Maya!

After many delays, a class finally got filled up this Fall semester for Animation I. Which is really just learning Maya, since we're not learning principles of animation or anything theory of the ilk that you would find in a Stanchfield or Frank & Ollie book.

I am actually surprised to see that Maya is really not that hard of a program (so far). Once you get some hotkeys down, learn what some buttons do, how to navigate, it is very manageable. We started the class following those video tutorials that pops out when you first load Maya. We then moved on to constructing a temple following the first project Maya 2008 comes with which can be found here (If you have maya 2008 open, just hit F1 and it should open up on your default browser):

http://download.autodesk.com/us/maya/2008help/wwhelp/wwhimpl/js/html/wwhelp.htm

My results are below:



The thing in the middle is just some object our teacher made up when he was showing us how to extrude objects, manipulate points using their vertex, scaling, translating, and other basic functions.

This last assignment was to research a temple and build it. I went with my favorite Greek goddess: The Temple of Athena Nike

We have started working out of AutoDesk's Foundation book right now which is pretty cool since you get to model and animate things from Sony's "Surf's up".

That's about it for now, bummed out there won't be any rigging or animation until next semester, but...it does make sense.

Sketch & Paint

Taking a painting class at the local CC, it's pretty darn awesome. Since the prof likes to have things done quickly and as efficiently as possible we use mainly an "alla prima" type technique. Which...I always kind of disliked because a lot of the "alla prima" paintings I saw always looked similar and got to looking more like a "style" than a technique and I always thought it was a way too easy process.

I've quickly learned though that it is indeed a technique and not a style and isn't necessarily "easy". Think a lot of it also had to do with the fact that my first demo was given in technique akin to the Flemish technique used around the the early 1600s. By that I mean, instead of going through seven different layers of paint, it was simply an imprimatura layer, maybe a dead layer, and finally the body layer. Guess I just grew fond of building the painting up in a systematic layer approach.

All of the paintings are done with black and white Utrecht oil paint mixed on a wooden palette with turp as a diluent on a 16x20 canvaboard using some boars hair brushes.

I also got myself one of those brown sketchbooks. I find it tougher than the regular white sheets and also made sure it was wired and not hardbound. Hardbounds are Headaches.