Lightballs

Playing with lights and dynamics, tinkering to see if I am inspired to make a more abstract animation. Character animation should be pursued with caution for it can lead to insomnia and carpal tunnel...

Add colour I must!

Or do I?

EyeBrain Returns Once Again

The Eyebrain 'character' is something I have been toying with for years, and I am contemplating creating a little animation with it to practice animating in Lightwave. This semester the advanced students in my class will try to tackle animation, so I have to get up to speed.

The image on the right is also the result of testing out my new birthday present :)

Let there be Sound!

I am very honored that Jef Nassenstein, my former coach, boss and colleague from the Netherlands Film and Television Academy has created a soundtrack for my animation. I just sent him a bunch of comments. It's not easy to critique one's mentor!

Jef is now an animator himself, since his retirement he has created two animations, the first one ("Match") made it straight to the Venice film festival. He recently sent me a copy of his second animation ("Shells") which has almost painterly backgrounds that created by a clever use of textures, transparency and an enormous amount of reflections. The image on the right is a still form that great animation (FIVE times as long as my latest piece... )

Got Balls?

I am teaching a 3D Modeling class using Lightwave this Spring. Basically the same class I taught last Fall, but now I also have advanced students doing animation. They have to create the standard first assignment in animation for the next class: a bouncing ball. Here is what I created as a test.

Done! Almost...

I did not actually drop off the face of the earth, but did finally finish my animation. That is: there are a few compositing issues to correct and there is no sound yet, but the edit is final at a whopping two minutes and five teen seconds! Barely made the festival deadline I was working towards.

Hope to return to life and blog a bit more. I did live as a tourist for a week when my parents came over for a visit (Statue of Liberty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the whole none yards: see Flickr). Classes start again next week, so you can expect a post or two with Lightwave stuff.