Floyd Bishop

When I was in and around Burbank on Thursday, the strike was still quite visible. I think it’s interesting to get the story from the guys and gals on the line (I didn’t shoot this video). This is film from outside of the Disney Studio early on in the strike. The picketers are still going strong, with a presence at each entrance to the lot, and not just at Disney. Writers and their supporters can be seen at Warner Brothers, NBC, and many other places in and around town.

With the changes made to this year’s Golden Globes and the awkward People’s Choice Awards, the effects of the strike are only starting to manifest. We’ll have to wait and see if the two sides can come to an agreement before the Oscars on February 24th.

-Floyd Bishop

So I’ve begun to set up my controls for Virgil in Maya. We’re basically swapping out pieces on this character in order to create the animation, in a method similar to cut out animation or something you might see on South Park.

Here you can see Maya’s Connection Editor. I’ve created a control curve for the mouth which will be a place where I can control which mouth is visible and when. I connect the “Aah_mouth” geometry visibility to the “Aah_mouth” attribute on the mouth control. When It’s set to “1″, the mouth will be visible. When it’s set to “0″, it will be invisible. The dialog will be animated by turning on and off the appropriate mouths.

Here’s the drawing of Virgil I’m working from to create the 3D model.

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