I just organized myself to schedule when and what times I’ll be working on animation.
Daily IS NOT going to happen, even if I wanted to. I found, over a lifetime of writing, putting the pen down and doing something else is the best method to coming up with fresh ideas. Plus, still hammering away at that Bachelor’s degree. God, I hate these classes (Information Technology). I only picked it up because it was the path of least resistance toward a six-figure salary. I’m already a fish in this water with IT anyway. At the time, I wasn’t any closer to a career in animation, so why not.
I just have six months to go!
Wednesdays, thus far, seem to be the best days to work on animation as my other degree classes start new sessions on Wednesdays. There’s this window of Wed, Thur and Fri the work isn’t as intensely needed. Things are due by Friday lightly, but a hard deadline on the following Tuesday. So, you see I have a weekend to get a lot done. Sunday night/Monday I’m usually crunching and the quality of my papers drops considerably.
Anyway, it’s animation time. Not much accomplished this morning yet. I thought it over for a few days and was certain I needed to lock the trombone sliding piece in one translated direction. Which I did and you can see in the video:
Locking it on the X-Axis, I made sure no matter what I’m doing, I won’t have the slider falling off the trombone in the wrong directions. No rotations. No scale. No Y. No Z. Just X and that works fine. Next, I’ll get Jazz Guy in his first pose with the Trombone in the right hand positions. Oh! Just remembered…I need that plunger!
It just occurred to me. I hope AnimSchool covers a good rendering/shading process. I think that will be in the ‘Look’ term of the course. My Maya rendering has never been strong as it is with 3DS Max and Vray. This Student Edition of Maya that I have comes with Arnold. Something I never really touched. I had some experience with MentalRay back when it came with Maya. Powers that be fucked everyone making it a separate ‘thing’ — thus even when I was using bootleg versions of Maya it was a bitch trying to load MentalRay separately after the change.
Let me tell you: it’s been reassuring to finally use a copy of Maya I didn’t have to get pirated. If it crashes, holy shit … I can actually speak to tech support! Legit! lol.
The only complaint I have is the annoying “Student Edition” popup when I save and open files. Almost want to go back to skull and crossbone-ing it.
Update:
Added plunger and microphone.
