Phil Willis Sketchbook

Phil Willis Animation Website Launched

2009-07-24T22:50:00.000-07:00

It's taken me a while, but I've finally finished the new-look Phil Willis animation website.

Complete with bio, contact details, animation showreel and a list of projects and events I've been working on - it's the best place to see what I'm up to at any given point.

I'll still keep posting work-in-progress on the blog here, but for "finished" animation, check my personal website first: http://www.PhilWillis.com.au

Egyptian scene - final

2009-06-12T19:17:00.000-07:00

It's done! After a lot of simplification, here is the final shot.

I still think there are some changes I could make, but I'm happy with it for the time being.

And so ends another class at Animation Mentor. Now I just need to update my showreel and I'm done. For a week.

Next class: Intro to Acting ...

Egyptian discovery week 2

2009-05-31T05:57:00.000-07:00

After some notes from my mentor, she really wanted me to change the first and last parts.

I'm so glad for Nicole's feedback too. I think it's a much better shot.

Although - I still have concerns that with the 200 frame limit I'm going through all the ideas I want to cover very quickly.

A physical pharoah shot

2009-05-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

This is my last shot for this class on advanced body mechanics.

I really wanted to do a heavy push, just because it's one of the key physical tests you need to get right in order to correctly show the weight of objects in your animation.

Getting the right reversals in the spine and showing the strain are important.

My set design is pretty basic at this stage, but given how little time I have, I'd rather get the animation blocked in first.

Final commando shot

2009-05-17T06:05:00.000-07:00

Wow - well there was no doubt this was the hardest shot I've had to do yet.

So much physical action, and so many things to pay attention to.

If I get a chance I wouldn't mind going in and really polishing the final 10% into this one, but all things considered I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Command climb

2009-05-03T19:53:00.000-07:00

Here's the first blocking pass of my next shot.

It's my first time doing a run, as well as putting some physical climbing and jumping in there as well.

Lots of great action in there. Hopefully I can pull it off and make it look realistic and entertaining.

Weight lifting final

2009-04-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty happy with the way this one turned out.

It was interesting that for once, there were not that many changes in poses or timing between the first blocking pass and the final.

Definitely makes it easier to get it right early, rather than trying to fix it in subsequent passes.

Weight lifting refining

2009-04-19T06:03:00.000-07:00

This week was the first time I've taken something from blocking to splined where I didn't see the snappy timing disappear into a mess of floatiness.

I definitely think the attention to poses in the blocking really help. I made sure I was very happy with all the poses before converting to splines, because it's almost impossible to fix your poses once you're in splined mode.

Weight lifting

2009-04-12T06:08:00.000-07:00

First assignment in class 3 of Animation Mentor, and we pretty much have a free rein to animate any three physical shots we'd like to do.

My emphasis this class will be to come up with three physical shots that cover some of the more advance body mechanics concepts: lifting a heavy weight, running, pulling and pushing a heavy object.

The toughest part this week was coming up with the technical rigging in Maya to bind the character's hands to the bar and have them rotate with the weight in a believable way.

Animation Mentor Class 2 Progress Reel

2009-04-10T06:13:00.000-07:00

Phil Willis Animation Mentor Class 2 Progress Reel March 2009

Well - this is it! My progress reel after just six months studying at Animation Mentor.

I'm so happy to see how far I've come in such a relatively short amount of time.

Class 3 is just around the corner, so no rest for the wicked - I have to keep at it and on to "Advanced Body Mechanics".

Ballet dance - part 1

2009-03-01T02:57:00.000-08:00

I have to say - I've never really been a fan of ballet, but when I started scrubbing frame-by-frame through some reference footage of Baryshinikov I was stunned.

Every single frame stands alone as a brilliant pose.

My job of blocking was definitely made a lot easier by taking my reference from a bona fide genius.

In fact, my biggest concern was that if I rendered it too similar to the performance it wouldn't look "real" because what the dancer achieves is truly spectacular.

Steep climb - polishing

2009-02-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

I don't know if I'd called this "final", but I'm happy to say that at least some of the ideas are coming together and this is starting to look decent.

Animation (like art) is not finished, merely abandonned. And I think I'm happy to abandon this where it is.

Great stuff planned for next week. Stay tuned.

Stair climb - part 2

2009-02-15T21:48:00.000-08:00

Got some great feedback from fellow students and my mentor who suggested some massive changes - most of which required re-blocking and big acting changes.

Fortunately the physical stuff, like the hips and spine are probably okay - but the biggest problems with this piece are the ideas.

Clearly I need to spend more time planning, before getting into the animation.

Steep climb part 1

2009-02-08T22:00:00.000-08:00

The idea with this assignment is to experiment with a full torso.

I was drawing on my experience in my recent trip to Tasmania and climbing Cradle Mountain here.

I really want to convey the exhaustion of almost being at the summit - but still being so far away.

With each new character and aspect we get to work with makes me so glad I didn't just jump in the deep end and start animating dialog tests with full character rigs with eyes, mouth, fingers etc.

It would have been a nightmare.

Museum Blunder Final

2009-02-01T03:42:00.000-08:00

After many hours, here it is. The final rendered shot.

Spent most of the last few hours tweaking the jump timing, and smoothing out all the arcs and getting some overlap in the feet.

Didn't get time to animate a smashing Ming Dynasty vase - but at least the simple ball prop doesn't draw too much attention to itself and away from the animation.

Museum Blunder Part 2

2009-01-24T03:34:00.000-08:00

Got lots of great feedback from fellow students and my mentor Jon on this shot.

The best advice was to change the weight shift in the hips and the rotations. Plus there are some timing tweaks to get more of a backwards sneak feel.

Museum Blunder Part 1

2009-01-18T16:27:00.000-08:00

First assignment of the year - and this time we have a bit more scope to be creative and add some character to our shots.

In this shot, the only compulsory portion was for the character to perform a 180 degree jump. I added the backward sneak just for character and practice - plus I can get some free feedback from my mentor on the walk as well as the jump.

It's only in the planning/blocking stages, but it's here that I wanted to get the timing right.

Still have a lot of work to do, but I think all the basic ideas are being communicated.

Progress Reel - Dec 2008

2008-12-19T02:04:00.000-08:00

Here is my progress reel after finishing class 1 at Animation Mentor.

Bring on class 2!

Exhausted pose

2008-12-06T23:34:00.001-08:00

I was the live model for this sketch - and I assure you: this is exactly what I look like after a hard day at work.

Exhausted

2008-12-05T02:28:00.001-08:00

Oh believe me. I am totally feeling this week's assignment.

Absolutely, 100% exhausted.

My first walk cycle

2008-11-30T04:02:00.000-08:00

I had to post this, because it's just that magic moment when something you've been working on for a while suddenly starts to have a life of its own.

It's my first walk cycle and after many iterations I'm finally starting to enjoy the look of it.

Hopefully it will be the first of many. Actually - I need to do at least one more before the end of the year.

Showing concern

2008-11-27T21:26:00.000-08:00

After looking at my video reference, I had a few different options for conveying the emotion of "concern".

There are so many ways you can go: concern for someone who is hurt, concern about the future, concern that your friend is about to leave the house in an ugly Hawaiian shirt.

Here are a couple of takes on concern for a hurt animal.

I like this standing pose, because it's all there - curve of the spine, the involuntary touching of the face, but there is a lot of action all bunched up near the neck and shoulders.

This one solves the problem of the hand, elbow, shoulder, neck all crowding the same area and gives more negative space, and pushes the line of action in the spine - but I think it loses something in the translation.

A feat of strength

2008-11-23T18:29:00.000-08:00

For each week until the end of the Animation Mentor term, we'll be doing poses showing conveying different emotions and physical states.

This week we have physical strength - although I've seen some other really great ideas from other students so I might see if I can get a few other poses and ideas out there too.

Pendulum with overlapping action

2008-11-09T11:54:00.000-08:00

No more bouncing balls again - ever!

Actually that's not strictly true. Almost every animation contains at least some of the bouncing ball principles, but this assignment was all about one of the other basic ideas in animation: overlapping action.

In this case, I started by animating the top of the pendulum, and gradually work down through the joints to give a floppy overlapping action to the character.

Obstacle course

2008-11-02T11:50:00.000-08:00

This week's assignment was to animate a ball moving through an obstacle and adding some squash and stretch.

It really makes you appreciate the fundamentals - because this is harder than it looks to get right.

Truthfully - I can still see problems with it, but hopefully I'll get a chance to revise it.

Devastation pose

2008-10-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

Here's the devastated pose I came up with.

The model has such a massive head, that I had to rotate the camera around to this angle, because his outstretched arm was not being seen.

Sketches for a devastated pose

2008-10-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

I've been working on a pose that portays "devastation".

Here is some of the sketches I made. There are a few I like - but I think number 7 is my favourite.

Two balls of different weight

2008-10-26T14:32:00.000-07:00

The assignment for this week was to animate two balls with different weights.

Communicating weight is sometimes about how fast the ball is falling (even though this doesn't really hold true in real world physics). But it's also about the number of bounces and the height of the bounces when it impacts.

One thing I'm definitely learning is that you can't just plug in the physics equations and expect it to look good. You have to "sell" the effect by slightly exaggerating the actions.

It's taken me a while to realise that animation is not the recreation of life - any more than painting is just duplicating a scene. It's about conveying information that is larger than life - but that still makes people go "oh yeah - I've seen that before".

Tricky stuff.

Bouncing Ball Revision

2008-10-23T14:28:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to not post every single bouncing ball exercise I do, but here is one after the critique from fellow students and my mentor.

The big thing he picked up was the rotations and the weight of the ball towards the end - which hopefully I've fixed.

AM103 - Excitement Pose

2008-10-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

This week's assignment was to convey excitement in a pose.

I think this one reads just fine - although it's pretty cliched.

I'd love to do a slightly more subtle one, where he is just leaning forward (maybe watching a sporting event) and just really getting into it.

AM103 Sketches

2008-10-18T19:40:00.000-07:00

Just some sketches in preparation for this week's Stu pose.

This week we're conveying excitement - so I think I'll go for number 13.

Improvements to AM102 assignment

2008-10-12T05:57:00.000-07:00

After some very helpful comments from my felow classmates - I made this modification to the pose for the assignment.

For me - it's definitely less stiff and has more appeal.

Thanks to all that commented.

AM Class102 - Stu Pose

2008-10-08T02:48:00.000-07:00

This is pose 6 from the sketchbook - but posed using our Animation Mentor character called "Stu".

The funny part is he actually looks like my mate Stu. Well - at least their hair is the same. Non-existent!

AM Class102 - sketching in real life

2008-10-07T02:43:00.000-07:00

All I can say is: thank heavens for having done at least some life drawing in my deep dark past.

Otherwise this week's assignment of sketching people live (not from television or magazines) would have been a true nightmare.

As it is - it still takes a lot of courage to overcome the fear of being observed drawing in public.

My tip #1 - do it while drinking coffee and reading a newspaper. That way if people come sniffing and snooping around - you can cover up!

Jump assignmnent

2008-09-10T06:29:00.000-07:00

I was getting a little frustrated with the 3D animation process - so I decided to try mapping out this jump in 2D first.

I'm not sure I have it yet 100% but it sure helped to just do it in a fun way first - and then I'll worry about it in 3d later.

Choice of tools - all important.

HSC Art Challenge 2008

2008-09-08T04:42:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit slack of late with my animation, because I've been thinking a lot about an art competition at work.

The Honeywell Software Centre 2008 Art Challenge is in full swing. I designed the poster, and I'm hoping my inspiration doesn't just stop there.

I'll probably submit a comic strip or three - but what I'd really like to do is submit a short animation.

We'll see how that goes.

Gotta have balls

2008-08-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

You gotta have balls to be an animator.

At least that's what I'm learning at the moment. Balls, balls and more balls.

And just when you think you've had more than your fair share of balls. You get some more balls.

Okay - I think that's enough with the balls.

Alright - one more: balls.

Night of the Living Dead - Reanimated

2008-08-27T21:09:00.001-07:00

I'm thinking about joining a group of animators in re-creating George Romero's classic zombie flick Night of the Living Dead.

Each of the animators selects a piece of the film to animate, then all the results will be stitched together (Frankenstein's monster style) to form a new version of the classic film.

More details

Bouncing ball with rotation

2008-08-25T21:04:00.000-07:00

Just a quick post to show an updated bouncing ball assignment I posted for the Animation Mentor Maya Springboard class.

Nothing too exciting here, although I was shooting for a fairly realistic bounce. Not too cartoony.

Getting the rotations right required a bit of maths (2 pi r anyone?) but I got there in the end.

Assignment 3 - posing and staging

2008-08-12T05:41:00.001-07:00

This was a render I did from Animation Mentor Maya Springboard assignment 3.

Here was where we got to pose our figure, plus create some props, a set and insert some cameras to get some storytelling angles.

Next steps will be to tinker more with the textures and lighting.

Assignment two

2008-08-09T14:12:00.000-07:00

Assignment two was just to get a basic figure in Maya and to set up the hierarchy so that the puppet moved as a unit.

It was stuff that I had done before in a previous class, so I decided to splash out and add a bit of extra flare - like some colours and textures.

The next assignment is to build a set and some props for the character.

Inspiration from Ralph Bakshi

2008-08-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

Some great words of inspiration and a kick in the guts from Ralph Bakshi - a true animation pioneer and iconoclast.

Animation Mentor Assignment 001

2008-08-05T14:44:00.001-07:00

This is the first assignment for the Animation Mentor Maya Springboard course. Just a simple exercise to create a few NURBS primitives and stack them on a shelf.

Rudd in your eye

2008-08-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

Spent some of the weekend messing around in Flash - just to remind myself how to use the tools.

Add a moving mouth and I might have a puppet for a future political cartoon.

Step up on a box

2008-07-28T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is my first 2d animation with Flipbook where I haven't followed a tutorial.

I wanted to get a basic "step up" animated.

It needs some work - I'll probably get rid of the little foot flourish on the step up and just try to keep it simple.

Simple Skip

2008-07-27T00:34:00.000-07:00

This is a simple skip that I did with Jason Ryan Animation tutorial.
I'm pretty happy with it so far. Next step is to add the skipping rope and some hair for overlap.

Simple ball bounce

2008-07-25T21:34:00.000-07:00

This was an exercise I cranked out quickly just to get a sense of the timing and spacing of a bouncing ball.

Might see if I can import this into Maya and do an equivalent in 3D.

Bounce with follow through

2008-07-18T21:30:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a while, but I thought I'd add a hand-drawn frame-by-frame animation test I created using Flipbook.

It's based on a tutorial made by Jason Ryan.

I was pretty happy with it - although now that I have a registered version of Flipbook - I'll be able to create animations without that crummy watermark on it.

Pause for a look around

2008-06-23T03:56:00.000-07:00

The main change in this version was to add some character to when the ant discovers the gaping chasm.

Plus I added some slight tweaks in the jump.

Leap of faith

2008-06-22T20:37:00.000-07:00

Here is an updated work in progress shot - now with the ant leaping across the chasm.

I think I can afford another day or so to mess around with the animation and the timing, but then I really need to just light it and hand in the final assignment.

Latest Ant Antics

2008-06-14T16:00:00.000-07:00

Spent a bit of time in class on the animation. Mostly just added a basic environment with some simple textures.

Also - I think the three camera shots makes for a more interesting few seconds of animation.

Now the ant has a little obstacle to overcome. Just like me.

Model for 2d animation

2008-06-07T22:13:00.000-07:00

I have to be honest and say that even though I know this still has work to be done - I'm actually quite happy with the outcome.

Almost matched what I had in mind in my head.

Ant walk cycle

2008-06-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here is the ant walk cycle using my model.

I'm sure there is some tweaking to be done, but at this stage I'm just happy to have all the animation variables with a value and I'll do some tuning at a later stage if I get a chance.

Final Ant Rigging

2008-06-06T00:37:00.000-07:00

All the rigging is completed on my own ant model.

Just about ready to create a walk cycle for this guy.

Ant walk cycle

2008-05-31T23:46:00.000-07:00

Here's my first walk cycle of the ant we did in class.

Probably a little too much "wobble" going on there, but I'm pretty happy with the result overall.

Ant rig almost complete

2008-05-29T17:22:00.000-07:00

Well it's taken a while, but the ant model is almost fully rigged and ready for animation.

Now that the work has been done to set up the puppet, now all that is required to get creative with the movement.

Character design for a 2d animation

2008-05-28T01:56:00.000-07:00

This is a quick sketch I did of "Tony" - a character for a 2D animation that I'm putting together.

If you look carefully you can see some of my light pencil marks while I was working out the pose, but I decided against harsh angles in favour of smooth rubbery limbs for this goofy main character.

Cartoon practice

2008-05-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

I spent some time just sketching and coming up with some character designs for a 2d animation I'm thinking about at the moment.

Credit where credit is due - this is a shameless copy of some of the work of Bernard Derriman.

I love his style - and although my characters won't look too much like this in the final animation, I'd really love to try to get as much as his style in as possible.

If you're going to steal - you might as well steal from the best.

Ant rigging

2008-05-11T04:06:00.001-07:00

This is the first part of the skeleton and rigging for the ant I'll be animating.

So far so good. I have to say, I find rigging pretty relaxing. It's a lot like some of the programming I've done in the past.

It shares that same feeling of needing to be accurate, copying and pasting, plus remembering the correct sequence of events.

It's easy to lose an hour or two on this stuff and not even know where the time went.

Lighting lesson

2008-05-03T04:36:00.000-07:00

Today's lesson was all about lighting.

I have to say - it's a bit of a weakness of mine. I don't have a background in photography and wouldn't say I have a great eye for lighting and composition.

Anyway - at least I have the basics (and something to practise to make my renders really "pop").

More ant modelling

2008-05-02T04:19:00.000-07:00

I think that's about as much of the ant modelling I will do for now.

At least until I see what affect the rigging and binding are going to have on the model.

First skeleton rig

2008-04-25T23:38:00.000-07:00

Spent 45 minutes making my first skeleton using the joint tool in Maya.

After messing around with the tools and settings I also worked out what was wrong with the Cherry Dude tutorial. It had the "joint" option disabled in the View menu.

Frustrating - but at least I know what went wrong last time.

I got accepted into Animation Mentor

2008-04-24T00:18:00.000-07:00

I just found out the incredible news that I've been accepted into Animation Mentor!

I start their "Advanced Studies in Character Animation" course in July 2008.

After the initial joy and relief comes the bowel-loosening terror which comes from knowing how much work I will need to do between now and the start of classes to get up to speed.

No turning back now.

My Cherry Dude

2008-04-22T22:52:00.000-07:00

One of the tutorials in the current Maya course I'm doing is to rig a character for animation.

Trouble is - the Maya file was broken and I couldn't see the joints - so I quickly spent a bit over an hour to put this guy together.

Pretty basic - but enough for me to do my first rigging on him.

First look at an ant

2008-04-13T04:12:00.000-07:00

Here is the first look at an ant that I'm modelling using NURBS.

Not too much to recommend it so far, but hopefully I'll get a chance to add some details (and more legs) later.

Texturing fruit

2008-04-08T23:57:00.000-07:00

No animation in this one. This still life scene was just a practise to do some procedural rendering on the fruit.

It works well for organic surfaces with random spots, lumps and bumps.

I was happy with the shininess of the orange, although I would NOT eat that banana.

Unless you had plans to turn it into banana bread.

Robot arm

2008-03-08T23:46:00.000-08:00

Our first real animation assignment: to create and animate a robot arm.

Here is a screen shot of the arm and it's prey - a small heavy ball.

No textures on this one - the purpose was literally just to get used to modelling the robot, playing with the hierarchy of joints and getting some basic animation done.

Next posts I'll show the storyboards and the final animation.

First Maya Class

2008-02-16T23:28:00.000-08:00

I'm a bit behind in posting these, given that I started Maya animation course in Feb 2006. But anyway - here was the output of the first class.

Pretty happy with it for the first one - even though it's basically a "paint by numbers" exercise.

Follow the bouncing ball - literally. But it did give us the first introduction to Maya and the sense of what's involved: simple models, texture maps, physics, lighting, shading and rendering.

Unfortunately after this simple example, it's downhill from there in terms of the quality of the renders.