
Animation is something you’re not going to get better at unless you just sit down and practice, implement the 12 principles into the work and never underestimate the importance of references.
For learning resources I plan to refer to the works of:
Kieth Lango – Animator at Valve and Disney
Jason Ryan – Animator at Disney and Dreamworks
Jason Shum – Animator at BLUR, EA and Riot Games
Chris Krishbaum – Animator at Dreamworks
Reading Resources:
Animator’s Survival Kit – Richard Williams
Character Animation Crash Course – Eric Goldberg
Cartoon Character Animation In Maya – Kieth Osborn
How to cheat in Maya 2014: Tools and Techniques for character Animation – Kenny Roy
Rigging and Scripting
A great animation starts with a great rig which is why I want to really push the quality of the rigs I create throughout the course of the year. So far I’ve been approached by several other teams to help them out with the rigging process with regards to their projects. From the sounds of things i’m going to have the opportunity to create a wide variety rigs each with their own distinct styles and technical requirements. In addition to rigging I’ve come to realise the importance of scripting to maximise work productivity, which includes developing tools and scripts that make the job a bit easier for the artist.
For learning resources I plan to refer to the works of:
Suchan Bajracharya – Rigging and Technical Artist at Puppeteer Lounge
Delano Athias – Rigger, Technical Artist and Animator at Blur and Pluralsight
Josh Sobel – Character Rigger and Technical Director at Blue Sky Animation and Disney
Chad Morgan– Rigger and Technical Artist at Double Helix Games and Lecturer at University of Irvine.
Reading Resources:
Rig It Right – Tina O’Hailey
Compositing and Tracking
Finally, I hope to improve my skills in composting and tracking using primarily Foundry’s NUKE, Pixel Farm’s PFTRACK and Adobe After Effects. My interest in composting started in 2nd Year where I took a simple model of a rubik’s cube and composited into live footage using PFTrack to Maya and After Effects. As time has progressed I still enjoy tracking however I’ve been advised to learn NUKE for heavy compositing assignments due to it’s node based, non destructive workflow which we hope to implement into pipeline for the project.
For learning resources I plan to refer to the works of:
Foundry – Getting Started in NUKE STUDIO
Pluralsight – NUKE COMPOSITING
Being a generalist I plan to be involved in every stage of the pipeline from concept design all the way through to the final edit, however I hope to eventually become a full time technical artist/animator some day so focusing on developing my rigging/Technical and animation skills are what I hope to get the most out of for this project.
(as well as something our team is incredibly proud of)
Computer GENERATED 