JCanimator.com
Internet Home of James Clarke, Animator

Nothing like domain registration expiration to
get you to update your website news eh?

If you visted my page in the last day or two you
may have noticed it had undergone some extreme
changes, like it had turned into an autogenerated
link farm shenanigan.

Thankfully, a three minute phone call to hostrocket
customer support got everything straightened out,
so all is well now.

In other news, I comnpleted 1 1/2 years of employment
with Trinity Animation, and as of July 2006 I have taken
on the role of “3D Visualization Specialist” at HNTB.
It’s lots of fun.
Sometime soon I hope to get some recent work up here.
I’m in the corporate office and therefore get to work with
clients from all over the country. We do lots of highways,
bridges, airports and the like, which is actually
much more exciting than it sounds!

Take care & keep in touch,
I may not update this site much,
but I’m always available for contacting at
James@JCanimator.com

In fact, not only am I alive, but I’m employed!
That’s the reason for my 6+ month
departure without any update whatsoever, I’ve
been hard at work at Trinity Animation.

During my time there I’ve become proficient in 3dStudioMax7
and have been getting familiar with combustion4 as well.
Most of my latest work has been in the architectural field,
however I am making plans on expanding my character
animation abilities within Max as well.

I plan on giving another update shortly with some
new media, so look for some of my new
architectural work in the coming weeks!

..but it’s here! The update took longer than I wished
it would, however I have just completed a major
overhaul of my resume (included a plain text
version of it too!) Microsoft Word .doc and
Adobe .pdf should be on their way shortly, along
with some new media as well! Stay tuned!

In the meantime don’t forget to checkout the
updated resume and I’ve also added a few
bits and minor corrections to the Bio page. Thanks!

New update coming soon, check back
later this week for more info!

Things are progressing nicely on Forsaken. I have
learned the basics of getting a working model into the
Hal-Life2 Model Viewer, from exporting a .smd file from
Maya to writing my own .qc script file to getting custom
facial animation working.

In the interest of getting things up and running quickly,
I opted to do the first few characters for the game in Maya
instead of 3dStudioMax. I would love to learn Max right now,
but I didn’t want to hurt our team’s progress
by having to be learning the details of both 3dsMax and
the Source engine at the same time. Once I get the first of
our characters working I plan on switching over to Max in an
effort to expand my knowledge base.

In website related news, I have added a few bits to the Bio section
of my website as well as added the “archives” feature to the
front page news portion, a link to which is found at the
bottom of the first page.
Take care, and remember anyone is always welcome
to drop me a line via my contacts page if you have
any questions/comments about anything.

Now that I’ve gotten the majority of my side-projects
out of the way, I am ready to begin full work on Forsaken.
I will be working with 3D Studio Max for the first time,
as well as the new tools for the Half-Life2 engine.
Currently hoping to have some of this new work online
in a matter of weeks. Stay tuned!

The new design has been unveiled to the public. Most
of the content is the same, though I have added
a ‘Rigs’ page that displays some of the work I
have done in that area. Be sure to checkout the
Martin Mouse rig as it is some of my better work
in the rigging area.

So, two months go by and no updates, lazy eh?
Not really, I’ve actually been working really hard on updating the site,
trouble is I couldn’t decide on a final design for it! I went through
three major and several more minor versions until I finally decided
on what you are looking at now. Hope you like it.

I have updated my resume, which can be found by
clicking on Resume. I have also added the
breakdown sheet crediting all the wonderful people
that created the characters I animated in my
GameCycles reel, a link to that is directly below the
reel on the Reel page. Thanks for visiting!

My Game Cycle Reel has been added to the work page. Apologies for
the lack of updates, for several weeks now I have been working on
redesigning the site in order to prepare for this new reel, but I have
been having too hard of a time deciding on a specific design I like.
It should happen soon, but first I am concentrating on getting this
new reel up and out to all of you potential employers. As of right now
there are no breakdown sheets available for either reel, this, as well
as an updated resume, is currently being worked on and will
be posted soon.