The Joy of Free Feet

One of the things I did not expect when I made the decision to try out the barefoot lifestyle was the childlike sense of freedom that I have rediscovered. It has been an amazing journey, and one which is not yet over.

Sketch Dump

Sketchbook scribbles!

Booyah Shed & Grill

My mother's side of the family has always nurtured a love of food.  Growing it. Cooking it.  Eating it.  It's as much a part of what the Nitkas are as football is a part of Green Bay.  I remember one of my three uncles for the huge gardens he's always kept.  I remember another of them for the bees he keeps and the amazing wonders of raw honey.  But neither of these is the one that I'll now have to start calling Chef.  That would be the third and final brother, the entrepreneur of the family, Uncle Dan.

This January I had the pleasure of visiting his brand new restaurant up in Wisconsin.  So strap yourselves in and come for a ride!  There will even be pictures.

A Stretchy IK

I have been helping a co-worker learn some rigging techniques, and since I'm essentially making tutorials, I figured I might as well post them for others to benefit from as well!  Today's topic is how to make an IK limb stretchy.

The basic idea is that we will measure the original length of the IK from start joint to handle, and any time that distance increases beyond its original value, the bones of the IK limb will scale to make up the extra distance rather than rotating beyond what makes sense (the cause of popping).


Let's dive right in!

GW2 @ PAX Prime 2011

The charr have fingers!! No more mitten-paws holding guns! Now every time they take a leap forward you get to see a gorgeous set of claws unfurl before them. That alone would have made this animator's heart happy, but there was so much more to be had.

Little Maya Cheaters

I've been known at my various places of employment for always looking for ways to cheat. Call it laziness if you like, but I've always believed in working smarter rather than harder. As a result, I'm frequently whipping up little scripts to speed up the workflow of my projects or to save my keyboard from repetitive use damage.

In maya there are a dozen or so core little scripts that I come back to over and over and over again. They just keep finding new ways to be useful. I've shared one or two with my co-workers and friends as the need arose, but I'd never really sat down and organized the lot of them for popular consumption.

Well, that's all changed now. They're free to download and use as you like, but please don't redistribute them.

Here's the overview of what's included:

Joints and orients and iks, oh my!

A lead rigging position in a decentralized studio means lots of emails about the proper way to do things. Here's one more I shall share with you! Kernels of wisdom about joint orientations (and how you shouldn't forget them) as well as a couple of comments on quadruped rigging.