Here is what I submitted for my final.
I'm not terribly happy with it. I'll put some more work into over the next couple days and post the final final.
For my next and last assignment of Intro to Body Mechanics I'm doing a dance. Not just any dance, mind you, a Carlton dance!!
now let's hope i can pull it off.
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Jump Blocking Plus
I switched my shot over to splines this week. Lot's of work left to do to get it right before I start polishing. This is where it is now.
Oh yeah, fun computer problems in the past week. Been to the apple store twice before finally just reformatting my computer. It's blank, mam.
Oh yeah, fun computer problems in the past week. Been to the apple store twice before finally just reformatting my computer. It's blank, mam.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
First and Second Assignments of Class 2
Week five of the second term just ended. We finished our first assignment last week, and I just turned in my first blocking pass for the second assignment, but I'll talk about that in a minute.
We have a few different options when choosing assignments, and for the first assignment I chose a 180° turn. The main focus of these assignments is to try to understand the way the body shifts its weight and also to keep it in balance throughout the shot. Animation Mentor has two classes focusing on body mechanics, because this is so effing important in creating believable movement.
We had four weeks to complete the first assignment. The first week was shooting video reference and sketching thumbnails of our key poses. Week two we blocked out our shot, which means we take our sketches of the poses and recreate them using our character. After getting our critique at the beginning of each week we do another blocking pass of the shot, and in the final week polish the shot. Each week I receive an eCritique from my mentor Drew.
Meet Drew Adams. He's my mentor for this term and works at Dreamworks where he is currently an animator on the sequel to Kung Fu Panda. He's such a cool dude and a GREAT teacher. I love our Q&A sessions and his eCritiques are really great.
(this is Drew critiquing my first assignment)
This is my first assignment. It goes from my final version to the very first blocking stage:
Today I turned in my first blocking pass for the second assignment. I chose "jump on and off a box". Below is the video reference I shot followed by my blocking. This week I'll be going through the blocking plus pass of the shot. See you next week!
We have a few different options when choosing assignments, and for the first assignment I chose a 180° turn. The main focus of these assignments is to try to understand the way the body shifts its weight and also to keep it in balance throughout the shot. Animation Mentor has two classes focusing on body mechanics, because this is so effing important in creating believable movement.
We had four weeks to complete the first assignment. The first week was shooting video reference and sketching thumbnails of our key poses. Week two we blocked out our shot, which means we take our sketches of the poses and recreate them using our character. After getting our critique at the beginning of each week we do another blocking pass of the shot, and in the final week polish the shot. Each week I receive an eCritique from my mentor Drew.
Meet Drew Adams. He's my mentor for this term and works at Dreamworks where he is currently an animator on the sequel to Kung Fu Panda. He's such a cool dude and a GREAT teacher. I love our Q&A sessions and his eCritiques are really great.
(this is Drew critiquing my first assignment)
This is my first assignment. It goes from my final version to the very first blocking stage:
Today I turned in my first blocking pass for the second assignment. I chose "jump on and off a box". Below is the video reference I shot followed by my blocking. This week I'll be going through the blocking plus pass of the shot. See you next week!
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Seriously? Weeks 6 - 11!?
If you were expecting me to keep up with this blog you were way off my friend.
So this is the work from the second half of the term. The assignments in this reel include:
★ Animating a pendulum to portray overlapping action
★ Using the Tailor rig (a ball with a tail) to continue to demonstrate overlapping action.
★ Animate a plain walk, aka a "Vanilla Walk", cycle with no character to it.
★ Animate a character walk cycle. For this assignment I chose a side stepping sneaky walk.
I shot video footage of myself doing a bunch of different walks with character and I included the one I chose in this reel. Shooting footage of yourself doing the actual movement is crucial! Reference footage shows all of the subtleties of the movement, things that you wouldn't think of. I also find myself continually getting up and acting out the movement over and over again to make sure I'm getting it right. Once you have that down it's time to start exaggerating. After all this isn't rotoscoping!
I'm constantly video chatting with my classmates throughout the week. They're awesome dudes, and I put up some links to their blogs. We tend to drink together. How can you not love a school where pants are optional and you can drink during lectures?
I realized I never introduced you to my mentor for this term, Sean Ermey. Check out his IMDB page here. He's a freelance animator from Texas and has worked on Jimmy Neutron, TMNT, and Ice Age 3. Really cool guy and I learned a lot from him.
Since this is our final week in Basic Foundations, our assignment is to revise our work and upload our class one reel. I'll post that next week on here. I promise.
So this is the work from the second half of the term. The assignments in this reel include:
★ Animating a pendulum to portray overlapping action
★ Using the Tailor rig (a ball with a tail) to continue to demonstrate overlapping action.
★ Animate a plain walk, aka a "Vanilla Walk", cycle with no character to it.
★ Animate a character walk cycle. For this assignment I chose a side stepping sneaky walk.
I shot video footage of myself doing a bunch of different walks with character and I included the one I chose in this reel. Shooting footage of yourself doing the actual movement is crucial! Reference footage shows all of the subtleties of the movement, things that you wouldn't think of. I also find myself continually getting up and acting out the movement over and over again to make sure I'm getting it right. Once you have that down it's time to start exaggerating. After all this isn't rotoscoping!
I'm constantly video chatting with my classmates throughout the week. They're awesome dudes, and I put up some links to their blogs. We tend to drink together. How can you not love a school where pants are optional and you can drink during lectures?
I realized I never introduced you to my mentor for this term, Sean Ermey. Check out his IMDB page here. He's a freelance animator from Texas and has worked on Jimmy Neutron, TMNT, and Ice Age 3. Really cool guy and I learned a lot from him.
Since this is our final week in Basic Foundations, our assignment is to revise our work and upload our class one reel. I'll post that next week on here. I promise.
Sunday, August 2, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, July 13, 2009
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!
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!
Thursday, June 4, 2009
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!
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!
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