Bouncing Balls

Beginning to think about a bouncing balls...

Working out timings from reference material, thinking about squash and stretch, and general ball based brain teasing.

The Ball and the Wall

We were asked to animate a ball desperate to see over a wall and here is the result. We began to learn about the curve editor as an animation tool, though in the end my piece worked well without the use of said tool, perhaps defeating the point of the excercise. Nonetheless I am pleased with the result and its another step forward in the world of Softimage.

*I thought it looked funny from the otherside of the wall so decided to post that here too.

Softage: The Sequel

Again, this may take a while to load. This is my second attempt at animating within Softimage. In this shot I also included a camera which was enjoyabe to play around with having got to grips with the animation of the ball. This was harder than the previous 'Croquet' piece as the ball not only had to move horizontaly but vertically too, and along a curve. This just meant adding extra keyframes and making sure the ball was touching the ground throughout! I tried to have the ball speed up down the slope as to make it a realistic movement.

Softimage: The First Animation

It may take a while to load, but here is my first attempt at Softimage animation. Given preset objects to play with, the target was to animate the croquet club(?) hitting the ball, however as I felt like experimenting and enjoyed playing with the software I took it a little further.

Potato Heads: The inside story...

Mr. & Mrs. Potato Head

Using Softimage and getting to grips with navigating round the workspace I managed to recreate the iconic climax to Gone With the Wind, and, apparently, America's "Greatest Film Quote of All Time." I used Photoshop to spruce up the images a little.

Today at University I played with Mr. Potato Head

After an introduction to Softimage the first thing to get your head around with the software is working in 3d space. No better way to do this of course than to have a play around with a dissembled Mr and Mrs Potato Head.

In all seriousness this was a good task to get used to navigating three dimensions. Initially this was a little tricky, for example, from one angle Mr Potato Head's hat sat nicely atop his spud head yet as I used the newly learned shortcuts to swing the camera around it was actually nowhere near his head, a trick of the eye. But with a little time the putting together of pieces became a little easier and I look forward to positioning the tasty couple in some kind of comic way, and posting the results over the next week.

you have saved our lives: we are eternally grateful.

And so it begins...

A life of Softimage, walk cycles, and getting lost in a glorious 3d environment lies ahead: and I cant wait to dive right in.

thats all folks.