Animation Project #19,20,21

So this past week, drove all the way up to San Francisco for the Game Developer Conference which took 6-7 hours. I had a pretty good time there but I mainly went there to meet with Riot Games. I actually got a rejection letter from them the day before for their summer internship. I wanted to go so I could show the actual animators my demo reel and get their thoughts and opinions on it. Alex and Tomas literally spent 30 minutes with my critiquing every shot on my demo reel. It was awesome. I've learned so much and I know what I need to focus on next.

Really wished that I could've gotten the internship though because I've grown so much and I am confident that I would have been ready by summer. It sucks being a student because its so hard to get in this game industry. Internships is really all I got, and it feels like even those are harder to get into. I'm still stumped on what sort of skill level they require. Still got a few more internships to hear back from.

Here's the animation projects I've been working on that I've added to my demo reel.

#19

#20

#21

#21 was a Hyuna's Bubble Pop dance that I did for fun to show to Riot since I know they love dances. They have awesome ones for every one of their characters.

We are coming up on our last week at iAnimate. Working on our finisher move. I was so scared of this assignment because it's my first time working with two characters at once. But after I started, it wasn't so bad. I'm really really happy with how it turned out. Things are starting click. I'm starting to understand weight, balance, and timing. It's amazing to see how far I've come.

Thank god it's spring break this week, I get so much time to animate! So after this finisher, I'm working on another Lisa attack that's more game oriented, and gonna work on a few more finishers cause they are just so fun to do. So here's what I got. Done in 2 days.

Will be rendering this tonight and slap it on my demo reel :)

Until next time... working my ass off. Keys and breakdowns all day everyday! Also just signed up for another online animation training class later this fall, focused on feature animation. I cannot wait! I wasn't able to do this months 11SC competition because I had no time. But I really need to start practicing again. Disney's internship deadline is coming up soon.... Maybe I can do ONE super amazing shot to send in.

Update

Just wanted to post some updates of what I'm working on. Currently polishing my demo reel and getting more shots to add to it. Hopefully I'll be done next week and have a more awesome demo reel to show :)

I'm up to animation project #18 now which is a injured walk cycle. I was inspired by Tomb Raider's Lara Croft's injured jog cycle when playing the same so I just had to try and make one. Definitely thought it was going to be a lot harder since I havn't done a walk cycle in a while, but I got this done in about 2 hours. Will be rendering and adding it to my demo reel.

I didn't post up #16 and #17 but they were my Redback attack and my Lisa spinning sword attack that's shown in my current demo reel.

Also posting up my creature attack for iAnimate. Just blocked out the ending of it so its rough, working on that right now. Hoping to complete this soon so I can work on more animation projects. Next, I'm going to work on a run cycle cause I don't like the last one that I did that's on my demo reel.  Got a cool kick and flip ninja-y looking montage clip coming up. Hopefully I can pull it off. We'll see :)

Really excited about my new demo reel. Having a great time polishing my old shots, making new ones, and just seeing all the growth I have made.

Update

It's been a crazy weekend and past few months. Some of the biggest things so far.. finished my website and demo reel (www.thomas-huynh.com), applied for Blizzard internship, and got accepted for the animation DreamCrit at college. So tomorrow, I will be going to Dreamworks Animation and get a critique on my shot.

Initially, I was thinking they could critique my demo reel but they don't want demo reels or short films. They want just one assignment and all of my assignments are like 2-5 seconds long. I don't want to show that to the person critiquing my work which I heard will be Ted Ty (he teaches the WS7 on the feature side of iA). He will probably know I attend iA due to the rigs I used and I don't want to waste his time when I could just ask my own mentors for a critique on my game related animations.

So, with 3 days left until the due date, I decided to work on my very first acting shot. I have no experience in acting as well as facial acting.  I chose to do this month's 11 Second Club dialogue that way I could enter the competition and see how I do. I was very excited to do this because I really needed an acting shot on my demo reel. The DreamCrit finally gave me the push that I needed to actually do this. I always thought it was too hard and just wanted to focus on game animation.  I mean, it definitely was hard, but do-able.

But after doing this, I found out that I quite enjoy it... a lot. I am REALLY happy with the results that I got from 3 days. I have my instructors at school to thank for that. They were all really helpful and I've learned so much from them. Here it is.

So after I get the critique from DreamWorks and my instructors, I will be fixing it up even further and submitting it. I'm going to do these 11SC competitions every month now to get practice. 

Also here's a creature spawn from 1-2 weeks ago that I'm still working on as well as a boss spawn.

I've been SOOOO busy and its going to be like that for the rest of the semester. I'm loving every moment of it though. Never been so motivated, confident, and happy. I'm making a lot of progress and it feels so great.

So nervous and excited for DreamWorks tomorrow! It's going to be a great experience.