Devils, Angels & Dating - Teaser Trailer

Over a year ago, I made contact with the director of an online collaborative animated film, and was cast as the voice of the two male characters. Later I was asked to record a Wonder Years-esque narration that would be woven throughout the film. The project has been progressing nicely, and a teaser trailer was just released that shows off some of the stellar work that's been done by the team, all of whom are volunteers. Take a minute (literally) and check it out!

Interview with Dorian Soto, Part 5

In part 4 Dorian talked about some of his suggestions for new animators, and in this final part Dorian continues in that vein by answering the question, "Would you recommend that someone pursue a career in animation?"

tweenMachine Tangent Error

I recently began receiving reports of a tangent-related error in tweenMachine:

// Error: Unrecognized tangent type. Use spline, clamped, linear, flat or step. //

With the help of one of the guys at work, I determined that this will occur when you're trying to add a tween key outside the range of an attribute's current keyframes; i.e. if you try to add a tween key to an object on frame 105, but the object's first keyframe isn't until frame 110. Because there's no previous key to reference for the tangent type, the tangent type in the script will remain undefined, and Maya will complain when applying the tangent.

I hope to eventually add an elegant solution for this problem. For now, the workaround is just to make sure that all objects that you're trying to tween have keys both before and after the frame where you want the tween key to appear.

Interview with Dorian Soto, Part 4

In part 3 Dorian talked about some of the differences between his first two jobs, and we begin Part 4 with another common question...

Interview with Dorian Soto, Part 3

In part 2 Dorian talked about some of the work he did on Green Lantern at Sony Imageworks, and we kick off Part 3 with a question that crosses the minds of all new animators as they approach their first job.

Interview with Dorian Soto, Part 2

In part 1 Dorian talked about his introduction to animation and some of his training, and we begin part 2 talking about his first job...

Interview with Dorian Soto, Part 1

It's been a while since I've been in here, and I apologize for the lapse in chatter. Frankly, I haven't had many ideas on what to post here, but knowing how I tend to over-edit these things when I finally get around to putting them together, I think I've largely been avoiding it when the ideas have come because I knew that I just didn't have the time.

However, something has come up lately that just may change all that. I recently started recording little vocal bits via the Audioboo service. A lot of it is just talk with friends, but I also plan on talking about various things related to animation, and will toss those up here from time to time. It's a lot easier to babble for five minutes, add some tags, and publish the recording than it is to sit down with the intention of writing a "simple" blog post (which is what this was supposed to be) and not take a half-hour to actually get the thing done. :)

One of the things that I got the bug to do with my Audioboo recordings is interview some of the folks at Reel FX. The first interview that I recorded was with Dorian Soto, who came on board as a contract animator for a couple months. Here's part 1 of that interview. Part 2 should be released shortly.

For more of my Audioboo posts, stop by my Audioboo profile page, where you can listen to them directly, and also find RSS and iTunes links for tracking them via other tools.