Blue Mammoth Year 1

I am a 2D Animator at Blue Mammoth Games.  I take cut out pieces of art work like this...

And make them do things like this.....

I start off by putting the character in key poses that get the basic idea across

I then time out how long each pose is shown.  It gives me a rough idea how the final animation will look.

Then finally I'll make several more poses that play in between the other poses.  This helps smooth out the animation.

I started my internship at Blue Mammoth Games January 2013.  They had me do various practice exercises to get me up to speed on how they do things.  My first assignment was to simply make a mechanical arm pick up a ball.  It was frustrating. The way they did things was very different from what we were taught at school.  What should have only taken me about 2 hours took over 7!  After a few weeks it finally clicked.  Now it actually saves time. (For you animators out there who work in Flash, this was the Motion Editor)
Shortly thereafter, they had me do an attack and several stock lightning effects.

Then our next project came up.  I worked on it for a month or so before I was put back on Dungeon Blitz.  We were working on what would be a huge update for the game.  My job was mostly to add more emotes.

Basically, I made characters do personality type stuff.  I was able to go through certain bosses in the game, and made them do a little something special during their dialogue

Eventually the pets in the game needed attack animations.  They weren't created the same way other Dungeon Blitz characters were.  These had to be hand drawn (for the most part).
It was a very long process, but it felt sooooo good to finally do some hand drawn character animation again.  Oh so good.

I work with two other animators.  Our Senior Animator, Darolle McKnight, and lead Special Effects Animator, Jade Joyner. There was a time when Jade was going be out for a week, so Darolle and I worked on special effects. 

Since then though, I have been moved over to our next project.  There have been several processes we have improved greatly upon since Dungeon Blitz.  With this next project we will be able to push the aesthetics much further.  Also, I get to do a lot of crazy fighting moves.  So be looking for some pretty cool things in the future!

The Fat Guy

Fat Guy Animations from Terry Legan on Vimeo.

A few snippets of the short I worked on last quarter

3D Animation Class

Class Work Animation from Terry Legan on Vimeo.

So far in school, I have chosen to primarily focus on 2D animation.  My plan was to start focusing on some more CG work after I graduate.  That does not mean, however, that the 3D side of things has been completely ignored.  I am currently working on two projects that involve a hybrid of the two mediums.  

Matte Painting

This was a matte painting I did for our digital ink and paint class.  It is a desert scene based on the beginning of the flash game I have been working on.

Digital Ink and Paint

Our instructor taught this class like concept art class.  It was nice to know that digital painting uses the much of the same methods and techniques as traditional painting.  Its not really cheating, just more forgiving. 

This was our second assignment.  He taught us how to do hair and skin pores (though the pores I never got to).  I decided to do one of the characters for the game I am working on.

Visual Development

In our visual development class we designed backgrounds and characters for a book that we read as if it was going to be turned into a movie.  My book was DragonSpell by Donita K. Paul.  You can check out her site http://www.donitakpaul.com/ 

This is a design for a cave the characters go through. It is covered with a lot of tiny glowing blue rocks.

A hulking shadowy swamp creature called a Mordakleep.  It has a very long rope like tail that disappears into the water.

A dim witted ogre like creature called a Grawlig.

The senile bog wizard, Fenworth.

Flash Game in Development

I had mentioned once briefly that I was making a flash game with a few friends.  I am glad to say that it is still going on, though very slowly.  We have the basics worked out.  Right now in the middle of programming a very very rough version of it.  The plan is that one day we'll put it on FlashGameLicense.com and receive a sponsorship for it.  School work makes it very difficult to work on it consistently, but I am learning a few things.

Also, this weekend is SIEGE Con.  Hopefully I learn some valuable information from the local Georgia game development community.  I went to a session on optimizing in flash, but half way it broke out into a discussion on Unity.  That game engine is all the talk lately, and for good reasons.