A little bit of modeling doesn't hurt

I'm trying to learn character modeling in Maya through a digital tutors title: Creating cartoon characters. Well, I'm in favor of specializing only at animation and always trying to improve myself by doing animation tests but modeling is a bit necessity when it comes to customizing characters, modeling props, getting more familiar with the 3d software; whether you're making a short film or a small animation test. I'll try to learn a little bit lighting and rendering too if I can finish texturing the character, which seems as a little bit tedious process according to the videos.

My Annecy Youtube Contest short: Shleeping

This is a short that I prepared for the annecy youtube contest. It is my first 2d animation. I think the idea/story was good, but just not very well executed due to the lack of experience&technique. The bad parts are: I tried to keep the character alive by drawing similar poses during the holds but they were too many and caused lots of wobbling. The connection between sequences aren't that good. Same for some of the jumping animations. Also, I shouldn't have placed same jump patterns one after another. I didn't bother much with music and sounds so they are not appealing as well. But it was a good experience in terms of motivating myself and getting used drawing on tablet pc, which may help me later in planning my cg shots.
In conclusion, as I said before, the idea was good but I should have spent more time on it to make it a successful piece. Anyway, in the end, experience is experience and I'm happy with it.

Fight for Life

This video was one of the screenings of Siggraph 2008. It was made by Jellyfish Pictures for the BBC documentary: Fight for Life.  It is great in terms of both vfx and music so just wanted to post here:

Fight for Life video