Monday, August 25, 2008

Home on the Range 3D - animating to music




Home on the Range was a interesting project for me, as I had the jobs of animating traditional and also animating in 3D { the background character : the steer } .

I was the lead with Lee Hepler being assistant animator and Pete Megow as our TD.
This was my first time animating in 3D for a movie.
Worked with the animation software 'Maya'.
Learned a hell of a lot from those two. Great to work with.

Here is my 1st 'march' cycle that I did at the beginning of the movie. My friend, Will Finn { one of the directors on the film }, gave me a very encouraging positive comment after seeing the test, which went a long way. 

Once again, I had the soundtrack { the song } to use to help with the timing of my animation.
The beat and rhythm of the music helped determine the speed of the characters walk or in this case ' march '.
Pete copied this march one hundred times over and plugged it into the BG's for the large crowd shots.

6 comments:

Bobby Pontillas said...

These tests are fantastic! Thanks for sharing. You seemed to had transitioned to 3D very well!

mark pudleiner said...

Thanks for the good words bobby :-)
I really loved learning 3D. It came at a good time in my career. I was just finishing the 'crunch time' on the Disney feature ' the Emperor's New Groove '.

I bought a new G4 Mac computer and a copy of 'POSER4' animation software. Late 1999.

Turned the mac power button on, opening to page 1 of the ' how to ' book and so began my 3D curve of learning ;-)

Kevin said...

Great looking stuff Mark. The cg cow looked like fun.

mark pudleiner said...

Thanks kevin :-)
The cow was a fun cycle to work on. Once again, being able to animate to the music really helped me with the timing, hopefully giving it some appeal.

Bobby Pontillas said...

Wow well thats cool to hear! I vividly remember jumping into 3D, my learning curve was absolutely dreadful! I don't think I had ever been more frustrated.

Looking back, I think it might have been because my switchover came from necessity, where as you seemed to have a real curious excitement about it!

mark pudleiner said...

HI bobby.

Well, i was curious ever since I saw the original 'Toy Story' movie. The characters, their stories and the animation. It still is my favorite Pixar film.

When I first was learning 3D at my home with the Poser4 software, after around 2 months { working at nights after my day job }, I had a walk cycle done.

Showed it to people at Disney and after a bit, was offered to head up the animation on the background character on ' Home'.

Once again being paired up with two experienced 3D artists { Pete Megow+ Lee Hepler }, my learning curve was a lot easier as those two were nothing but helpful when I had any ' technical ' questions.