First Blender Animation

I decided to jump in and start learning how to animate using Blender. I really liked it. I found it to be much easier and enjoyable than animating in Maya. I've animated a simple rolling Ball for my test. I'd like to learn to rig a robot character I've modeled so I can try a character animation. So probably my next step will be to Rig a bouncy ball and animate that.

Animation 01 - The Backflip

Here is one of my better homework assignments from Animation 01 (Using Maya2008). Its actually pretty horrible, but I only had one night to try and learn to do a back flip animation. I mostly blame my lack of knowing how to properly manipulate the IPO graph. I'm confident I could do far better now.

Animation 01 - The Poses

One of the early assignments I had in my Animation 01 class (Using Maya 2008) was to make poses on our "Norman" rig. It was to get us ready for animating him the next day. I rather enjoy the poses I made so I decided to share them here:

Blender... Rocks

I just started using Blender this weekend. I love it.

I've been learning Maya 2008 in school and, after getting accustomed to Blender's interface, I feel that Blender is much better. It makes working faster and easier to manage.

Blender has an very customizable interface. Which has much more accessible tools. It isn't all about hot keys. An appealing and functional interface is extremely important to productivity, and Blender provides. The program is fast, and
does not limit.

Another bonus to Blender is the active and friendly community behind it. Questions are quickly and accurately addressed, and has made my short time adapting to the software much easier. I look forward to being able to contribute in the future.

I'd really like to encourage you, if you haven't already, to check Blender out. It is Open Source software, which means it is entirely free to download and use. You do not need to buy a license.