I've been getting into a lot of 3d modeling and animation within the last year, and just the other night I taught myself how to rig up models with bone structures, for complex animations. So I started playing around and ended up with the quick little animation you see below.
Immediately after I finished this one, I was inspired to begin working on a very complex animation. I did a number of different sketches of this during idle time at work and in classes. And tonight I was finally able to sit down and get cracking on it.
What I'm gonna make is a 3d ball that rolls into the scene from the horizon. Once the ball stops, it begins transforming and opening up. Once it is fully opened, 4 mechanical arms will fold out from the inside, and on the end of each arm, will be a screen. If it comes out like I'm thinking it will, I might turn the whole thing into my new portfolio website. The entire thing would be Flash animated. It'll look pretty rad if I can get it to what I'm thinking about.
Anyway, here's a couple pics of what I got done tonight. I skimped on a few details for now. I'll go back and add all kinds of small stuff once the big stuff is done.
And as it's opened:
Completely opened:
As I said, there's lots more to be done to it.
And here is a quick 2-3 second animation test I did. The model used in this brief animation is what I had before I started over. Though animation will be exactly the same, there will be mechanical arms attached to everything, as you see above.