Back in 1999 I went to Utah to work on a PS2 game for the movie Monsters Inc. After a year of working in mocrap right after 3 years of 2D animation I had no goddamn clue how to actually animate. Nobody knew Maya at the time, Softimage was the only thing being taught at most of the schools back in Canada and yet the whole damn industry was using it and studios were desperate for people who knew Maya. Blah blah blah. So I took this gig, learned Maya enough by doing the stupid flaming bouncing ball/build a spaceship maya learning book shit and then I was given actual game animation to do. I forget how long it took me to do the moveset for Mike, maybe like two weeks to a month. It went fast because hey, it's short animation and Mike is just a ball with arms and legs.
So here we go...
Here's a 1 sec Mike talking animation.
The next animation is....the bane of my very existence. When I die and my life flashes before my eyes, I will see this pattern: "1, 2, 3, I don't know!!" Why? Because I saw it 4 billion times. Why? because out of ALL the animations to test the engine with the characters, they chose this piece of shit. So for MONTHS.....MONTHS!!!!#$@%$%!%!!!!! our stupid programmers would show progress with the engine for hours and there in the middle of the level, the only character visible would be Mike doing this animation OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER. There is a knife to my nuts when I see this clip. A knife. So I can cut off my balls so I will never have children who can grow up and one day will searching through my files and be like "Oh what's this? It's in daddy's files...hmm...OMFG...that's terrible! Make it stop!!" Why am I keeping this? Just in case my friends. Just in case the US government captures some high level terrorist and needs more creative torture devices, they can give me a call and I'll gladly send them this animation. "1, 2, 3, what's Al Qaeda?"
Here's Mike's walk. I referenced this from a motion test they did early on, which, besides the teaser trailer, was ALL the reference we had to go on for the game, animation wise. Overlap? what's that? Give me a break, I came from mocap and 2D. This was like my 3rd week in Maya.
No comment on this one...
Here's a character I loved but never got used in the game. I think his name was Muscle. Here he is "talking". Before you watch it, call the family over and have them drag some chairs around the ol' magic box. This is animation for the ages:
Ah, Roz. Roz barely moved in the movie. So, my animations were so weaksauce I barely made the thing move. Here is her "Big thing" animation. I hope this animation never gets found by aliens 2432 years from now when they are on some archaeological dig on this planet.
Back in college, sleep deprived and insane on caffeine, we used to mock act like animated characters, y'know with insane overlap, anticipation, breaking joints, when OBVIOUSLY we don't move like that in real life. We used to get up and go to the bathroom at Coffeetime donuts and anticipate the door handle and so on..laughing cause it's funny from an animation nerd point of view. The staff at Coffeetime obviously gave us weird looks. Y'know..sometimes, animation needs to calm the fuck down with it's principles. Case in point..all Sulley had to do here was pull the lever. But since it was seen from the back in game play, I did this:
Look what the Illusion Of Life did to me! This is the most ridiculously over animated thing I have ever done. I'm fucking speechless. The shame. If that clip was shown at my funeral, I would love to die again.
HUHH??!! WHAT'S THAT?!! Oh just bad animation. Plus the slowest recovery E-V-E-R.
Couldn't resist adding music when I saw this one again after all these years. Timing doesn't match, but what the hell was I doing when I animated this?
What I liked in retrospect:
Learning Maya, A job that took me away from mocap.
What I don't like in retrospect:
I thought Ik arms were awesome for everything.
Conclusion:
More embarassment from this game to come...
