This is a cute stop motion animation short. The video uses stop motion animation to animate two drawing skeletons in an epic Midwest showdown. The video is funny and ridiculous in it's simplicity. There is an animated explosion at the end which the only non stop motion part of the video.

Animating Fluids in Maya

Back in the Maya class that I took last semester, our final project was to explore the uses of a tool that we hadn't covered in class, or to find other ways of using a tool that we had already used. For my project, I decided to take a look at how fluids could be simulated in the application. Fluids consist of anything without a defined shape that can be acted upon by forces, so I created some brief simulations of an explosion and fire. Through the use of particle emitters, along with other variable modifiers (such as turbulence and directional constrainers), I was able to create the renders I've included along with this post. Seeing as how we've just started using Maya in this class, I figured I'd talk a little about the experience I've already had with it.

Unnecessary Explosions

Unnecessary Explosions

I was browsing the web the other day and I came across a funny post about adding random explosions to gifs. While they're all pretty silly, I thought of this class and how these short clips could be used for inspiration if anyone ever wants to try animating explosions.

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A lot of these exist, but not all of them are that funny. I think what makes this specific batch really successful, is the timing of the explosions and how they fit so naturally into what's already happening in the gif. My favorite is definitely number one. I love how smaller explosions go off near his feet as he's stumbling. They set up his final explosion really well. 

Russian vs. Snowman

I find this video very impressive.  Not only is the storyline ridiculous and funny, but there are some very good production qualities to it as well!  In fact, I’m not even sure if some of the things that I expect to be special effects, if they actually are or not.  The explosions in particular are soo realistic looking, that I am just beyond belief.  My first instinct is that these are special effects though, because many low budget productions like this wouldn’t actually use real explosions.  Along with that, I don’t know if a few of the explosions would actually behave as such in real life.  But in the even t that I am wrong and these are real guns and explosions, then all the more power to the production team!  This is a great video! 

It's Always Fun To Blow Stuff Up

When we were working on the birds flying in class on Thursday there was a lot of talk about setting things on fire and blowing stuff up. I was in the middle of doing a tutorial on Video Co-Pilot so I wasn't able to look into it too much. Therefore earlier today I took a bit of a look at some cool tutorials on how to blow some buildings up. Here's a short one:

And here's another one that blows up the Statue of Liberty. I didn't look into it too much, but I will definitely look to explore it more as time goes on:

Project One

I was looking through some tutorials that I might be using in my first project (explosions and turning photos from 2D into 3D). I found some that I think would be very useful. The first one doesn't tell you how to create an explosion but it includes a zip file that you can just import into your project and it tells you how to size it up and place it where it will fit best.

This video copilot tutorial (that someone may have posted before) shows how to layer photos to make them seem like they are in 3D. I was hoping to create the credits for the actors in the movie by taking images of them and creating a 3D image from the 2D stills. Here is another tutorial on how to do this, I didn't watch through the whole thing but it seems like an alternate way to create this using displacement maps.

Another thing I wanted to try (hopefully not adding too much work for myself) would be to create shapes in Photoshop and then animate them in after effects. Since it is a war movie, I wanted to use these shapes when I bring out the title (show the title of the film and then have them either drop down). I've made more then one storyboard so I just have to decide which one to use. Either having solid colored parachutes drop down or maybe creating a gun from a template and having the title come from that.