chumble spuzz

Indeed. After a look at your website, it seems you had a hand in just about all of Midway's big titles as of late. I got to work briefly on Blacksite, but only very briefly. Did some cool animation, though.

I'm a character animator at Sucker Punch Productions. That's right, ladies. I used to work at Surreal Software (on This is Vegas), but that game pretty much goes against everything I stand for. Also, mocap is not much fun to work with or very creative. You can crank out the content, but it's not very fulfilling. Best part about working there: resident Tetris Attack masters. Oh, the mighty battles we fought.

Wow, that rules. That rules so hard. Jam Stunna: that's my favorite part!

Congrat's on graduating! Crazy how we have a small community of animators here. I like how your reel is nice and short--no fluff. However, that means everything has to be stellar, and thankfully you're just about there. I only have two qualms: first, the supervisor in your store room scene stops moving before the big pan up to the top shelf--I feel like he should glance or just kind of nod upwards while looking at the stockboy, and then let the surprise reaction of the stockboy get some time in the sun before the supervisor looks upward as well, just before the pan starts. Second, the hand posing on the tennis serve is a bit weak, and could be pushed WAY more, to help finish out the flow of the motion. Everything else looks great! Nice work!

Has he read Invincible? I just got into that recently, and found it a fun read. It really picks up in the third TPB. Other suggestions: Rose and Isabel by Ted Mathot, anything by Doug Tennapel (I've read Gear and Earthboy Jacobus, both good)...and might I suggest Atomic Lead Volume 3? Yes, it's a shameless plug, but hey, I'm darned proud of my first, 11-page comic.

Life happened. With a vengeance. However, funny that you should mention this today, because it seems I've stumbled upon some free time, just now... edit: next up: the walk, revised.

Uh, the Nice Shot anim is intended as a one-off for letting fly with a fully-charged nice-shot. Why with the looping while charging? (Maybe I need to work on my communication...?)

Coming right up, monsieur.

Hey, that was pretty sweet. Thanks for posting!

Finally, done with the Nice Shot anim. Also, here's the fixed dash init pose, Wingless.

So, uh...how long is your demo reel?

Hey, you have to eat right. Stay healthy, OCR. Actually, the reason I left WHOLE GRAIN untouched was because I couldn't think of a good joke to put in its place...but hey, apparently it works!

You're welcome.

Wow, most wanted song, huh? In three words: Do not want. Actually, now that I think about it, the "most wanted" song has many things in it that I find annoying. :\ Romantic-mood-type sax solos are a big one. Also, the fact that it's a sappy love song. Since when were those desirable?

I made it through the whole thing, and I cried tears of laughter. Children screaming about Yom Kippur and Wal Mart is apparently hilarious to me. Then again, I do have Banjo-Kazooie music in my iTunes...

A new genre is born? http://blog.wired.com/music/2008/04/a-scientific-at.html edit: maybe a quote from the page would be nice. "An online poll conducted in the '90s set Vitaly Komar, Alex Melamid and David Soldier on a quest to create the most annoying song ever. After gathering data about people's least favorite music and lyrical subjects, they did the unthinkable: they combined them into a single monstrosity, specifically engineered to sound as unpleasant to the maximum percentage of listeners."

He means, basically, this: Height of railing + height of Tan's shooting arm = bullets scooting along railing. Also, I noticed in the playtest that Tan shifts backwards by one pixel when she charges.

Thanks for posting that, Larry. I just downloaded a ton of sweet official Okami artwork. Mmm...

IDEA: What if I repurpose X's armor-less damage anim to be the Nice Shot anim? Then we can use it both on land AND in midair. I'm working on a mock-up right now. Probably won't be done tonight, but very likely tomorrow night. EDIT: Behold, the gist. Useable both in midair and on the ground.

Jeez...I just shut both you guys down. Sorry...I feel like an ass. I'm just trying to be practical about this... On an lighter note, Coop, have you made any progress on the Nice Shot bullet? I recall you expressed interest in constructing that awesomeness... fH: ...That's actually not a bad idea. We'd have to buff the shot so that it eats all enemy bullets it crosses paths with (or something like that), that way you don't get automatically screwed every time you use it. Wingless, what do you think?

Inbetweens! Here's the frame inbetween the stand and the dash poses. If memory serves, this is played at both the start and end of the dash move. Coop: Thanks. I'm still not sure how I feel about the guitar (again, we'll see how it looks in the run). I've been thinking: if play controls interrupt the animation, the timing will be less of an issue, which is good on the gameplay side. But if we do go with the guitar (I know I'm repeating myself a little here) we'll have to put the guitar in each sprite, the charging guitar in each sprite, and a firing animation in each sprite, effectively multiplying our workload thrice over. The guitar idea is sweet, and in-keeping with Tan's design, but I'm just not sure I want to work that hard on this. friendlyHunter: Please understand that I say this with all due respect:

Shooting! Don't worry, Coop, I'll get the run done... edit: A flaw! In her boot! Decided to tweak the elbow while I was at it!

Looking real good, Coop! Crunch time is over at work, now, so I can use that extra 2 hours every day to get some more spriting done. I'll get that run fixed up posthaste! edit: But first, instant gratification.

How long is your reel?

...One more song to match one of your animations? You're not just using one song for the whole thing? (I'm a character animator as well, btw).