Animation Mentor — Class 301-304

Class 301

So this is the first class of Intro to Acting. We didn't have a week break between Class 2 and 3, so I didn't really get a break from school. But that was okay, cause I was/am SOO stoked to get into acting, especially since acting (built upon solid body mechanics) is what the feature film studios look for in reels. The point of all this is to be able to show a performance, or bring life to the character. To really show the character is actually THINKING and not just moving across the screen.

This first week of class is a planning week. Our assignment is to have a shot that has two distinct beats or attitude changes. So, happy/sad or calm/scared. Honestly, coming up with an idea was tougher then I thought it'd be. I had some ideas, but finally decided on a character with a jack in the box. Like always, the first step was planning and shooting/finding reference footage. Here's what I shot for my footage. Enjoy!



After shooting the footage, I worked out some sketches for poses and story ideas based on my reference footage. Here's some of that stuff:



I wanted to be totally certain my mentor knew what my plans were for the shot (and I wanted to be sure myself), so I decided to do a rough 2D pass of the shot. This really helped me sort out some of the timing and ideas of the shot. It also helped make figure out the acting and beats of my shot. Here's that shot:



Class 302

This week's assignment was to take our planning and reference footage, along with our mentor's notes, and put our shot into blocking stage. I have a guy cranking a jack in the box, simple right? Wrong. I have a really good buddy of mine here at Animation Mentor. Jeffrey has been along for this ride since the beginning of AM. He really came through for me with this shot. I modeled the "Jack" box, but he rigged it for me and made it so I could make the hand holding the crank LOOK like it was actually the thing moving the crank, instead of the other way around! This shot wouldn't have happened without his skills! Thanks man!

On a side note, this shot doesn't have the actual "JACK" of the Jack-in-the-Box yet. I was having issues figuring out how to actually create the spring and animate it. You have to imagine what it'll look like! Take a look at this pass:



Class 303

This week we continued pushing our shot further and further to be final. This week, we were suppose to take out shot outta the blocking stage and into spline, creating a smoother shot. We also were suppose to take the mentor's comments and make any adjustments to our shots. I had some blocking changes and really had to work on nailing some poses and timing. But after another LONG weekend of work, I got my shot at least into spline before the deadline.

I also got the JACK head modeled, but still not sure how the spring is gonna work, so I just animated the head where I THOUGHT the final might be. Here's that pass:



Class 304

We have a total of 5 weeks for this first acting shot, so this week was all about getting it as far as I could so I would be able to spend a week on polishing. Polishing is something I've never really gotten done in all my shots. I want this to be different. I can make it to 90%, but polishing is that last part that will sometimes push your shot from good to great! I had an off week and really didn't get into my shot until Thursday. And it REALLY didn't start flowing until Friday. So I had a lot to get done. But I think it's coming along really well.

Finally, I figured out a way to do the spring and JACK head (thanks in huge part to Jeffrey and Neil). It's not the BEST way to animate a working Jack-in the-Box, but for this animation test it works fine! Take a gander:



Well...there's the first four weeks in a fast overview. My Q&A's have been great and continue to be a great place to gain knowledge about my craft, as well as getting to know my mentor as a person AND a fellow animator. My crit's have been good (even if a couple weeks I didn't get them until late on Tues. night). Marek is up there with the toughest graders...but I'm holding my own and learning from it. And I think my work is showing that. One more week on this shot and then it's time for some fun...the first dialogue shot! WHOOT!!

Thanks for checking in with me..and hopefully it was worth your time! Check back soon to see some more work...and check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor — Class "San-ga"! (also known as Class 3)

With one-third of my Animation Mentor schooling finished, I have begun Intro to Acting. Now starts the fun stuff. Last class was the taking the basic animation building blocks (the Principles) and using those in creating animations with body mechanics. Now we are taking those blocks and foundations and adding onto it a performance, or acting. Cuase remember, animators are simply actors who are camera shy!

For Class 3, I've been given Marek Kochout as a mentor. Marek is an Aussie who has been animating since 1990. He started out doing traditional animation for Disney and then came to the states to work for Don Bluth. For the last 10 years, he's been working at Dreamworks Animation. He's currently animating on Shrek 4. I'm really looking forward to learning a ton from this guy, and from what I can tell, he's gonna be just as tough on us students as my last two classes. I've also got a couple returning fellow classmates this term. One friend, Dustin, and I have had the same mentor EVERY class so far. We're gonna aim for a complete 6 for 6 by the time we graduate!

I'm already behind on posts, so I'll try to get caught up soon! I hope you keep check in and just maybe you'll learn a little something about one of my favorite artforms Character Animation!!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 212: Progress Reel

Class 212

In every Class at Animation Mentor, Week 12 is the week AFTER the final shot is due. There is no grade for anything, simply a final lecture reviewing the class and our final Q&A with our mentor. The other final thing we have to do before the Friday noon deadline is to piece together a progress reel of all our AM work. Many people just piece the shots together, put a name plate on the front and call it good. I started last term with creating a name plate with some "character". I continued that character into this term's name plate. AM has a mascot named "Spike" and one of the AM logos has a Mary Blair (an amazing Disney designer...wikipedia her!) or 50's style inspired Spike in it. I took this logo, recreated it and have added references to the mentor from each Class. Class 1 was Victor Navone. The animated short, "Alien's Song", got him a job at Pixar. I used that as the reference to his logo. Class 2 mentor, Rebecca Perez, has worked at a few studios in her short feature film career, but I chose the most recently RELEASED film to use for her logo, Bolt.

Besides the name plate, the main reason for this assignment is to have a record of our AM progress. It's always so much fun for me to see this put together. And now you can see it too!

Here's my Class 2 Progress Reel:



*music credits for "DakotaKid Theme" (the music in my Reel) go to my amazing buddy, Caleb Dirnberger!!

Thanks again to Rebecca and all my buddies at AM for helping getting me to this point!

Animation Mentor: Class 207-211

Class 207: part 2

This week is the crossover week. Meaning I have to finish my second shot and start my third shot of the class. I chose the "baseball throw" pick for my third shot, but I wanted to do more of a story and something I hadn't seen really at AM for this assignment. Also, I was REALLY missing my snow, so I chose to do a snowball throw/fight. I went to my place of work and set up a mock snow fort and grabbed some foam pit to be my snowballs. You can see my first attempt at reference footage and sketches at the end of my Class 204-107

Class 208

Week 8 started with reworking my reference footage based on Rebecca's e-crit comments. Here's that reworked video footage:



I also really didn't feel my sketches were anywhere NEAR what I needed to block in this shot well. I also was inspired by a buddy of mine from AM, Jeffrey. He sent me a video of his favorite Donald Duck cartoon, "Donald's Snowfight". I realized I had this short on DVD, so I used this for some reference. It was a HUGE help to flesh out some of my poses. In the end, it was worth taking the extra planning time for this shot. Here are the new sketches:




Once I got the planning part done, I started blocking in my shot. This part took a LONG time..and in the end, I actually spent an extra week or so in the blocking stage. But it all helped make the end shot better!

Here's my week 5 blocking assignment:



Class 209

This week, I really took the notes from Rebecca's critique and continued to work on the overall timing and pushing the key poses to really read well.

Here's the blocking PLUS pass:



Class 210

I finally got my shot pushed into splines this week. For those of you that are already lost with my animation terms, that basically means the shot now starts to smooth out and feel like more fluid motion. I also tried to add in some touches like squash & stretch and drag.

Here's the Week 10 refining assignment:



Class 211

Week 11 brings us to the last push on this final shot. We are to polish our shots as far as we can. This is the most time consuming and draining part in my mind. I don't know that you can EVER stop polishing a shot, at least that's what Rebecca has told us many times. Every shot I've done, I go through this time of "I'll never get this shot done" and every time I end up with a finished shot. Rebecca had said earlier in this shot how this was going to be a really good shot. I tried really hard to get this to be as good as she had said it could be. I still feel like I've got some more work to do on it to add that final 10% that will separate my animation from the majority of other animation reels, but it's coming along.

Here's the final shot of Class 2:



Overall..I'm super excited about all the growing I've done over the last couple months. I have learned so much from my mentor and my fellow Animation Mentor students. After Week 12, we only get a weekend to rest and we start right in on Class 3. Honestly, I'm soo excited to get on into my next class, Intro to Acting! Check back to find out who my new mentor will be and to see my Class 3 work. Also, check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Assignment #2 Revision

Week 207 Revision

I got a great review of my final FLIPPIN' shot in my e-crit from Rebecca this week. I wasn't sure I'd get the revision finished, but I got it done in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I tweaked it even more and she really thought it had come soo far. Of course, she found a few more things to tweak, but in the end said to just set it on the shelf for a few weeks and then come back to it with really fresh eyes and look at a couple parts that still need some minor, nitpicking tweaks. But overall, she said it was really good. Always great to hear from your mentor!

Here's the revised version I am submitting this week:



One more shot in Body Mechanics..and I picked a doozie! The blocking pass went well..so now we'll just see if I can push it even more in the quest for another killer shot!! Check back for more info and samples of that shot!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 204-207

Class 204: part 2

This week was both finishing up my last shot AND planning out the next one. I chose to do a tough pick from the list and did the "jump on to a post and balance". Now those of you that know me..I couldn't just do a basic jump...no, I had to give myself a little more of a challenge. I thought it'd be cool and DIFFERENT if I had Stewie (who doesn't have arms, by the way) not just jump, but do a "NO HANDED CARTWHEEL" or aerial onto the post. But it doesn't stop there..I then also decide to have him then do a back tuck flip onto a second post. Most are thinking about now..wow..that's a ton. But wait..I ain't done! I then wanted him to do a bigger back layout flip onto yet a third post. After he did this, he was then gonna do a crazy flip. Easy, right?? WHAT AM I THINKING?????

Luckily, I coach gymnastics and also participated back in the day. I took my wonderful Christmas gift mini-dv camera and asked one of my level 7 gymnasts to do an aerial for me. I would have loved to have just filmed myself..but I didn't want to break my neck. I then asked a couple other gymnasts to do some back tucks and layouts on the trampoline. I had wished I coulda video taped my girls back in South Dakota. I know they would have loved it..but the girls here are great sports and good kids too!
So yeah..the reference footage. I also took some of myself doing the "acting" parts of the shot and maybe even a couple flips..dang..old, outta shape guys CAN flip!

Here's what I submitted for reference footage:



Along with the reference video we needed to have a few pages of our sketchbook for our mentor to see our planning process. This is really important for us to work through our poses to get the clearest ones, along with working out timing and some story. Here's what I came up with for that part of the assignment:




Class 205

Week 5 of this class was my birthday week! I turned a year older on Monday and spent the day at Disneyland...FREE! A good friend of mine with a season pass went with me and we had a blast! But after the fun and games of Disneyland..I had to come back to reality and get down to my blocking of my second shot. I got some good feedback in my Week 4 e-crit from my mentor, Rebecca, about my choice and she was supportive that I could meet the challenge. I just hate that she's trying to push to make me a better animator! LOL (in case your wondering..that was sarcasm..)

Here's my week 5 blocking assignment:



Class 206

Week 6 started with my e-crit from Rebecca. It wasn't as glowing as I'd wanted, but part of that was my own fault. As you saw in the previous week's assignment, I had created the shot in a perspective view to get the LONG shot into a closer view. I was trying to make the poses work towards that camera view. I thought it would be a good decision to add the profile view so Rebecca could really see the arcs of the action. I was really proud of my flips. This was not smart. When Rebecca was giving me her crit, she couldn't read the poses as clearly because my camera angle was too drastic. So she went to the long profile view to give feedback. This is where everything went down hill. I had animated all the poses in this view to be nice clean lines of arcs..but wasn't worried about the silhouette of each pose, so she started really rippin' into it. In the end...I learned a ton and learned NOT to give additional views of the animation that aren't as cleaned up as the main one! Lesson learned!!

I took the crit and applied the comments to my shot. This pass is suppose to be a BLOCKING PLUS. Which means...well..it can mean alot. But the basic idea is that you push your blocking pass further and maybe that includes starting to smooth out the motion into splines. You'll notice that I have added a camera move. I was really stubborn and wanted a better camera angle that showed off my animation. I didn't like how small it was when you saw it in the profile, so I tried my hand at a camera move. It took some work, but I finally got my mentor to see my point and in the end she agreed that the camera angle DIDN'T distract (like she had thought it would) and it does make it better to showcase my animation!

Here's the blocking PLUS pass:



Class 207

My FLIPPIN' shot was due this week. I worked my butt off to take the comments in Rebecca's Week 6 e-crit and implement them into my shot. I really tried to track the arcs in as much of the body as I could. Arcs are in EVERYTHING in real life. Nothing organic moves naturally in a straight linear action..it all has an arc to the path of action. This can be tough..and is something I'm STILL working on. I really worked to polish this shot as far as I could by the Sunday noon deadline.

Here's the finished shot:



The other half of this weeks assignment is the planning for our third and final animated shot for Class 2. I decided to tackle the "throwing a ball" pick. But I decided to have it be a snowball fight, in honor of my missing actual winter in this WAY TOO WARM southern California! I once again used my place of work and shot the reference footage using some camera tricks and some foam pit!

Here's the video footage:



I also then did some planning for the shot. I'll admit..these are rough and in the end I ended up redoing them..but here's what I handed in this week:



I think this is enough to please you hungry, faithful readers this time around. Thanks for checking in with me..and hopefully it was STILL worth your time! Check back soon to see some more work...and check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Assignment #1 Revision

Week 204 Revision

Once again, I got a quick and well received e-crit from my mentor, Rebecca Perez. She felt I really did a great job, especially with the shorter amount of time to do the assignment because of my computer issues. She had a couple tweaks to push this shot even closer to being signed off on. I took those tweaks and tried to address all of them. After the first pause and his turn to look down at the stone, I had never really liked how that felt and Rebecca had commented on something in that area. I ended up doing more of a change to this area, and took out the big step and made it more a slide step.

Here's the revised version I am submitting this week:



Now gotta just get further on this blocking pass for Assignment #2! It'll be pretty sweet if I can get it worked through! Check back to see how it goes...

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 201-204

Class 201

So far Class two has been flying by. It started out with my first week of class happening while I was back in South Dakota, still on vacation for Christmas. All we had that week was planning for our first of THREE animations we'd be doing this quarter. We had three options: 180 degree turn, a big step to the side and to kick a ball. For this assignment, we have our old friend, Ballie to animate. If you remember, he's the character of a ball and two legs we used in our Class 1 Vanilla and Personality walks. I thought about it all week, and decided to go with a simple side step. I didn't really do much in way of work until I returned to LA the Friday of Week 1, but hit the ground running when I got home. Our assignment was to shoot some reference video (thanks to Santa, I have a mini DV camera now!!) and then put up two sketchbook pages of our planning. I worked most of Friday night and pretty much most of Saturday on planning out the shot. Luckily, I didn't have to work ALL night long on it, and was able to work on my social life a tad. But here's the reference and sketches:





Class 202

Week 2 started out pretty good. I got my e-crit back from my mentor, Rebecca, pretty fast. She really liked my sketches and planning and video reference, but she thought it was a little too simple for someone of my skill level. Soo, she suggested adding in some diffiulty at the start or finish. I took that and decided to have Ballie walk into the shot from off screen and then add a turn and walk off at the end. This was all doable, but my computer decided to make it harder for me. I woke up on Tuesday morning to find my computer wouldn't start up. I took it directly into an Apple Store and got a spot with the Genius'. I was then told that it was the logic board and that it needed to be replaced. Now, this isn't new to me, I've had two or three logic boards go out on me in my years of owning laptops. I just didn't need this right now. In the end, I sent my computer in to be fixed (seven to ten day turnaround)and told the school and my mentor my situation. Week 2's assignment was to take our planning and do a blocking pass in CG. A blocking pass is when we put in all the Key story-telling poses of our animation. In a good blocking, you should be able to understand the complete animation.

Because of my computer issues, I decided to do this weeks assignment old school: traditionally hand drawn, baby!! Now, this isn't new to the school and many others have done this, but I talked to my mentor and she agreed that it would be good if I was able to get this done and it'd fill the requirements of the week. So, I got my light box out and started taking all I have learned and relearned here at AM and drew out my key poses and actually did more then was needed for this pass. But I wanted to use this opportunity to really work out all the timing and spacing issues, along with poses. Here's my week 2's assignment:



Just as Murphy's Law would have it, the minute I got a nice, shiny, new computer (been needing to get a second computer for a LONG time), I get a call from the Apple Store telling my laptop was finished...five days early! After I had a chuckle about Murphy and his law's, I got my assignment uploaded in time for my deadline. All was well with the world!

Class 203

Finally after the uncertainty of last week's computer issues, I have to get my 2D blocking pass to translate into Maya. I got some great feedback from Rebecca about my work so far. She thought I did a really good job in 2D and she thought this would be easy to transfer into Maya. She just mentioned a few things like deleting the signs because it blocked the beginning too much and she didn't know why they were there (even though it was in the 2D version). She also talked about "story beats". She suggested I change the second step to go back screen right and then turn and walk off screen. This would help add to the texture of the shot. It all made great sense. I often wonder if they'll be a time I actually KNOW this stuff...and some days I don't think so..but the days where the light switches on, I feel great about my understanding.

So after the e-critique, I got Maya running on my new computer and got to work. This week's assignment was a Blocking PLUS pass. Now this term is pretty vague, but I knew I had to take it as far as I could to make up for being behind. I blocked out my shot, and then when that was looking good, I started pushing it into splines, making the shots start to smooth out. I wasn't sure how far they wanted us to go with this week's work, but took a chance on it and took it pretty far. Here's what I submitted:



Class 204

I was really nervous about this week's e-crit, because I just didn't know what to expect. If I totally missed the mark, I'd have a huge load of work to do this week. But if I nailed it, I'd just have to keep pushing it to close to finished. Luckily, Rebecca thought I had it and gave me some suggestions to make things better and keep going with it. So all week long, I tweaked this part and then tweaked another and then another and back to a previous one..and so on. I had a few moments of "what am I doing" but after some late nights and some much needed family time with my sister, I got the assignment finished to a point I was happy with. Here's this week's submission:



Not only did we need to finish up our first shot, we had to do the planning for our second animation. From what some buddies tell me..this is pretty much how it is in the studios...multi-tasking and time management, baby! Once again, we had a few choices to pick from; animate a run, have a character jump a large gap, have a character jump up onto a box and off and have a character jump onto a post and balance. I chose the biggest challenge one, the post assignment. I decided to try something I hadn't seen in past Class 2 student's work and take advantage of my gymnastics training. Here's the planning and the video reference along with it:







So, you can see the first four weeks of Class 2 have flown by! I've been pretty happy with the class so far. I know Rebecca is really pushing us to be our best and challenging us to take on bigger projects each assignment. I also like that she's tough with grades, and I'm still pulling in good ones...even though it's NOT ABOUT THE GRADE LETTER! (gotta keep remembering that!) Thanks for checking in with me..and hopefully it was worth your time! Check back soon to see some more work...and check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor — CLASS DEUX!!!

After a LONG two week Christmas and New Year's break...the Animation Mentor campus was opened back up to us students and I logged on, impatiently wondering who my Class 2 Mentor would be...and what class time I would have...and who my fellow classmates would be. I was excited to see that this term's mentor was Rebecca Perez. I had recognized her from some of the introduction videos for Class 1. Not so long ago, she was ALSO an AM student. Since then, she has gone on to work at Disney (Meet the Robinson's and Bolt), Blue Sky Studios (Horton Hears a Who) and currently is at Sony Imageworks working on the upcoming film "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". I'm looking forward to learning some amazing stuff in animation this term and hopefully producing some animation that I will be proud of! :)

I know I was behind keeping up on bloggin last term. I'm not gonna promise I'll be better, but I will try my hardest to at least post some of the work...but not sure I'll have the in depth commentary I previously had..but ya never know! :) I hope you keep check in and following me along this amazing journey into Character Animation!!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 112 - Studying Different Walks and Class 1 Review

It's finally here..week 12 and the end of Class 1 of Animation Mentor! It has been an amazing trip and I am so greatful to all my fellow students and buddies at AM, but most of all to my Mentor Victor Navone! He has pushed me and my animation more then I ever thought. I have been honored to be mentored by him and look forward to maybe working with him at Pixar one day! :)

ASSIGNMENT

This week was really only about organizing our animations and poses into a Class 1 Progress reel (or demo reel!!). We only needed to piece together our shots together and put a name card on the front and be done, but I wanted mine to look professional and good. So I took a little more time to re-render the shots out, along with trying to make some more fixes to some shots Victor wanted changed. I think i did some fixes, but still not feeling I've nailed all the ball bounces down. I also re-rendered the STU poses so they all had the same feel and color. I actually wanted to do some more with the poses to show the process I went through, but time got away from me. I also had to pack to fly home to South Dakota for the holidays this week...along with some holiday fun with some friends..SO..I did what I could do..but I'm feeling really good about this Class 1 progress reel! :) So without further a-doo...check it out:



Well, there you have it. Class 1 was amazing and I can't wait to get started on the next step on my journey to my animation dreams! Bring on CLASS 2!!!!!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 108 - Introduction to Walks

Hey all! Week eight has come and gone...and man..was it a biggie. I had some more corrections to make on previous work and of course new animation to produce. Here's an overview.

WEEK 8

This weeks lecture and assignment introduced us to Walks. I have had some experience with walk cycles, but still, I was reminded of some important things and shown some new things. All in all, reminded how walk cycles are truly some of the hardest things to get correct in animation. Partly because they use ALL the principles of animation. Once again, the week ended burning the midnight oil on Saturday night...but then again..what's new!!

NEW ASSIGNMENT

This week had EVERYONE doing the same VANILLA WALK. We were given BALLIE this week. He is a ball (never can get away from the ball and it's bouncing...NEVER!!!) with TWO legs. Ballie is the more fortunate older brother of ONE-LEG from last week. I just happened to wait until after the Q&A this week to start on my actual blocking. I sketched out the planning thumbnails, but that's about it. Here are the plans:



This week's assignment was to animate two complete steps with Ballie, in a side view and in Stepped mode. Basically the blocking stage of the walk. The other thing was that the walk was to be as mechanical and the same...VANILLA. There was to be no variation in anything from step to step. Sounds simple, right??? Wrong...VERY WRONG!!! Luckily, Victor gave us a Vanilla Walk Demonstration in our Q&A. I had been recording our Q&A's for a few weeks now (for my own review and not for distrubution, of course!!), and was SOO glad to have this one recorded. I had to go back and watch it a few times since my notes were not as strong as I'd have liked. Here's what I came up with for the blocking pass that I handed in:



After a couple weeks off from creating poses for the STU character, this week finds us creating a PHYSICAL STRENGTH pose for him. After the difficulty of the DEVASTATION pose..I was kinda glad to get something that was a little easier to visualize. But it also gave a little problem to come up with poses that weren't overused in this Animation Mentor assignment. Here's the sketchbook page of the pose choices:


Here's the pose I chose to put STU in. I had a few poses that I kinda liked..but wanted to a gymnastics pose..once again to use the years of participating in the sport. But the biggest challenge I had in choosing this pose, was the symmetry and "twinning" of the pose. So, I went against my better judgement and made the pose a little more off balance and tried to add interest. Check it out:


REVISIONS

Along with the new assignment, I worked on making revisions to the previous weeks stuff. In his E-Critique, Victor gave a more corrections on my REVISIONS of my Week 6 assignment, the Pendulum. This assignment is truly proving to be the bain in my Class 1. Here are the corrections from these latest comments:



I also then had some revisions for the TAILOR animation from last week. Overall, Victor liked what I did and I think I showed some good knowledge of what the assignment was getting at. As per usual, Victor tried to give me some tweaks that would make the animation better, and fix a few things with Tailor's tail. Here's what I did with his corrections.



Well..there's the update on Week 108 for ya. Next week we'll really get into the cleaning up of the walk and making it really look like a VANILLA walk...come back and check out what happens!!!

Animation Mentor: Week 107-Arcs & Path of Action

Hey all! Week seven has come and gone. My workflow is getting refined (which means I just have booked Friday night after work through the deadline of noon on Sunday as my main work time! Here's an overview of Week 7.

WEEK 7

This weeks lecture and assignment dealt with Arcs and Path of Action. Our featured character this week was a ball with a tail named TAILOR or ONE-LEG, which was a ball with..you guessed it..ONE LEG!! This really is the first week that we get a character that has "character" possibilities with it. We have another week off from a new emotion pose for STU, so my full attention could be given to the animation assignment. Once again, I worked right up to the deadline, continually finding tweaks to try and make the shot better. Sometimes it was really hard for me to ask others to look at my stuff, especially my circle of good bros..cause they ALWAYS could find something I missed or could change to make it better in there eyes. But in the end..USUALLY it was for the good!

NEW ASSIGNMENT

We had another choice this week; choose ONE-LEG and have him do a single jump or choose TAILOR and have him bounce a minimum of three bounces. Some fellow classmates chose One-Leg to get ready for the future character we'd be using for our walk cycles. Others chose to use Tailor..since they were use to the bouncing ball which Tailor is created. Still others, like me had set out to use BOTH characters. I soon learned this was more then I wanted to take on, so I just went with Tailor..but decided to finally use some of my gymnastics knowledge to good use. Here are the plans:


I originally blocked in a version that had Tailor doing a flip AFTER he jumps off the mini trampoline. After getting some feedback on this version, I decided to take out the flip...but later added in a smaller flip ONTO the mini trampoline. I have to give some massive kudos to my bro, Jeffrey, for his hard-nosed crits...and for his amazing work on his Tailor animation. It turned out awesome..I'm both inspired and jealous at the same time! :) Check out my final submitted version here:



REVISIONS

I had some MAJOR work to do on last weeks PENDULUM shot. This was actually the worst e-critique for me. I was really bummed out. I had thought I was really getting overlapping action, but Victor had a drawing on almost every frame of my shot.


So, after walking away from the e-crit and computer totally, I came back and made the needed changes. This is another reason I was glad we didn't have a pose for this week, so I could spend some of my time on these revisions. Here's this weeks revision on the Pendulum assignment:



He also made a few more minor suggestions on the DEVASTATION pose. Here's that RE-revised version:




In this weeks Q&A, Victor was at the wrap party for the "Cars Toons" shorts he'd been working on recently. Because of this, we were honored to have a sub in our Q&A time. Morgan Kelly, a Dreamworks animator and campus mentor, was said Substitute. It was kinda cool hearing from another mentor. He gave some great info on the weeks topic of Arcs and Path of Action, along with answering some of our questions about his time in the animation field. It was kinda interesting, cause Morgan had been an animator at Dreamworks for as long as I'd been doing animation since leaving AI..about 5 years. After hearing from a "veteran" like Victor, it was great hearing from someone that was a little closer to my time in the industry...the only difference was his was at a big time studio..and mine was at slightly smaller, little known places! But overall, great Q&A with Mr. Kelly! I hope to hear and talk more with him in the future...either through Animation Mentor or elsewhere.

Well..there's the update on Week 107...once again..a few weeks late, but hey...it's at least up on here now for all to see! Week 108 is next..and it's the start of walk cycles...WOOF! One of THE hardest things to do in animation! Bring on the torture...and FUN! ANIMATION MENTOR is moving along and I'm LOVING it!! Until laterz, faithful viewers!

Animation Mentor: Week 106-Overlapping Action

Hey all! Week six meant I am halfway through my first class of ANIMATION MENTOR. I've started getting into a workflow..or trying too get into one. The assignments are going deeper into animation and also building in difficulty, but that's partly my own fault. I want to really challenge myself. I just gotta make sure I am fulfilling the assignment and then not making mistakes in those advanced decisions. But let's get into this weeks stuff!

WEEK 6

This weeks lecture and assignment dealt with Overlapping Action. This weeks "character" is a pendulum, a root object with a three joined tail hanging below it. This week we have to choose outta two assignments, one harder then the other. Being the glutton for punishment I sometimes am, I chose the more difficult one, but not before I did the first assignment to get some of the basics. The pendulum is to help teach us the principle of overlapping action..which is seriously not as easy as it looks!

NEW ASSIGNMENT

The assignment I went with was to show the pendulum move through the shot with some movement, such as a figure 8. I wanted to do something that was fun to watch (and animate) and took the idea of the falling blocks from the obstacle course.
Here are the thumbnails and plans:


I modeled the blocks and then started animating the root of the pendulum. When I had the blocking of that done, I started on the tail part. Luckily, I was given a link to a blog that gave some helpful insights on overlapping action. I had some awesome help from some fellow classmates. Every time I thought I had it right...I'd have something pointed out to me that wasn't quite right..but, by the end of a long Saturday of working on it, I uploaded what I had in time for the Sunday noon deadline. Here's that version:



REVISIONS

This weeks e-critique had a few small changes to my DEVASTATED pose...



...and then there were a few changes to make the obstacle course better. I was really glad to have a good response to this assignment. I was really worried I was gonna get nailed for going soo far away from the usual obstacle courses most everyone else in the course do. But overall Victor liked what I did.


Here are the changes based on last weeks crit:



Well..there's the update on Week 106 for ya. Some of you might have realized this is a few weeks late...but I have good reasons. Those reasons would be the lack of time between coaching and each weeks assignments workload..I haven't even had time to hang out with friends or see any recent films. Hopefully that'll change..or not. lol! But now we are onto Week 7 and all the fun that brings! Check back soon for the 107 week in review! Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 105-Anticipation and Squash and Stretch

Hey all! Week five has happened and was it ever hard. Between battling a cold and sore throat and coaching and this weeks assignments, I wasn't sure I'd make it. I got a really late start on work. Sunday wasn't as productive as it should be. Then a buddy of mine came into town from back home on Monday. I spent much of Monday with him and another friend. I spent much of my week working to get my animation done by the deadline. It didn't help that Halloween was Friday night and I was invited to many parties. I did take a couple hours to attend a friend's party, but then came home and continued working. After a full day of work on Saturday, I got everything uploaded in time. I'm just glad this week is done! Here's an overview.

WEEK 5

This weeks lecture and assignment deal with anticipation and squash and stretch. We are now given controls for the ball that allow us to add squash and stretch to our animation. This weeks animation assignment is to take the ball through an obstacle course. The ball is to show anticipation and squash and stretch as it jumps into the course.

NEW ASSIGNMENT

We had three different courses we could choose from, or take elements from and create a new course. Of course I couldn't just do the basic courses. Early in the week, I came up with the idea of a video game type feel, inspired by Super Mario Bros. or Sonic (although Sonic was a reference that came up after people started commenting on my work). I started out with the planning stage along with constructing the course. Here are the plans:


I had a whole course planned out and built..even had the animation finished, but then I started getting feedback that "it's great, but I don't think it fits the assignment." I really liked what I had completed, but started really looking at the assignment. One thing about Animation Mentor is how interpretation of assignments really comes down to each mentor. Here is the first version I created (I realize that the timing on a couple things don't quite match..but this is the last playblast I did of this version..so this is what you get!!):



I decided to try to create a shot that was closer to the assignment, but still felt like mine. I loved the beginning part, but some close AM buddies suggested making the ending more like a basketball. After some huge stress moments and some real frustration about what I was doing and why I had chosen such a huge idea, I completed the shot in the wee hours of the night on Saturday night. Here's the final submitted version:



I'll see how Victor goes for it and make any changes next week!

After a week off from creating poses for the STU character, this week finds us creating a DEVESTATION pose for him. This was much tougher to do then the excitement one last time. There are so many cliche poses and ideas that have been done, and I tried to stay away from it. But also, I really didn't spend a ton of time on the pose this week. The animation took priority for me. So, I'm glad that I got what I did this week. And I didn't get very much feedback on the chosen pose before handing it in, so I'm hoping the crit isn't too harsh! Here's the sketchbook page of the pose choices:


Here's the pose I chose to put STU in. Not the best work..but still think you get something close to devestation, at least:

REVISIONS

Along with the new assignment, I worked on making revisions to the previous weeks stuff. In last weeks E-Critique, Victor gave a couple tweaks on my Week 3 EXCITEMENT revision, so I took those tweaks and RE-revisied the pose.


Here's that RE-revised version:


Then I also got some feedback on my weighted ball assignment.


I have tried to make the corrections that were pointed out by Victor. We'll see what he says in this week's critique. Here's that revised assignment:



In this weeks Q&A, Victor gave a Squash and Stretch lecture showing examples from several films, including the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and the butler, Edgar, from Aristocats (the scene where Edgar hears about his employers plans to leave all her wealth to her cats and not him). He also gave examples about Anticipation. He used some footage of a squirrel and the bird that chased Flick in "A Bug's Life". He also pulled some live action examples from George Clooney in "Intolerable Cruelty" and Jack Lemon in "The Apartment". These examples were more facial anticipation then full body stuff. And then of course, the examples of some of the BEST Anticipation/Squash & Stretch, Wile E. Cyote and the Roadrunner! Victor then gave a Squash and Stretch demo for us. It's always great to get a demo from Victor, if only to see how veterans would approach the assignments.

Well..there's the update on Week 105 for ya. It was a massivly stressful week, and I'm amazed I made it through without a major breakdown (there might have been minor ones..but no major!!). Hopefully Victor will have some good feedback in the E-Critique. Make sure to check back and see how Week 6 goes! NO MORE REQUIRED BOUNCING BALLS!! Bring on the PENDULUM!!! Thanks for joining me on this journey closer to my passions and dreams, and this adventure called ANIMATION MENTOR!!