Monday, September 24, 2007

Jojo the Juggler



And this is my very first 3D animation, using NewTek Lightwave. Again, I was a Junior in my major (senior in number of years at UMD). I was a bit worried when I started that the idea was a little too crazy. I knew nothing about 3D animation, and knew even less about juggling. And he just HAD to be on a unicycle too... So it was annoying at times, especially since I never quite grasped the concept of rigging (I do now, but I didn't then).

I made his mouth too wide from the start, so now he's in a perpetual state of excitement. But it's okay, there really isn't much time for any other emotion. Like my penguin animation, I tried to make my little gremlin dudes stand out from each other by having different personalities. I don't know how noticeable it is, but they have a "see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil" thing going on. No real reason behind that, but I have my friend Sarah to thank for that idea. It's cute.

I didn't want to overload this with effects, so I tried to keep it as technically simplistic as I could, so I could focus on the animation itself. There's some bump mapping on his shirt, but you can't even see it.


Anyway, on a side note, here's another short little doodle-animation I did a few weeks back.

3 comments:

Sarah said...

Thank you for the nod- I have no recollection of giving you this idea, but have no problem with taking all the glory for the entire project. What an inspired thought I had. Also, love that Cirque-du-Solei music you've got going on! Where'd you get that?

Dan Flynn said...

Hah, whatever. I do remember having the conversation over the phone though. You were like "no, you should really do it," and I was like "I don't even know what that means!" Eventually I caved in. But it's cute.

And I'm fully aware that you provided the music for this, along with 90% of my other projects, HOWEVER, all the original ideas were MINE!

Dave Schlafman said...

Love the juggler! Great timing...very funny.