I'm back from my six weeks trip to the US since monday ... still fighting with the jet lag ... it was a GREAT experience. Thanks to Dane, Bryan and Goro for letting me stay at your places, to Kevin for the helicopter ride and to all the other people I met, it was a really awesome time. A small selection out of the 1364 pictures I took ... enjoy 🙂

I have had the privilege to be on the beta team of this amazing tool... No more accidental scaling keyframes, and moving the keys of just one controller UNLESS I WANT TO ;). Favour poses (keys), playblast with shotmask, switching between cameras, color the ticks on the timeline, it's all there. This tool is a time saver if you work the traditional pose to pose way. More information and some nice videos how it works can be found on www.funhouseinteractive.biz ... GO and take a look and if you like what you see ... GET it ;).

Just found some time to wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. I want to thank everyone who helped me on my assignments this term. Especially Goro for all his great support and Paul for modeling the background of my latest shot ... I hope to find some time to render it during the holidays, but I think so 😉

Yesterday a big packet full of DVDs and CDs arrived. It was the whole Shorts Drawer Compilation (2004 -2007) with a bunch of amazing shorts. Luckily WANTED was selected to be on the 2006 DVD. But not only the DVD collection was part of the packet, we got the complete 3d Total Texture Collection including 15 GB of textures :). Thanks to Lynette and 3dtoatal.com

www.dimos.ca/dtalk

The ANIMTool was designed by Dimos Vrysellas and scripted by Charles Wardlaw. The tool is based on similar tools such as the ReTime Tool (created by Lionel Gallat) and the AnimationAgent (created by Roja Huchez & Dimos Vrysellas). The ANIMTool is designed to aid in the setting of key/breakdown poses and in the timing process. The tool is especially helpful for CG animators that follow a more traditional approach to animation (mimicking hand drawn techniques) but can be useful for every method and style of animation production using MAYA. It’s up to the user to fit it in their workflow as they see fit. For a detailed overview and an introduction of all functions just KLICK.

I was one of the beta testers and for speeding up your animation workflow this tool is a must have ;). Thank to Dimos and Charles for creating this little helper. You ROCK

Play (QT Sorenson3 10.7mb, 2:40 min)

Today I cleaned up my web space and found a video with stop motion tests we did at the German Film School to discover the medium. Later on we played around and filmed ourself, the result is pretty funny. I'm the one with the brown striped pullover and the slippers ;).