The Michael Smith Animation Website

2012-01-26T07:30:00.000-08:00

Animation Reel 2011 from Michael Smith on Vimeo.

Took the time to polish some of my acting exercises and make a new reel out of them. Made a new page on the site that contains my most current reel and shot breakdown. You can check it out here...

My latest reel...

2011-12-17T04:41:00.000-08:00

Animation Reel 2010 from Michael Smith on Vimeo.

This Reel is still a bit of a work in progress. I'm revamping it to show some more of my Day 1 Studios animation work. I apologize for the bad compression on some of the videos, fixing that too. I also need to figure out a cool way of showing, in the reel, how technical I've become as well with Scripting and Rigging.

Welp...I've finally returned to the graveyard of old animations I call my website. As you can see (if you've been here before) I'm giving it a complete overhaul and changing it to a blog type format. Should make it easier for me to post more regularly.

2009-06-29T10:27:00.000-07:00

OMG! Please do NOT tell me I let 1 and a half years go by without a SINGLE update!

I swear, time is going by faster and faster.

After watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, it reminded me of my old Transformer days and inspired me to actually do a website update.

K, to save face I'm going to cheat. I'm going to add a 2008 page as if I'd been doing updates all along (plus I enjoy looking back on my career timeline so I'd like to keep that going). We all know that I did no updates from 2007 till now, but we'll keep the illusion that I update the site every few months.

So make sure you check out the 2008 page for a bunch of new stuff.

;)

2008-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

LucasArts’ Fracture is out! It’s available at fine retail stores everywhere. Go pick up a copy now and experience the joys of terrain deformation! ;)

2008-08-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

Ha-ha…I love this one. Another animation I did for the 11 second club. The trouble was I used up all my time animating the little kid’s dance and had to throw the father in at the last minute. But I had fun animating the kid at least.

You can view it on YouTube.

2008-06-10T10:25:00.000-07:00

K, I started this animation much earlier in the month so I could actually finish it for the 11 second club. So here you go…a new finished animation!

You can view it on You Tube.

2008-04-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

Holy cow! I just got back from Target where I picked up my copy of Ben 10: Race Against Time on DVD. As you know I animated Grey Matter in the film and had a lot of fun doing it. I don’t think I’ll ever get over the cool feeling of seeing your work up on a shelf available to purchase.

P.S. Oh, and just as an aside, I did a small sequence of animated disco dancing guinea pigs that you can check out on Nickelodeon’s movie Shredderman Rules! which you can also check out on DVD. (It was a very small clip that I haven’t gotten around to posting here)

2008-01-08T13:23:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting around minding my own business today when Super 78 sends me this email...

"Variety announced today that Ben 10 is nominated for TWO Visual Effects/Animation awards by the Visual Effects Society."

One of those awards being for the Grey Matter sequence I animated for the film! How cool is that! Here's a link to the Variety articles list of nominees...

Look for my name under the award for ANIMATED CHARACTER IN A LIVE ACTION BROADCAST PROGRAM OR COMMERCIAL

So let me get this straight....not only will they pay you, they may even give you awards for playing around all day....pretty sure

COOLEST JOB EVER!!!

2007-11-29T13:22:00.000-08:00

One of the last things I did at Super 78 before I left was work on Grey Matter for the live action movie...

Ben 10: Race Against Time on Cartoon Network

If you don't know what Ben 10 is, shame on you! Watch more cartoons! (it's about a boy who fights bad guys by becoming one of 10 different aliens by injecting himself with their DNA which is stored in his wristband (the Omnitrix). Grey Matter is one of the aliens he turns into.)

Now, I'm not exactly unbiased, but I think Grey Matter steals the show (no offense to Lee Majors, he's great too, I sure don't want the Bionic Man to come after me). Of course I recommend watching the whole film in high resolution on Cartoon Network, but if you can no longer catch a rebroadcast, you can check out my work on YouTube thanks to a Ben 10 fan.

I modeled Grey Matter and was responsible for his animation in the whole sequence with the exception of the morph scene at the very beginning. Check it out...

Ben 10: Race Against Time, Grey Matter scene on YouTube

2007-05-19T13:22:00.000-07:00

YAY...Finally an update. Heck, I've got a whole new webpage! Still need to fix the navigation bars so there's a link to it, but in the meantime click the picture below to go to the new TransZ webpage! Have fun and enjoy.

TheAll New TransZ

Transformer Webpage!

2007-05-02T13:21:00.000-07:00

Well, this is a bonus. Only at the new job a couple weeks and I get to share what I'm working on with you. They just had a big launch showing the media the game. You can check it out and watch the trailer here: www.FractureGame.com

As much as they show in the trailer, just wait....you haven't seen anything yet.

2007-04-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

Just finished moving the family from Los Angeles all the way to Maryland, just outside of Baltimore...Whew! Glad that I'm on the other side of that, anyhow...I'm starting work at Day 1 Studios working on their new game for Lucas Arts. I'm really excited and can't wait to get going, it should be fun.

2007-03-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

Did a quick little sequel to our first little Wii parody animation for Super 78 in before I left there to go to my new job. Tried to give the little WiiMote and Nunchuck more personality in this one.

You can view it on the Animations page.

2007-02-09T13:18:00.000-08:00

Just finished a little Wii parody animation for Super 78 during some down time. It's my first V-Ray render ever and that cable turned into a pain (running simulations), but I think it's cute. I thought I'd post it here for some critique.

You can view it on the Animations page.

2007-02-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

Well found a bunch of my Tomb Raider animation work online thanks to TombRaiderChronicles and YouTube. It's good 'cause I didn't save any of my animation work from my Lara Croft days and I don't have the game. Now if only some fan would post the cinematics from the game Project: Snowblind on YouTube I could show you that work too(hint, hint). ;)

Check out my Tomb Raider work here.

2006-10-01T13:17:00.000-07:00

Added a bunch of new transformer video links to my list of live action transformers on the internet. You can check 'em out on the VW transformer webpage. I especially like the Devastator one that was done by just one fan, although the music starts to grate on you pretty quickly. Don't miss the Nissan commercial in the Honarable Mentions section either, I think it's pretty sweet. I'll hopefully be posting some of my own new animations soon.

2006-07-10T13:16:00.000-07:00

Wanna see what I've been working on lately? Run over to the Twisted Whiskers website and check out the video of Goosers Gets It (check out the Potty Animal animation that was done by a friend of mine too). Goosers Gets It is one of six 30 second animated shorts I completed for American Greetings. Hopefully they'll be releasing some of the other ones soon for viewing.

2006-07-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

Switched hosting to one that won't change when I move so hopefully that's the end of the website going down for awhile. I think it's all back online and running at this point.

2006-04-08T13:15:00.000-07:00

Well I just moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles and switched from comcast to adelphia, so most of my website is offline. I don't get as much webspace anymore so I'm going to have to figure out a different way to host my animations. I'll hopefully have everything up and running again soon. Now it's back to unpacking boxes for me!

2006-03-18T13:14:00.000-08:00

Added a new animation to the website. Click on the picture to go to my Animations Page where you can download it. It's my third 10 sec club animation. Thought I would try and loosen up the animation a bit by adding some squash and stretch to the acting.

2006-02-05T13:13:00.000-08:00

Alright kind of a big update this time. Added a few new animations to the website.

Click on the pictures to go to my Animations Page where you can download the new animations.

My second 10 sec club animation. The sound clip is from Singing In the Rain which I just watched for the first time. It made me want to go stomp around in puddles...again ;)

I did my first ever animation for the 10 sec club animation website. The sound clip was from Raising Arizona and the character is a free model for use in learning animation. You can download the character for you own animations here (you'll need Maya to animate him).

I realized my website was getting a little cartoon heavy so I figured I needed to add some more "realistic" video game animations. I finally got around to rendering this work I did for Realm Interactive. I think the game is cancelled now so this is the only place you can see these. Too bad, the game was looking really cool

Added the portion of the "FX Break on Through" animation I did for Autonomy to my animation page. A rare chance for me to texture and light as well as model and animate.

Also added a new video to my list of live action transformers on the internet. You can check it out on the VW transformer webpage right here.

2006-01-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

Added a new video to my list of live action transformers on the internet. It looks to be secret test footage from a transformer movie done by ILM, but apparently it's a hoax. I can't wait to see the real stuff if it's indeed fake, cause it will be even more amazing if Industrial Light and Magic is working on it. You can check it out on the VW transformer webpage right here.

2005-10-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Well it looks like someone posted a clip from the 2002 film "Returner" online. It's the cool part at the end with the big transforming 747 jet. I'm not sure how this works with copyright laws and stuff, but it's so cool I thought I'd add it to my list of live transformers done by other people. You can check it out right here.

2005-10-09T12:45:00.000-07:00

Check out the high polygon Lara Croft I helped model. You can see her here. Just click on one of the flags and it opens new window with her climbing on a cliff in front of a waterfall.

Now the model was tweaked, textured and rigged and posed by other artists. I didn't model the hair or boots, and I didn't really touch her face as the in-game model is already pretty high poly. When I get some spare time I'll post my "unfiltered" Lara model on the website here.

2005-09-17T12:44:00.000-07:00

Added a couple new videos to my list of live transformers done by other people. A Bumblebee animation done by Richard Valenzuela and a Starscream animation done by Michael Raphaelovich. You can check it out on the VW transformer webpage right here.