How To Train Your Dragon: Flight School

Great discussion with DW Simon Otto and Paleontologist/Professor Stuart Sumida on HTTYD. My brother Henry, had to complete Flight School going into How To Train Your Dragon 2 and from his stories it was quite challenge to animate. A great walk cycle can be difficult to achieve, I can't imagine animating flight. So many aspects and little subtleties to a bird's flight....The smallest change in their wings and tails affect their flight and are constantly adjusting. It's definitely a film that captured flight so incredibly well!! One of the reasons I love the 1st film. Can't wait for the 2nd!

Taotie Escape

There was so many great character rigs while my time on Kung Fu Panda: Legends Of Awesomeness. This one in particular looked so fun, I really had the urge to animate something with it. Here is the result.

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Kickball Fail

Here's the final pass for the Kickball animation. Had fun messing about with some smear frames on the head shake. Cheers!

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Kickball Fail (Blocking Pass)

Modeled this character for simple animation exercises. No facial rig, no body and no arms. Just head and legs. Similar concept to AnimationMentors Ballie rig. The animation was inspired by a YouTube video of a kid trying kick a ball extremely hard toward his friend's back. But of course, ball ricocheted off his friends back heel and slammed him instead. Thought it made for a great, simple and short animation. Cheers!

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Cop Lean (Final)

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Cop Lean (BlockingPass)

This is an animation that was done with the props and character mentioned in my last post.
A cop leans on his car and takes a sip of his coffee. Its in the Blocking Stage. Cheers!

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Toyota 2000GT

The Toyota 2000GT:
A beautiful car. This is from an animation that I worked on. I did not model the car, the original model was acquired at Animium from creator Phoenix. Had to make some modifications to simplify the aesthetic to my liking. I also modeled the sirens and horn on top of the car to convert it into a "cop" car for the animation scene .

The Cop:
I modeled and rigged the character. Everything except for the head. The head is from the Norman rig, with its blendshapes and facial controls ready to go. Made some modifications to the head with a corrective blendshape. Then modeled/rigged the character and finished by attaching the pre-existing head setup to the new rig and voilà!!

Here's just a couple of quick clay renders of the animation scene. Cheers!