SIGGRAPH 2010

Gobusata shimashita!! Shiro Ninja here. My apologies for the long absence! Zer07 and I were on a top secret mission in Los Angeles. Our mission: to infiltrate SIGGRAPH and distribute as many of our demo reels as possible!

For those of you who don't know, SIGGRAPH is an annual conference held for the Computer Graphics industry. There are exhibits on emerging technologies, new software, and most excitingly, a job fair. All the big animation studios set up booths and it's a great opportunity to network! So Zer07 and I went with 200 demo reels and this is what happened:





Nobody seemed very enthusiastic about taking our demo reels or applications... so then we went to the designated "Job Fair" section thinking that everyone there was recruiting...



Before the end of the day, we each had luck with one studio.



Needless to say, our mission was a supreme failure.



We did, however, have fun with some good friends and see some beautiful sights! It was a looooong journey back to Canada. Maybe next time we'll fly!









-Shiro Ninja-

Rough Animation

Today I thought I'd show you what happened to those thumbnail sketches from my previous post. Every Last Cookie clip you've seen so far has been drawn and colored on paper. I give all of those drawings to Zero7 to scan and edit in the computer. For most animators, there's a little trial and error involved in the animation process. To check if the animation is working properly, you do numerous "pencil tests," which are basically video footage of test animation. Because I don't want to waste too much of Zero7's time, I do all of my preliminary animation in Flash first. As you'll see below, it's VERY rough... but it doesn't need to look pretty. At this stage, all I care about is how the action looks. Flash allows me to quickly draw, adjust timing, and playback the animation all at the click of a button. Once I'm happy with the action, I start working on paper, using the Flash animation test as a guide, but this time trying to make each frame look pretty.


Fight scene (Rough Animation) from Shiro Ninja on Vimeo.


Keep an eye out for some final images of this scene!
Saraba!

-Shiro Ninja-

Inspiration Candy!

01100101001...

ohayou gozaimasu...

greetings fellow interneters,

today we're going to highlight some inspirational animation for all you fans to salivate over. I personally have been waiting for this film to come out since I heard about it back in 2006. Since then this film has been like a ghost wandering the vast expanse of the internet, showing its face from time to time in scattered bits of news and constantly pushed back premiere dates. I'm talking of course about Takeshi Koike's Directorial debut "Redline".

For those of you who don't know Koike by name, perhaps you might recognize the Animatrix. Koike directed the short "World Record" about a record breaking run that turned into enlightenment for one denizen of the matrix. It was a brilliantly animated and directed piece, so fans have been greatly anticipating his first feature film. Not much is known about the plot of Redline at this time, but this is what I know.

Redline is an intergalactic race of epic proportions. The story follows main character JP as he chases love and victory on the ultimate track. Will he achieve his goals? Will he surpass the Red line? Still don't think you have any reason to check it out? Here's five...

Trailer 1:



Trailer 2:



Trailer 3:



Trailer 4:



Trailer 5:





until next time...

-zer07-

Yattaaa!! \(^o^)/

Shiro Ninja here... just finished a scene that really kicked my butt (-_-;)

When we last left our two cookie monsters, they were staring each other down and ready to strike! If you can't tell already, "The Last Cookie" is about to get intense. The truth is, I've been dreading this next sequence for months. These action sequences need to be really awesome... otherwise I will have to commit seppuku! (>o<) I was watching LOTS of anime fighting clips, wushu choreography, and some just plain gross violence, trying to get some sort of inspiration, but I just couldn't figure out this next sequence. Then, I went back to one of the original inspirations for Last Cookie: "Ranma 1/2."

"The Last Cookie" originally came about ten years ago when I was obsessed with Ranma and also watching way too much "Dragonball Z" on Toonami. Needless to say, after watching several episodes of Ranma, I finally knew what I wanted to do with this next part, and came up with these thumbnails:



Next time I will show you the rough animation phase!

Nin, nin!

Musical Miscreants (part 2)

Greetings humans! A good friend of mine by the name of Digiflesh has just released his first album. It's an industrial style with "heavy beats, aggressive synths and driving baselines." I have often slayed many the undead zombie while listening to his music.

"Digiflesh is a weapon of musical mass destruction that's armed and set to detonate on the electronic music scene!"

you can check out his debut album "Disunity" here:

www.digiflesh.blogspot.com

"Disunity" is available for download in all major online music stores.

until next time,

hen - tai!

-07-

V for VICTORY!

(a sexy bartender designed by ShiroNinja)

This post officially marks overcoming the rigging hump. The bartender rig is officially done which means we're more than half way through rigging human characters. (4 out of 7 to be exact) We also only have 1 dinosaur left to rig, which means in no time we'll be starting textures. I'll be doing a more in depth post about textures in the coming weeks.

Keep your eyes peeled for a trailer as well! It can come at any time...


powering down...

-07-

A look at Rigging

Greetings autobots! unitzer07 here with a new post on the exciting topic of Rigging!

Some of you may be wondering what exactly Rigging is. Well, a "rig" is a representation of the bones and joints in your body. Those bones and joints can be used to manipulate and animate a model. "Rigging" is the process of creating those bones and giving the artist control over them. Think "putting the strings on the puppet". Check out the video below for an in-depth look at the process of building a rig for our Sheriff character.

As always, questions and comments are encouraged and appreciated!

Rig Demo from zero seven on Vimeo.

see you, space cowboy...