Kameo: Making Of

by Michael Cawood March 28, 2016 in animated, animated filmmaker, behind the scenes, filmmaking, Game, games animation, maya, michael cawood, microsoft, rare 0 comments tags: kameo, microsoft, rare
I worked on this game for three years over a decade ago. Now there’s a ‘making of’ video doing the rounds. It is a good game… it’s fascinating to see how well it holds up, and how in other areas it’s dated. About half the footage they used here was from my pre-rendered cut scenes. Some good, much of it looking a bit shaky now…. largely I’d put that down to not having the budget and the team size you’d expect on a project like this today (it was also my first time doing pre-rendered HD 3D as well). But I learned a lot from this and there were many, many improvements over what I’d been able to do in the real-time cut-scenes I did for Starfox Adventures (which was somewhat limited by starting out as a cartridge game on the N64). Anyway if anyone is wondering what the fuss is about go get the Rare Replay collection, Kameo is one of the best reasons to get it.

Finish your Film

by Michael Cawood June 29, 2014 in 5) Animation, animated film, animated filmmaker, animated short, animator, behind the scenes, book, devils, devils angels and dating, filmmaking, Finish your Film, Kenny Roy, maya, michael cawood, short film, short film animation 0 comments tags: Book, Finish your Film, Kenny Roy
Kenny Roy’s book ‘Finish Your Film! Tips and Tricks for Making an Animated Short in Maya‘ features ‘Devils Angels & Dating‘ several times. It discusses the making of an animated short film. It’s available at all the usual book retailers.

How to Cheat in Maya 2014

by Michael Cawood June 29, 2014 in 5) Animation, animator, book, How to cheat in Maya, Kenny Roy, maya, michael cawood 0 comments
Kenny Roy’s book on ‘How to Cheat in Maya 2014’ features an interview with me. It’s available at all the usual book retailers.

Parkour for Layout and Previs

by Michael Cawood June 29, 2013 in 5) Animation, 7) Demoreels, acrobat, Camera, camera sequencer, Layout, maya, parkour, Previs, Reel, Showreel 0 comments
Some time ago I animated this Parkour piece as a one off exercise and it’s been in my animation reel for a while. You can read about it here. But as I was thinking about doing new pieces for my layout / previs reel I realized it would be a great piece to build on. Originally I kept the camera very plain so that the focus of the piece was the animation on the character. There were no cuts, as that could have been perceived as a way to hide cheats in the animation. But for this new piece that wasn’t important. So I could cut as often as I liked, explore angles and even use slow motion. It’s a work in progress and I intend to come back to it. I want to spend some time playing with the layout of the buildings, improve the textures, add motion blur, depth, focus, foreground elements passing the camera and possibly even light and render it. I had fun playing with Maya’s new Camera Sequencer to put this together which made speed changes very easy. It has a great tool for batch playblasting what ever shots you select in the sequence which […]