August - 2008

My Research Interests

As an artist who uses the computer, my animations and artwork represent large parts of my research. But my work as an artist/animator who also teaches leads me into compelling avenues of inquiry that may not be aesthetically stimulating, but which are relevant either in producing my artwork or teaching my students. MEL scripting, for example, is not beautiful to look at (unless you are a technical director perhaps); but it may facilitate some aspect of animation that is not readily apparent. This section of the site is dedicated to providing some explanation of these types of projects.

ekCharacterToolKit.mel

When I came to Jacksonville University, I faced the challenge of converting the school’s animation program from Lightwave to Maya. One of the first classes I was to teach was a character design and animation class that covered the creation and rigging of characters. Anyone who has touched Maya knows that character rigging is perhaps the most excruciatingly technical of character creation tasks. At ACA, I taught this class to students with three semesters of Maya experience, a