Goodbye Voltron and 2018

I finally finished the season finale of Voltron: Legendary Defender on Netflix. The collaboration between Studio Mir and Dreamworks Animation was fantastic! I need to watch the original but, I love this series. Allura and Lance are sweethearts despite the sad ending. I love them to pieces so, I could not help but draw them. I plan on doing a digital version in color. :) 2018 was not my best year. I had many let downs in my personal life but also exciting opportunities fly my way in my field. I pray that 2019 will be more rewarding than 2018 was. I am considering putting myself out there for more freelance projects. All of my freelance work just sort of flew my way but, I'm excited that I may be able to freelance more soon.  Happy New Years Folks! May you have a wonderful day!

Weiss Fanart Sketch

Ruby Rose - Fanart Sketch

Empherel - Finished

Bought some new courses from Aaron Blaise! :)

I just recently purchased some new video courses from Aaron Blaise. The two new ones that I have purchased are: How to Draw Human Anatomy and the Art of the Storyboard by Lyndon Ruddy.

I am super stoked to begin these new lessons! These will help me in my human anatomy drawing and character design if I know the human anatomy better and the storyboarding course will help me create great compositions for storyboards. I am stoked. These lessons have been great for me! I love the variety of courses! 

Almost there!

We are almost there! I got to add the highlights, glow for the talisman, and make the background yet. I got some new brushes to try out for the background. I am pretty stoked to try them out. :) They are Aaron Blaise's environment brushes. I thought I'd purchase them because I love his work and take courses from him. I also have Sandara's brushes and those are which I am using to create this. They were from a free download. :) I am please with how this is turning out just have a ways to go.

Empherel from Distant Skies

I finally have gotten around to painting my old 2014 sketch of Empherel. She's one of my personal characters from Distant Skies. She is the Light Beast of Empheria. I can't wait to design her brother, Venom, and Jordan who is the main character and her sky guardian form. Here is some progressional photos. I still have a ways to go but were getting there. The brushes I am using are Sandara's brushes. I really like them a lot. I have expanded my brush inventory and she had them for free download and so I checked them out. She is an excellent artist and her art is very charming to me. I am trying to pick up a thing or two from her.

Original Drawing in 2014

Drawing Touch Up 2018

Base Colors Added

Line-less Art currently

Line Art and Color currently 

I can't wait to finish her up! :)

Maya and 3DS Max Tutorials and Practice

I am continuing on brushing up my skills in Maya and 3DS Max. It will be a fun adventure and I am learning a lot of new things. I downloaded the student versions on my computer at home and I plan on making a lot of progress with modeling, animation, and etc. I've been trying to watch a lot of Youtube tutorials which have been very insightful.  I look forward to the future. :) Pssst here's some progress on a model of a character that I am working on in Maya in my free time :)

Brushing up in Maya Continued

I have recently been brushing up my previous skills in Maya so I have been watching a bunch of tutorials since it's been a while. Here is what I have watched tutorials on:

-Combine and Separate
-Using Brush Tools to sculpt meshes
-Setting up reference
-Modeling against reference
-Working with Edge Loops
-Using the Extrude Tool

These tutorials have been definitely insightful!

Brushing Up on Maya Continued...

Tonight I brushed up on these tutorials: These were some awesome tutorials and I am glad I found these on Youtube. The creator does a great job of explaining Maya and It's good to be looking back at it after a while.

-Hiding and Showing Objects
-Creating Layers
-Working with Selection Masks
-Differences between Nurbs and Polygons
-Polygonal Modeling
-Select Polygonal Components
-Using Soft Selection and Symmetry

Brushing up on Maya Continued

I have been brushing up on my Maya skills while working on Fresh Snow. I am coming at Maya with a much fresher perspective than I did in college. Here is some of the ones I have watched recently. I really like the tutorials from iLearn on Youtube. He does a great job of making it easy to understand as he walks through the program. It has been a while so I am definitely brushing up my previous skills. I can't wait to dive into all of his videos there are so many! :) Here are some of the ones that I have watched already.

-Overview of the Maya Interface
-Work with files and Maya Projects
-Navigating in Maya
-Configuring Viewports
-Using the Hotbox and Marking Menus
-Customizing the Interface
-Using Maya workspaces
-Selecting Objects
-Using the Move Tool
-Rotate and Scale Tool
-Manipulate Pivots
-Duplicate Objects
-Understanding the Channel Box
-Working with the Attribute Editor
-Reset and Freeze Transformations

Rough Exploratory Storyboards for Fresh Snow

First Rough Draft- Getting the feels 

2nd Rough Draft: Getting location placements

3rd Draft Boards coming soon! :) 

Revised Character Turnaround for Pavel

Fresh Snow- Concept Sketches

Here are some concept sketches I did traditionally for Fresh Snow. Trying to get in an essence the sense of what it is going to capture and what not. 

Fresh Snow - Half of 2nd Rough Draft Storyboards Completed and Test Story Reel

So, I finally broke in my technically 2nd rough draft but, I will call it my first for now to be more serious about it. Here is my rough storyboards for the first minute and 30 seconds of Fresh Snow. Fresh Snow is a total of 2:58. So it is about 3 minutes total. I have a lot of work to go but, this is just what I worked on today. :3 Lots of work ahead! :) Stay tuned! I have to add some things in between and what not but, it is a start.

Pavel : Revised Character Design

Here is Pavel's revised character design. I am going to be making turnarounds, expression, and pose sheets for him. I am also going to be working on my second draft of storyboards for Fresh Snow. I am going to apply all that I have learned from my new tutorials and hope it goes fantastic :) I will keep you all posted with my progress. I hope you like him! :3 He's a Siberian Roe Deer.

Aaron Blaise's : Fundamentals of Animation - Secondary Action, Exaggeration, and Appeal

The next videos that I watched today were Aaron's videos on Secondary Action, Exaggeration, and Appeal.

In the Secondary Action lesson, Aaron said that it is common for animators to confuse secondary action with follow through and overlapping action. He said they are totally different things! He said follow through and overlapping action happen due to the main action whereas secondary action is an action that is happening separately but is in support of the main action. The example he gave was a character thinking of what to do and the secondary action is that character also scratching their head. It is a second action separate but in support of the main action.  Another example is a ballerina jumping but the motion of her arms is a secondary action that is in support of her main action, jumping.

The next video I watched was about Exaggeration. In this video, Aaron mentioned there is different levels of Exaggeration within the animation world. He said animator's exaggerate animation to clarify what is happening for the viewer. One level of exaggeration is Pocahontas and bear and the hare film where the characters were so lifelike they did not have much exaggeration. But, another different level of exaggeration was Roger Rabbit where exaggeration is taken to the extreme. Aaron said it all depends on what level of exaggeration you want to use to convey your character's world. He said you must ask yourself what world does it fit into? All animation and exaggeration must be consistent for that world otherwise it will not mesh.

The next video that I watched was about Appeal. Appeal in the terms of animation means making something real that your viewer can relate to. We can find appeal in the character's acting, the look of the character, and the design of the character. It doesn't have to be all 3. Aaron said that whenever he tries to design a story character he gives them a backstory to help understand that character. For example his bear character he wanted her to be a mother character with round shapes and soft eyes. His elephant character he wanted to look fun and real chill kind of dude. So he said to ask yourself what kind of person/ character are they and how can you make it something you can draw over and over again? Appealing characters should be real, honest, and interesting Aaron says.

Aaron Blaise's Fundamentals of Animation Course: Anticipation, Follow Through and Overlapping Action, Arcs, and Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose Action

I have been on a tutorial binge been watching a lot of videos. It's been a real treat and it's awesome to see and learn so much.

The next video that I watched from Aaron Blaise was his lesson on Anticipation. He says that anticipation is used a lot! He says that because anticipation is a natural part of physics its used almost constantly in animation or at least he said it should be. Anticipation is the anticipation of a particular motion. For example when a character punches something, we anticipate the build up of the punch as he prepares to punch, before a character gets up they have to hold their hands on a chair, before a character jumps there's them going down to prepare to jump, there is lots of anticipation. He showed a demonstration where a bunny was anticipating his jump and followed through with that animation. You definitely want to feel the physics of your animation. Physics is what we do naturally all the time when we move and react. Drawings tend to be closer together during anticipation before a big move or an action of sorts.

The next video that I watched was Aaron's Follow Through and Overlapping Action Video. I learned what these were. I learned a lot of these in college but, I am stepping back through them again and re learning them from a new perspective. Aaron said things move at different timings than the rest of the animation that animators have to track such as: hair, ears, clothing, etc. Overlapping action is for example: a punch but the rest of the body moves differently than just the arm and fist which we need to take account of and make sure it is moving properly.

Follow Through is momentum follows through after the action is completed and shouldn't just stop. So for example when you are punching your body will continue to move and complete the action not just stop moving once you punch but it will complete the follow through of full action anticipated previously.

Aaron said animation we tend to think no both sides of the brain because we not only have to be creative but we break things down, observe from life, and have to think in a logical position of how physics works and how things move and react in real life. He also says once you understand all the principles of animation, you will use them constantly and sometimes you don't even think about it you will just begin to do it out of habit.

The next lesson that I watched was on Arcs. I have watched some previous videos from Aaron's scene approach videos but in this one, he goes into detail about what arcs are. Aaron says that in nature everything seems to move in an arc. To draw using arcs adds fluidity to your animations. You can use arcs in storyboarding, drawings, animations. It adds realism to how we move, walk, throw, jump, planets move, and etc. By adding arcs of motion in your animation by drawing in a set arc path it adds realism, grace, and life to your animation. It creates a beautiful path of motion for our viewer's eyes to follow. Aaron said he really learned about arcs a lot more when he was working on Disney's animated feature: Mulan.

The next lesson that I watched was on Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose Action. Aaron said that animators can animate in 2 main ways: Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose Action. Straight Ahead  is animating a scene straight on on the timeline without using key poses to guide your animation. Straight Ahead is used in Stop Motion animation where animators animate from beginning to end guiding their character and they really feel out what's happening and just go with the flow of their motion. Straight Ahead can be great just getting the feel of your character and it can be a lot of fun and a faster method however it can cause problems such as: loss of volume in animating characters. It is used a lot less.  He demonstrated an animation where Straight Ahead Action was used.

He then talked about Pose to Pose Animation. Pose to Pose is the most common method for animation. Pose to Pose is where you animate a scene using key poses and move from pose to pose to set up the scene and animation. This method is great for animating a complex character, lots of action, emotion, and dialogue. It tends to be much more accurate but you can get lost in drawings and it can become stiff if you aren't careful. Pose to Pose animators typically make thumbnails of their rough action ideas and then use those to create their key drawings later on. Aaron said that he tends to work this way. Pose to Pose helps you get a sense of direction but it can be often different than your final animation delivery. Be open to change he says.

Aaron Blaise's Fundamentals of Animation Course: Animation Demonstration Video, Slow In and Slow Out Video, and Staging Video

Today, I watched the rest of Aaron Blaise's Animation Demonstration. I watched as he used the squash and stretch method during his inbetweens. He said you can create some awesome squash and stretch during your inbetweens to really push your drawings. He said the magic of animation happens even more once you get all your hard work done and get to your inbetweens. The animation starts coming to life even more than you imagined it. Inbetweens should go pretty quick just get them done fast and accurately as my old huntington professor would say :). Aaron reminded me that be sure your keys are precise and then with your breakdowns should be and then inbetweens are a little more loose and fast. Definitely work loosely he says. He encouraged to push your drawings as much as possible. You want to be able to read your animation well and if it is a lip sync you want to see and read those lips well. Aaron adds inbetweens based on the timeline when he feels there should be one and this is interesting it makes the process seem more focused then just adding drawings. He gives a lot of life to his demonstrations making the process seem more interesting than I used to perceive it to be.
The next fundamental video that I watched today was, the Slow in and Slow out video. In this lesson, Aaron explained in more detail what slow in and slow out is within animation. Aaron said that anytime he is animating a character on the screen whether they are walking or whatever that you want to create a slow start and a slow ending to your animations. This mean that there is a slow beginning and a slow ending to your next pose. This can even apply to film in a sense as well. He says that slow ins and slow outs help it from starting harshly and stopping harshly. This creates a nice soft edge to your animations and this is the term animator's tend to use known as "Fluidity".
He said that when you create your slow ins and slow outs you start with nice tightly spaced drawings and the animation speed picks up then as its slowing down you get more nicely tight spaced drawings to end it. He says out of all the animation fundamentals this is the most used he says. He said the only time he does not use slow ins and slow outs is when a character is fighting, thrown or shot out of a canon and so on. It is not used with abrupt fast actions.

The next fundamental video that I watched was Aaron's Staging video. In this lesson, I learned more about what staging is and approach it properly. Staging is an approach to animation where you focus on how you "stage" or portray your character or scene to your viewer. You can do this in a few ways: your camera location and your character's position in relation to their location. Aaron said that you want to convey your character or scene in the best way possible for your viewer. He gave me a few examples. He explained about having 2 characters on screen, how to portray a dominant character, a desolate background with a character, lonely characters, and compressed backgrounds. The biggest thing you want to ask yourself Aaron says is : What is the action or emotion that needs to be conveyed here? He said the further your character gets on screen -the broader your action has to be. You can exaggerate moments, make things subtle by framing things tighter to get more subtext, and ideas can be more broad by accurate staging. It was a great lesson, short but straight to the key points!

Aaron Blaise's Fundamentals of Animation Course/ Complete Animation Course: Animation Demonstration Video

Today, I watched the next video in Aaron Blaise's lessons that I had purchased. In this lesson, he taught how he approaches his animation process. In this he did a lipsync character body animation. He explained that he likes to create thumbnails in Adobe Photoshop to get ideas of his key frames and it lays the groundwork for the process. Then after you get those poses drawn for the keys, you can then start working on the breakdowns. He mentioned that we need to keep things loose while you are drawing. He said definitely don't get caught up in all the details because that will mess you up. This is something I struggle with as an animator and he mentioned that and I have hope that I can continue to improve as an animator and concept artist. Once you get your keys all mapped out he said while you are working strive to create dynamic framing. Animators need to feel the acting. Acting it out yourself is encouraged he said.

The next step after creating the key drawings is to focus on the breakdowns. This can be intimidating and hard but if you focus all that hard work goes a long way. He said the way he works is after the keys and breakdowns he begins to animate straight ahead. That's just how he does it. He tried to create a slow and deliberate animation that works into an explosion of energy. He said that every shot is important. He said that you don't want to focus too much time on one drawing. That is something that I am working to get better at myself. He said moves can be big but he said you can find it. The further away the drawings, the faster the animation will be.

He said continue to think about arcs often. He said that it really helps you find yourself and your art in the process and helps your animations look pleasing to the eye. He said continue to work loosely and don't get too sloppy. He tends to go back and forth between adjusting poses and drawings. Scrubbing through your drawings is a great idea he says. I stopped at 50:09 for the day and will be continuing my tutorial tomorrow. :) Great process and I feel like I am understanding animation much better this time around than when I was in college. I have matured more and feel more focused internally so these courses are awesome! I highly recommend them! Here are some shots of his tutorial that he was showing me. :)

Aaron Blaise- Fundamentals of Animation and Scene Approach Course: Scene Review, Mouth Shapes, Breakdowns, Inbetweens, and Arcs

Today I spent my day before going to work catching up on some 2d computer animation tutorials from Aaron Blaise's Fundamentals of Animation and Scene Approach Courses that I had purchased. Today I worked on these video tutorials: Scene Review, Mouth Shapes, Breakdowns, Inbetweens, and Arcs.
In the first video, I learned about the beginning stages of creating a lip sync and how to create good key poses. I really enjoyed Aaron's animation process. It feels way more interesting and not as complicated to learn as most approaches to animation that I have learned. He puts a lot of fun and less imtimidating factors into it but keeping me in the know with animation techniques. He works in Tv Paint but, I will be using Adobe Animate for now.
He taught me how he writes words on screen in the exposure sheet. How to create good changes in pose. He showed me how he creates pose tests within key poses. He calls this a "Pose Test". In this phase we do not want to worry about words but getting the characters pose and action focused on screen. Then after that we talked about creating a smooth out with breakdowns. He mentioned we are starting to hit the dialogue at this stage creating rough ideas of mouth shapes.

In Aaron's next video, we talked about mouth shapes. He said that this takes place after the pose test. In this stage, we tackle the dialogue and add mouth shapes. This was cool to learn. As an animator I tend to focus on every little mouth shape I make when I pronounce words but, he had a great way of teaching this to me. It is different and more interesting than I expected.

Aaron said that common mistakes he sees young animators make is drawing every shape for every word. He said we don't want to focus on just letters we need to think about the sounds that our actor is making. He had a lip sync where a bear was saying "Listen to me mister" and talked about how someone was their knight in shining armor. He said animators need to focus on when the mouths are opening and closing like the Muppets. He said once you get that you are about 90% there! He went over how to use the timeline in Tv Paint. He said it just lays in the dialogue track which automatically loads into the timeline! I definitely want to get Tv Paint sometime when I get more stable financially.

He then talked about exposure sheets and frames. He explained the nature of how they work and that you can write the words right in but, he tends to choose the wave form when he does it. He said this is how he did things at Walt Disney Animation Studios. He says we always make our mouth shapes before we make a sound from our mouth. He said sometimes it can be up to 8 frames before we say it. He says that 1-2 frames ahead we hit the dialogue if not longer. He says its better to hit the dialogue spot on or a little bit ahead than later. He said 10-12 frames ahead can look spot on too depending on the dialogue! I used to think that was unheard of so this was such a valuable lesson for me.
The next thing he did in this tutorial was that he added breakdowns. He turned on his light table and sketched it. He said the breakdowns are some of the hardest to do. He said it helps you create the flow of the drawing where it will go and the inbetween of key drawings then after you get your breakdown you can tackle those inbetweens which he said are much easier to tackle! He said while doing this we need to focus on creating arcs and slow in and out with our drawings and track that movement of our characters.

It was amazing watching him animate his bear character. He made animation seem less complicated to me. He said you want to hit your consonants hard! He said focus on the way that your actor is saying the words. They don't necessarily pronounce everything the same way that many people do. Everyone talks differently and that is a key focus that makes animators so special. We can bring to life a person or a character and make their dialogue really come to life! He mentioned and gave tips on how to deal with quiet dialogue. You want to ease into the dialogue and may have to hold poses. He said a great way to work is to have little thumbnails on the right screen if you are working dual monitor and your animation timeline on the left side. I didn't check but, I believe that he is a lefty too! Rock on to that! So am I! He mentioned that you want to hit your poses gracefully. Slow ins and slow outs make it smooth and make it graceful. He said that thumbnails keep your animation under control and give it direction within your work. He said after this stage is when he would take his work to a director. He said then he would put inbetweens into it. He said slow action tends to be drawn on 2's. 24 frames per second. He said that the human eye accepts gaps as they are and that was what was so cool about animation which I completely agree with him!

He game me wonderful insight about timing animations and the space timing between drawings. He said 12 frames produce jittery animations but we could accept it and he said 3 frames or 4 per drawing is choppy! He said that is a big no no within animation. I will keep that in mind. I may...or may not have done that in college. So thank you Aaron this is super duper helpful! He said that you want to make sure that you are animating ahead with your work. We need to focus on making the character make sounds before we see or hear them. The big takeaway was : "Don't just animate all words but SOUNDS!"

The last video that I watched for today was the Breakdowns, Inbetweens, and Arcs video where he demonstrated how to do these on his animated bear turn. He had a bear that moved his head to the right and blinked during that head turn.

I enjoyed his demonstration very much. I watched him draw his breakdowns. He was drawing on 2's. He also demonstrated how to create "Charts". This is what I've been dying to learn! Charts indicate where inbetweens go.

He mentioned there are two chart styles that he knows of and uses often and they are : Halves and Thirds. He said its like a sideways bird and has listed numbers which represent our key frames breakdowns and inbetweens. I feel much more knowledgable with these now. He used the halves style.

He said with halves - the inbetweens will get progressively further away from each other. How do we do this he helped demonstrate it for me. Very insightful here! Basically its a chart for your keys, breakdowns and the inbetweens for those. He said a good way to animate using arcs is to make and use anchor points like tracking a nose or a chin to follow your character to create wonderful movement.  He gave more insight but due to lack of time I will pass on writing it all but great and wonderful stuff here! :)

Fresh Snow- Pavel - Anatomy Exploration

Fresh Snow- Background Exploration

Fresh Snow- Pavel: Character Exploration

Fresh Snow-Pavel- Character Exploration Sketches

Forest Speedpaint - 1 Hr

So, I did another speedpaint. This time I tried a forest. I spend an hour on this one and the image reference that I used can be found on Getty Images, a royalty free photography website.

Mountain Poppies- 45 Minute Speedpainting

I forgot to post this but, I did this a few days ago. I did a speedpainting that was 45 minutes. I am trying to continue working on speedpainting landscapes and environments. 

Autodesk Maya 2016 Tutorials- Parenting and Grouping

The next set of tutorials that I went over today was the Parenting and Grouping tutorials. I learned a better understanding of how parenting and grouping works and how to set those controls.

I learned that Parenting is the action of placing objects into an organized group. The leader is the parent and the followers are its children. I learned how to parent two cubes to a sphere. I learned how to create relationships and how to break those relationships within Maya. I also learned how to re-parent items.

I learned how to move a pivot point that has been previously set up. I then learned about another form of parenting called grouping. It is the same except with grouping you get a null node - a transform that does not have any geometry it does not render.

I then learned about hierarchy with grouping. The benefit with this is that you have this null object in your scene that you can't select in the view port. This helps so you don't accidentally select something that you don't need. I learned how you use certain keys to navigate and select through your hierarchy tools. 

Next up, I learned how to break objects that are grouped from the groups. I learned that you should stay highly organized with your groups so that it does not get confusing.

Camera Control, Projects, Nodes and Transformations- Primitive Objects - Autodesk Maya 2016 Tutorials

I dived more into Maya this afternoon. I learned quite a bit and I loved the walk through a lot. It made Maya seem less stressful and complicated to me.  I can say I definitely understand it better this time around than I did in college. I wrote down all the hot keys for doing this but, I will give you the cliff notes version of what I learned.

Today I learned about camera control. I learned about what the space bar does within Maya and how it will toggle the camera settings. I learned about view ports and how to make those active. I learned about how to open the hyper graph. I learned how to move, control, and navigate cameras. This part of the lesson was helpful especially. I didn't realize that there was a difference of moving the camera and the button combo that allows you to pan a camera. I learned about the keys in which you move the camera, the select camera button, the pan camera button, the zoom in and out feature, and how to scroll in and out fixed in settings. I learned how to make an object come into view. I learned about how if you hit certain keys that it will frame everything to make it helpful to navigate our world in Maya. I learned that the camera moves in the middle of our objects. You can press a key and frame a selection. When you do this, the camera will center its orbit around the object itself. I learned how to zoom into a specific region of an object or area and how to move out and in easily. This was super helpful. I definitely have a better understanding of the way I was moving in Maya and how in college it was easily able to mess up a scene with a single click if I wasn't careful.

The next video that I watched was about creating Projects. This video helped me learn how to set up Maya's directory paths to load scenes and data properly. Maya has its own way of doing things in a very particular way. I learned about setting up a project and to make sure I save in the appropriate directory. I learned about Maya's directory structure.  I learned about creating a project and the folders I should be especially concerned with when creating and working on projects. I learned about checking on the project to make sure it was created properly. This one I remembered somewhat from college. It has definitely been about almost 5 years about since I have used Maya.

The next video that I learned was the more lengthy video. I took a lot of notes in this section. I learned about Nodes & Transformations - Primitive Objects. I learned these are a great way to start building an object. I first learned about the 4 Primitive Objects: NURBS primitives, Polygon Primitives, Volume Primitives, and Subdivision Surface that is located in the Polygon Primitive section.

I then when into detail learning about each of the primitive objects. I learned how to break off the menu and use it at my fingertips on the screen. I learned that NURBS stands for : Non Uniform Rational B Splines. These are primitive objects that are made up of curves. The surface of a NURB is an approximation of what it actually looks like. I learned about the properties of NURBS. I learned about what interactive creation is. If you turn this on..then it allows you to build your own custom NURBS of your own height, width, etc. It is a handy feature but, it does add values to our object. It can mess up te scale values as well. The next part that I learned about was Polygon Primitives. I learned that these are the most used because they are flexible, versatile, and they have the largest amount of tools to manipulate them. Polygons definitely has a lot more geometry and edges compared to the NURBS. Unlike the NURBS, the Polygon's vertices actually sit on the surface. NURBS are approximation where as, Polygons are not.

I then learned about Volume Primitives. The volumes are very different. These are not used a lot. I learned that they allow us to extract information from it and use it for something else. For example: You take a volume and then assign a certain type of material to assign to the volume. Volumes are used to create something that is not so tangible such as fog, smoke, etc. With volumes, you cannot go and change its shape but you can however use transformation tools. There may come a time where you will need them depending on what you are working on.

I learned about the 4th Primitive that does not show up on its own. If you go to Polygon primitive, you have the ability to create a subdivision surface. A subdivision surface is a hybrid of both polygons and NURBS. You can get there by hitting the 3 key and go to the vertex and the vertex is actually sitting out not as far but an approximation. It allows us to exploit the benefits. Nurbs have very smooth surfaces. Polygons can be difficult to get a smooth surface. The reason it is hard to get a smooth surface is because we have finite control of every single point. It stays very smooth when bending vertices. You can toggle between the polygon and subdivision. If you click on it and it will go back to that polygon surface and go back to 3 it will go back to the smoothness of a Nurb.

In conclusion, I hope that I can continue to learn and work my way through the Maya interface so that I can continue to work and expand my animation knowledge. I want to be a well rounded concept artist and animator who knows how to work in 3D software as well and possibly Zbrush soon too. The next set of tutorials that I have are: Transforming objects, Parenting and Grouping, and the Hypergraph, and Outliner. I have many more after that still but, that is what is ahead of me.

Autodesk Maya 2016 Tutorials - Introduction to Maya 2016 course, Maya Interface Overview, Hotbox and Marking Menus tutorials progress

So, this month I have revisited learning 2D animation and 3D animation. I am watching 2D animation tutorials with Aaron Blaise with his Fundamentals of Animation course and his Scene Approach course. But, on my own through Youtube video lessons from Todd Palamar. He goes through a very introductory level walk through of Maya. Today, I watched 6 videos. During his course I will learn how to model a character, learn to texture it, rig it, and animate it as well as render it. So, I have decided I am going to model, texture, rig, and animate my cute little creature (as seen below) - Droodle.

Here is what I have learned and gathered. I watched the Introduction to Autodesk Maya 2016 video. In this video he discussed What Maya is how long the program has been out. The next video I watched is what I can expect from the courses he has on learning Maya. His tutorials are going to teach the basic walk through of what Maya can do based on its individual objectives. Our focus is learning the Menu, Modeling, Animation, and Rendering and based on those lessons we will focus on those objectives while learning key ways to utilize Maya for those purposes. Todd Palamar has written books on Maya and has worked in the industry which is awesome. He has written books on how to use Maya such as: Maya Studio Project - Dynamics and he has also written the series - Mastering Maya book series. You can even find his work online and learn more from him at SPeffects.com. Pretty cool stuff!

Then I learned what Maya Help is all about. He taught me how to use those resources where to go and what kind of benefits it can help you learn about. You can even access the Maya Learning Channel. This will be helpful if there are things I want to discover later on or need help learning about that may be more complex than what he is currently showing me.

The next video I watched and learned about was the Maya Interface Overview video. In this video, Todd walked through the Menu sets, He discussed Snapping Tools briefly, Render tools, The view port view, how to access the different views, The channel box and layer editor, the left toolbar and it's functions. He showed me how to hide the layers and re enable them. He showed me the panel layouts and their basic presets. He walked through the Timeline and editing tools and the script editor and output window.

Todd's next video talked about Hotbox and Marking Menus. He taught me the ability to bring up workflow in our work space. He showed me how to use that by using the space bar. He taught me about Hotbox controls and how this function of the menu worked. I love the way he explains Maya he gives an overview without making it too overbearing. He talked about content sensitive menus and I learned the hot keys for zooming closer to an object and the move and rotate tools and their hot keys. These videos have been very beneficial for me. I hope that I can further watch his videos and continue to learn. Next up, I will be learning : About Camera Control, Projects, Nodes and Transformations-Primitive Objects.

1 minute figure studies

Tonight I spent some time drawing the human figure again. I am going to try and draw the human figure daily so that I get a better feel at it. I enjoy it but, drawing the human anatomy isn't my strongest strength. I am an animal and creature drawer and that is what I enjoy drawing most but, I know that with practice I can get much better. :) I also want to work on creating unique characters, facial features, and the male anatomy especially since I am not as used to that. I am hoping that life drawing will help out with that a lot. It will also help me build a library of anatomy that I can pull from when I am drawing and animating. 

Quick Sketch Before Work