"Tooth Fairy" Short Film

At last, my Diploma Short Film is released on Youtube at my alma mater's channel.

The story:
In the middle of the night, when a little boy was sound in sleep, Tooth Fairy paid him a small visit. Most people know what Tooth Fairies do when they find a tooth, but do we ever wonder what value they find in something we discard away? Watch and find out!



Looking back at this short film, it certainly brought back nostalgic memories of slogging together (with tons of fun and learning included) with my classmates back then. Even though it may not be a Pixar-quality film worthy of any Grammy awards, at least it's a starting point for our journey ahead.

Mocap Zap Zap

There's so much to learn about motion capture and while Avatar/Hulk/LoTR made it look so cool and easy, getting down and dirty to actually using the system is really quite...something.
And I can't even say that I know everything there is to know about it. In fact, I may well be one of the least knowledgeable of the technology at work.

But it's been quite an eye opener. Learning to calibrate the system, sticking on mocap markers on actors etc are the baby steps to mastering it. The entire system is so sensitive that any slight movement to the cameras can cause calculations to fail. Wow. *hence the clumsy me has to be extra careful.. talk about stress!*

Anyway, I am really quite excited for the journey ahead. I'm looking forward to see how the mocap data transfers to the 3d characters.. and yada yada yada.

A brief history of Motion Capture: http://www.siggraph.org/education/materials/HyperGraph/animation/character_animation/motion_capture/history1.htm

I'm still not very sure how mocap may compare to keyed 3d animation, but I guess as I learn more about the craft, I'd have some pretty interesting inputs. :)

*update* I've been trying my hand at 3d modeling recently as part of my company's training. Maybe I'll post some pics soon.

*update* check out a discussion of mocap vs animation here: http://johncelestri.blogspot.sg/2011/10/motion-capture-is-not-animation.html

A minor update

Hi everyone,

Just a little update on what I've been up to.

My company has been sending us for training in animation (and we've just started in modeling!). Well, there are a couple of shots that I have been practicing on but haven't yet got the time to go polish them. But I'll definitely try to work on those whenever I can (and since I've already more or less publicly announced it, I figure it would give me greater push). Hopefully, I'll be able to upload pictures of my modeling assignments as well.

I'm really quite thankful for my current job that allows for such exposure in different specializations. I must say that I can even paint skin weights more confidently now when I used to be so afraid of them.