Acting Reference #68

Not much to say about this clip - Anne Hathaway gave a pretty amazing performance in Les Miserables. It's a little longer than my normal acting reference videos, but since this was all one shot I didn't want to cut any of it out. Never have I seen a musical performance with this much emotion in it. Enjoy

Acting Reference #68 from Kyle Kenworthy on Vimeo.

51 Things Every Game Student Should Know

Must read for people wanting to get into games

Acting Reference #67

I wanted to talk a little bit about composition & this clip from Romeo & Juliet is a great example. Often when animators are doing dialog tests the environment & composition are an after thought. But thinking about where your characters are & what the camera is doing can add tons to your shot. Using the fish tank as a way to introduce these two characters was a really cool idea & it adds a lot to the scene. I'm curious how many takes they did to get the right fish movement...these days they just would have made the fish cg.
When tackling a test shot, bring in an environment, play with where the camera could be/where the characters could go. You can find a lot of free environment models on the internet - cgsociety does a lighting challenge & you can download the environment models they use here
I also like the little take/reaction Leo has in this shot
hmmm I have a lot of Leo clips on here...is that a problem...am I obsessed with him?...probably

Timing & Expectations

Nice post by Ken Fountain on Timing, check it out!

Acting Reference #66

Sorry for the lack of posts, been pretty busy with my class. I've been watching March Madness and these AT&T commercials are on all the time. I really liked this one in particular. The girls expression & delivery after he asks "do you believe in yourself" is awesome! Such great timing and I love the facial expression.

Promo Video

Promo video for the cgsociety class I'm teaching :D

I'm Teaching A Class

I'm going to be teaching a class on video game animation for CGsociety :) Click the picture to learn more about the class and sign up!

Acting Reference #65

First off sorry for the lack of posts, was a busy Holiday. I've gotten a number of messages about how I added clothes to the Morpheus rig for my 11 Second entry. I plan on making a how to video very soon to show this. Onto the acting...

Here's a great clip from Django Unchained. This movie is awesome..so go see it. Christoph Waltz is amazing in it, definitely steals all the scenes he's in. I love the contrast he has with Jamie Foxx. One character being more over the top & expressive and the other much more subtle  Having contrast in your characters allows them to play off each other very nicely.

Acting Reference #65 from Kyle Kenworthy on Vimeo.

Anim: Cops & Robbers - Process

Here's a process video of my 11 Second Entry & some explanation below
 

 The first clip is my reference. I plan out my camera angle & layout in Maya first, so I can shoot reference that will be close to the angle I'll see in Maya.

12 sec - The next step is blocking. For dialog shots I worked in stepped & block in the major key poses. I study my reference and also use it for very rough timing. This just helps save time, so when I start splinning in the next step the timing isn't super off.

23 sec - The next video I have splinned the beginning. I work in small sections, so I can focus my attention. I don't stay in stepped mode that long, I find it easier to switch to spline & start adding in-betweens there.

35 sec - The fourth video I now have rough inbetweens/clean up on the whole shot. This is technically my final blocking pass.

46 sec - this is my first pass polish. I start tweaking some of the timing, pushing some of the poses & adding more overlap/follow through. I also added the gun twirl in this stage, I felt the ending was lacking a bit and thought this would spice it up

57 sec - this is my second polish pass. I've added in first pass lip sync/worked on the face more. I've also added in some secondary action on the gun, but only in the first half of the shot

1:09 - this is the final polish pass on the guy. I've tweaked more lip sync and fixed anything I saw that felt "off"

1:20 - I added in the girl animation. I animated her in a more straight ahead manner, was in spline from the beginning. I knew I didn't want her to be distracting so I basically just animated reactions to what the guy was doing

1:32 - Final version. Added in a background & rendered it using Maya's Hardware Render Buffer. I definitely recommend it. It's quick and lets you add in motion blur. Basically a beefed up version of a playblast

Anim: Cops & Robbers - Final

Here's the final version I submitted...and I won!!!! woohoo!!!!
   

Anim: Cops & Robbers #4

Update, added in the girl's reations, moved the male cop a little closer to screen to fix some eye line issues, started polishing some of the lip sync
   

Anim: Cops & Robbers #3

Another clean up pass & first pass lip sync
   

Anim: Cops & Robbers #2

First pass clean up, still haven't cleaned up face
   

Anim: Cops & Robbers #1

Working on another 11 second club entry, here's the blocking so far
   

Rindin The Puffer

This is the short I worked on while interning at FatCat Animation Studios 6 years ago. I worked in the Ink & Paint Department and it was a great learning experience.

Rindin the Puffer from Robert Cote on Vimeo.

Acting Reference #64

Nice clip from The Disappearance of Alice Creed. Great movie, definitely recommend checking it out. A lot of nice, subtle, nervous ticks going on from Danny (character wearing the track suit)

Animation Pinterest

I created an Animation Pinterest page, where I "pin" awesome demo reels, cool shorts, sweet shots, anything that inspires me. Figured I would share it with other people :) I find having a one stop page like this is great for when you need to recharge those animation batteries*




* If you are actually running on batteries, then you are a robot, sorry to break the news to you.

Anim: Blow A Hole!

Animation I created using the sweet Cenk rig that came with How To Cheat In Maya 2013