Character animation reel

The character emotion and needs were a bit complex. He has finally realized his mistakes and panics to correct them. Technically, the shot was a challenge trying to sell his emotions through his eyes when they're beneath such thick warping goggles.

Had lots of fun animating guinea pigs, but when they're fluffy, round, and squishy, it's hard to sell the idea of them physically interacting. In animation, the best way to solve it is to oversell the idea and I think it worked out.

Previz shot for an intro to the story. I created the set/environment and camera from scratch, then animated the raven.

This previz sequence was handed off to me for a rough animation pass on the Dwarf motion capture. The facial animation and hair were hand keyed with some exceptional challenges. The facial model and rig didn't have a lot of give to change expressions. So it was difficult trying to get anything other than a "I'm mad" expression. As for the facial hair, I animated it to match my very thick beard. It doesn't droop down from gravity and seems to have a life of it's own. In later iterations, this beard was relaxed.

Animation done off hours. I wanted to make him creepy seem out of place for a elementary classroom. The student's animations were minimized so the viewer isn't distracted. I also dressed the set and blocked in the camera. Possibly the hardest part of this shot was animating the upper body and head to keep smooth arcs. Unfortunately, this rig's torso doesn't have IK so everything was hand keyed.

This was a chance to really push lip-sync shapes and working with a soft malleable character. The set and dome were crudely modeled myself.

A simple dialogue. I didn't want to cut to the other character because I felt he was more menacing when you couldn't see him and I wanted him to really be subtle which would have made a cut pointless and distracting.

Thanks for watching my 3D character animation reel!