(00:02) 1. Cinematic Vignette from Amazon's Crucible game. "Rahi & Brother". I animated the little floating robot named "Brother" (keyframed). Total short was 1min, 15 seconds.
(00:23) From Amazon's Crucible game. A series of Stomper AI animations I keyframed. I animated a whole set of these including various idles/ambient life behaviors, other death anims, etc. Stomper Gallop (keyframe) Stomper Walk (keyframe) Stomper death A (keyframe) Stomper death B (keyframe)
Mocap polish shots from Amazon's Crucible game. These are a bunch of emotes. Was given mocap footage (as seen on the right side) and had to make the shot fit within 6 seconds.
(00:52) Ajonah emote kata staff (mocap polish) - I used nCloth sims on the hat and ears using custom proxy geo, then baked back down to controllers. If there's a controller on a joint, I will make an attempt to put some animation on it. Couldn't count on the engine to simulate it properly right away, so I did it in Maya and baked it down.
(01:03) Sazan emote violin. I like the little vibrato of the fingers on the neck. Had to add my own controller (locators with aim offset) to the rig to get it to move the way I wanted. I tend to add things like geo or other controls to help make a motion more realistic (and easier / precise).
(01:08) Rahi crouch idle breaker (mocap polish) - Brother (little robot) was keyframed. Was given no direction on this other than "Rahi pushes Brother away". The mocap looked horrendous, so I tweaked it. Did a bunch of these crouch idle breakers (5 or 6). They were as complicated as a full blown emote and never got plugged into the game. That's life.
(01:14) Ajonah emote tube dancer (mocap polish). This was a looping animation. I trimmed it here. I like the overlap I put in her limbs. Hat flaps and ears sim'd with nCloth again & baked down.
(01:18) Ajonah emote bubble gun (mocap polish). I keyframed balloons for vfx reference. Fun little emote. I was given this assignment after they had completed the facial rig, so I added some animation there. "Pop!"
(01:23) Ogre log climb - this was from an Animation Mentor assignment. I still kinda like it.
(01:26) Source Filmmaker (SFM) short I made back in 2012 called "Scout vs. Witch" (vimeo.com/48605505). For the Witch I Z-brush sculpted some phonemes/visemes for her so she could say her lines. Yes, I'm Intimately familiar with .qc files, studiomdl.exe and the like. The entire process was an exercise in pain. I have never recovered.
Scout vs. Witch (September 2012). This video was created using the video-games Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead 2, along with Source Film Maker.
I had not yet become a professional animator at this time. I was a recent graduate of Animation Mentor, but was still struggling to land a job (took 2 years after graduating to find a job). So with time on my hands, I wanted to create an action oriented short movie with some dialog. Looking back, I think creating a simple 10-15 second animation would have been the better way to go (for landing a job). But with this, at least I've got a cool little video to look back on.
This video also lead to another tour and lunch at Valve. My hosts were Wade, Mike, and a German guy (primary engineer on SFM?) whose name I've forgotten.
This video also led to me starting my professional career in Animation. Thanks Microsoft! (Dave, Chad, Colin).
I created this in about 2 months back in July 2005. This was years before I became a professional animator.
It uses dialog from the movie A Few Good Men (1992).
The characters and tools used were from the video-game Half-Life 2 (from Valve). I used the Source Engine SDK (editing tools used by the creators of the game), which included a map editor (Hammer) and a tool for animating character faces (Face Poser aka Choreography Tool). Additionally I used command line tools to compile the character models (studiomdl), necessary for importing your own custom body animations. I authored the body animations in Autodesk's 3DS Max.
This short won an award at the 2005 Machinima Film Festival for Best Virtual Performance.
Some other insights on this video, I published it online the day before I was heading out for the San Diego Comic-Con (2005). I attended the show without any knowledge of what was happening with this video. Apparently it created a little buzz. On my last day at the SDCC, I ran into an artist in Artist Alley named Bay (he worked at Valve). I don't know why I approached his table, but I guess he had some Valve related art on display. We ended up chatting. He had seen my video (and so had Valve)!
Cut to a few days later, I get an invite to Valve in Bellevue to come hang out and have lunch. My guide there was a guy named Bill. Chatted with the animation cabal over lunch.
I'll write some more later...
warthog jump (2002)
WartHog Jump (Feb 3, 2002). The original Halo stunt video. I created this over a weekend back in early February 2002 with an Xbox, Halo, a VCR, and my old blue & white Mac running iMovie.
Some kind words from Marty O'Donnell (Halo Music Composer/Director): https://youtu.be/oFEzO_z5WS4?t=6282 whole interview worth checking out.
I'll write some more stuff. included a visit to Bungie HQ.