Weeks 3 - 5

I've been slacking on updating, so this post will encompass three weeks worth of classes. I'll start where we left off. Week three's assignment was to animate a bouncing ball with the weight of a soccer ball or a basketball bouncing across the screen. I need to go in and revise this, because it has a ton of problems and I've learned a lot since then.



Next up we have not one, but two balls! One has the weight of a beach ball and the other of a bowling ball. Again, I need to do a revision of this assignment and I'll post any revisions in subsequent posts.



That brings us to the latest and greatest (which isn't saying much). This past assignment was to take a ball and move it through an obstacle course while incorporating squash and stretch. This one was by far the most difficult, and thankfully was my best work so far. I learned a lot while working on this, and I started video conferencing with some fellow students and participating in study groups which really made a difference for me. This also needs to be tweaked and slowed down, but I'll get to that soon enough.



Finally, these are the three poses we had to first sketch and then recreate using our 3D model, Stu. The first one is the random pose, the second had to clearly show excitement and the third had to show devastation. After the first pose I decided to stop creating elaborate backdrops and using props. I want to make sure I'm not using that as a crutch, but rather have a strong pose that says what it needs to without relying on those things. With that being said I don't think my excitement pose clearly shows excitement, because without a facial expression it could be confused with curiosity.



Now It's time to begin learning overlapping action and apply it to a pendulum. Wish me luck.

Basic Foundations

Lots of goings on in my world as of late. Animation Mentor has gone hardcore and I'm currently in week three of the first class. Our first week was spent getting acquainted with the online campus and getting everything set up and ready, or at least that's what we thought. Week two's assignment was to observe and sketch real people doing their thing out in the real world. I hung out in Rittenhouse Square and sketched some random people there, and my drawings totally blew!



We then had to choose a drawing and recreate that image using the 3D character Stu. I ended up going with the one circled in red on the bottom. I then jumped on the computer and decided to create an environment for Stu, mainly to see if I still remembered what I learned in the Springboard workshop, i.e. basic lighting and modeling. Here is what I turned in. Overall I'm happy with it, but some fellow classmates pointed out some stuff I'll remember to do/not do next time.



Well, I just finished the lecture for this week. We have to plan out and animate a bouncing ball from the side view, and then I have to observe and sketch people who show "excitement", and avoid the pitfalls of cliché poses. Wish me luck!

One Leg

This is One Leg. Our assignment was to make him jump, so I decided to give him a reason to.



Tomorrow's our last class of the workshop, and I hope my first class of the program will be as fun as this one. Everyone in the workshop was awesome and my instructor, Jeff, was a really cool guy. He taught me a ton of stuff. The first time I opened Maya back in April I didn't know how to make a sphere. Now I can animate a ball with a leg! Soon I hope to move onto animating balls with two legs. Whoa! Better not get ahead of myself here. Anyway, Class 1, aka Basic Foundations, begins at the end of June sometime, so you better get ready!

Animation Mentor on Forbes.com

I just saw this video after it was posted by a fellow animation student of mine. It's only a few minutes long and gives a great back story on my school.



Awesome, right?

Crane Assignment

Over the past week I've been working on my latest assignment, which was to animate a crane picking up a cylinder and placing it on a block. Let me start out by saying that the way to approach a shot is to first block out the key poses, that is, the main storytelling poses, and then refine the shot with in-between poses. This is called blocking. Since this was my first attempt at blocking I didn't actually cover all of the poses and go as in depth as I should have, so when I went to finish the animation in the second half of the week I had a lot more work to do then I would have if I had properly blocked out the shot. So from now on I'll try to do a better job at the blocking phase.



After the blocking I went ahead and constrained the can to the claw. This way the crane actually picks up the can and takes it over to the block. I took my time and tried to make the animation smooth and hopefully interesting. This is what I turned in.



I'm happy with the way it came out, but I'm not finished with it yet. My instructor gave me some tips to clean up the animation and make things a bit more realistic and smooth. However, that's going to have to wait until after my next assignment where I'll animate a ball with one leg! I'll have that up when I'm finished.

Workshop Assignments

I'm sorry for not updating sooner, but I've been pretty busy with moving and the Maya Springboard Workshop. I'm really happy I decided to take this course. I started with absolutely no knowledge of how to use Maya, but now I'm getting pretty comfortable with it. I've learned so much in the past month and a half!

One of our first assignments was to create a very simple character and develop parent/child relationships between the different body parts. My maya trainer, Jeff, was pretty adamant about keeping it simple and just replicating the example image we were provided with, so my character isn't anything special. I am, however, really happy with the way the environment came out. I decided to model my living room and the front exterior of my apartment, with my character eating some cereal on the couch. Next we learned how to use shaders, which allowed me to add color to my project. Finally we learned some basic lighting techniques and moved on to animation. These are some rendered images of my lighting assignment.









We just started our animation assignments. This was my latest attempt at animating two bouncing balls. Believe it or not but it was surprisingly time consuming.



For our next assignment we'll be working with a crane. We'll start by blocking out our key poses and then in subsequent sessions we'll finish it up. I'll post the blocking when I finish it next week. I'll make sure to update this more often from now on!

Workshop and Website

It's been months since my last post. Sorry about that, but not much has been going on since I was just waiting for Animation Mentor to start. Well that time is now! I just had my first Q&A session with a bunch of other workshop students and it was really cool. Everyone was really excited and talkative on the chatroom side of things, meanwhile, two people from Animation Mentor, Jay and Victoria, were answering student's questions on screen and video of the student's asking the questions appeared under them. I asked a couple questions and it was a little weird at first but really cool talking and interacting with people across the world!

So what have I been up to? Well I'm about a quarter of the way through The Illusion of Life and half way through The Animator's Survival Kit. Both books are really good so far and I think I'm going to order another book to help me through the Maya Workshop called The Modeling and Animation Handbook. Other than that I've been working on my site again and I fixed a few things that were wrong with it and also added a 'Drawings' section to my portfolio! Most of them are from my Drawing 1 class back in freshman year of college. So check them out. I've also decided that I'm going to take a figure drawing class at the Fleisher Art Memorial over the summer or in the fall, because I need to brush up on my drawing skills.

For the next couple weeks we're settling into the Animation Mentor site and have access to new sections little by little. Then in week four everything gets hardcore! Two Q&As a week and assignments galore! I'm really looking forward to diving in and learning how the hell to use this program I just spent $400 on.