2006-09-06

Finally, Some "New" Stuff!

THQ Anim Test
Way back in April, I was contacted by the folks at THQ's new Kaos game studio. They were hiring animators for their first game (which I've since learned is called Frontlines: Fuel of War) and asked if I'd like to take an animation test for them. After nearly a year of not animating I jumped at the opportunity. They sent me a very light character and an audio file. I was to animate:

1) a run cycle with a rifle
2) a death animation
3) a pantomime to match the audio file they sent

I was all jazzed about it, but I had a problem. I don't own a PC or a copy of Maya. My wife has a Mac that I had installed Maya 6.0 PLE on at one time, but I had since removed it and now the only version available for download (7.0) would not install on her old version of OSX. I had to delay a bit so that I could borrow a friends PC for a while and installed PLE on it. Finally, I was ready and animated at night after work. I think the first two parts turned out ok, but the pantomime is a prime example of my tendency to over animate. It's just a whole bunch of squirmy movements. There aren't any real holds and there's no rhythm to it. Don't do what Donny-Don't does, kids!

So in the end, they liked the animations and asked if I wanted to move to Manhattan. As much as I'd love to animate for games someday, I wasn't too keen on living in the most expensive city in North America and I felt that if I stuck at my current studio there was a good chance I'd get to animate on a TV show or even our next feature film. So I told them "no" for now at least. So far my gamble seems to be paying off.

Smaller Demo Reel
Additionally, please note that I have posted a smaller version of my Demo Reel in the sidebar. I just thought that many people find 20+ MB too tiresome to download. So now there's a tiny version that's only 2.6MB. It is the same resolution, but with lower quality, and an ugly watermark since I was using the trial version of the Sorenson Squeeze software. It should download in a jiffy.