 Was that a baaaah-d pun? Been working at my new job for about 6 months though, and although it isn't strictly video, I've been enjoying it a lot. I even get to lend my voice-work for it. I think I like the diversity in the type of work I'm doing. Not sure if I mentioned, but the gifs from my last post are excerpts from animations I made for where I'm working at. The gifs here are a bit different. The gif above is from a game me and my lovely friends are making, something between Paper Mario and Cooking Mama. We're calling it; Lamb Chopped!
I've been creating enemy character animations, as well as some UI elements. It's a small team, and slow going, but it's cool seeing our talents come together to create something bigger than anything we would make on our own-some.  I did make this some time ago to showcase the UI damage rep face I created. Again, this is all something we had to put all of our heads together to really visualize as a game, and I gotta admit I'm pretty proud of how it's coming out.
Keep working, keep saving, keep living. I need to find more time to work on my own projects, but I have been making things. I actually thought I was late in my posting, but I think 3-4 months betwen posts is kind of the norm for me.
0 Comments
 Seriously, why is it in all caps. I don't understand.
 Upon adding these to the arsenal, realized that the hand drawn stuff might not be all that applicable. So it's gone! Samples from this point on will not be hand drawn, since I'm going for clean polished content. Whatever works! Besides, there's other things I've worked on that I decided not to post just because they were for faster simpler projects, or don't really show enough in my opinion.
 Like the Yolk-lore themed MayDay DePaul University did this year. Here's a link
And why is the title automatically in all caps? Has it always been that way with this site?
Greetings superfans. It's been 8 months since I've uploaded anything onto the site. I feel like I'm walking through an old abandoned Old Abandoned Warehouse. With Cobwebs and all that jazz. But three months ago, I received a new job! So there was a bit of a moving process there. If I can I'll post works from things I've made. I've been busy with a lot of stuff! So busy I haven't been to any networking things that I've wanted to be in for a while. Count that and the fact that I have been busy before with other things. That's a lot of months of being a no show :( I hope to change that! I guess that's all I can say for now! Have to update my resume still, add things to this site. There's probably a lot of things on my to-do list that I can't think of right now. It's good to be busy!  It is done!  On my main page, I had gifs showcasing animation, as I sold myself as an animator, video editor, and motion graphics!
I now have a new tab, Video Editing, that showcases editing that I have done. Now I can show editing in itself, without the distractions of the animations I have made. I added gifs of video editing samples on the main page as well, and as of now, clicking a gif will send you to the respective page of said content! Like the animation? Click on it to see more! Diggin' the motion graphics? Bam!
There's been a lot of reanimated projects going on as of late, and I just finished a submission I've been holding off on for long enough. Done really quick, as a quick shot should.
And with those out of the way, I'll be working more and more on the cleaner motion graphics stuff I've been doing! I think it's worth the investment. I even created an Instagram specifically for that stuff. https://www.instagram.com/danimation_station/ I noticed a lot of artists are promoting themselves through that, and it'd high time I did it too. It also helps that now that a site like that is made to promote yourself, there's also a sort of pressure to keep making things for people to see. Let's get productive!
 As of late I've been focusing on the type of work that is more likely to grab the attention of employers. The hand drawn stuff is great, but around here i's more clean, simple work that truly showcases compatibility with opportunities. So Introducing my new design portfolio! https://dannsigns.myportfolio.com/ It's still probably going to show animation, but the cleaner, more professional looking sort. I'll want to still do the drawing and animating, but I need to make things that get the attention I want. Design and Animation? And Video Editing? If I can prove myself as a generalist, I'm applicable to more places and situations. But first I have to advertise myself effectively.  Still, you should never stop doing what you love.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to present: my latest and greatest reel! I am very happy with how it turned out.
Whenever I speak to people about creating reels, one thing I've always heard is that you should be clear in showing one type of work. So if you want to do animation, do animation. If it's motion graphics, show motion graphics. However, I am pretty wide spread in what I do, and it isn't really easy to put things in different specific categories. Technically, it's all animation. And there's editing in all my videos regardless of its goal or focus. And aspects of motion graphics leak into other works, like how to handle transitions and presentation. I wanted to create a reel soon, because I was thinking of beefing up other aspects of my skill set. So instead of making excuses, I decided to make a reel with what I had, dividing the work, but making it all feel like one cohesive piece. And I did that by merging techniques with other works. I figured. Let's make the demo reel a sample itself. The videos are videos I made, but the reel itself, what I do in combining videos and transitioning it from one to another... that is the sample of what I'm capable of in video. To be honest, some videos are really old on there. But rather then just slapping them in there, I divide the footage into layers, have them come in as sequences, and then they play out. And of course, there's the animation in the beginning, with Mr Dan leaning on the tv and all that. Thought adding something new would further push this being a new level of sorts. Did you like the TV static transitions? Haha.  Hello, hello. It's been a while since an update. I really should get better at that. It's been a busy couple of months. Working at Xpress, participating in DePaul's latest MayDay, and being a voice in my pal's Mario animation. Wow! I voiced Toad again, as before. I was a fan of sprite fan-imation before, so it's pretty cool that I could be involved with something like that. Plus "Itony" is one of the few people still keeping it alive, which is pretty neat in itself. And I knew him in college, so I can tell that this is very much a product of his, haha. It's kind of strange how, lately, everyone seemed to find themselves busy with their own thing all at the same time, so I've been thinking of focusing even more myself. I had been working and improving in my own way, but I think I should learn things outside of my realm, and become more applicable as a creative in other areas as well. I guess I'm just not sure where to focus on that.  Lynda.com is a site I've been using to sort of teach myself more and more things. It's pretty neat, and I had recently learned that certificates you get there from completion are added onto your LinkedIn profile as actual certificates! Wow! It's pretty encouraging, and I would like to learn more and more. The only thing is that it can be kind of daunting, not knowing what exactly it is you should be watching or studying.  Not only is it a matter of spending time to watch, but also figuring out what skills you can pick up and be able to show that you're capable, that works with what you already know, and that people would even care to have. Is it too late to learn to code sites? Is it even an asset? Is it one that you can prove you know enough of? Would your time be better off spent learning something else, or enforcing something you already know? These questions just add more questions. I admit that I'm not a fan.
But it's something to figure out, I suppose. The YuGiOh collabration the me and (apparently) 200 + other animators worked on is finally out! Actually, it's been a week, but I've been busy.
I've been using a plug-in in After Effects called "Rubber Hose", that basically combines the puppet tool with functioning anchor points. I've been playing around with it a bit and hope to get comfortable enough with it to make really good stuff. Other then that, working, went out of the country for a bit, other things.
You might recognize the guy in the middle from another cartoon I made. That walk cycle was my first attempt at all with the program, so it's pretty bleh. Anastasia animate project is still kind of in the air still, and maybe a SEGA related project might be made. Joined the Sonic Shorts Discord that has animators and creators I remember watching since Middle School. That's going waaaay back. Waaay past cool. Woah. |
Archives
February 2020
Categories |
RSS Feed