AM Q5 ASN1 Dialogue Week 1

New quarter and a new mentor, the mentor I have this quarter is old school, Jay Jackson, who learned from the Nine Old Men and who worked on films with Tim Burton. I am very excited to learn from a mentor
"No school, like the old school."
-Frank Thomas The Incredibles

This week I kinda worked out of order, I did start with my reference but my reference didn't really capture what I wanted. Though I feel I need to look at it more and taker note of the times where I do extenuate the words and find more small things to add to sweeten what I have. I also need to do a pass where it is just my mouth. Need to make sure I brush before that one.

 

After shooting reference and kind of ignoring it I went into the animation, I don't know why, I think I just wanted to play around and then I just couldn't stop. I ended up with something that I am actually kind of happy with. It helped me to tighten up the body in some parts and to better know what to accent with the body. I kinda needed the face to know the body. Even when I draw I start with the head and all things lead from that.

 

After the animation I did some of the worst planning drawings I have done yet . I know I can do better and I think I will do better next week. Need to figure out a time of day to start doing animation every day.

I am looking forward to next week and getting some feed back and just making the shot better step by step.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week8 The Sweet Shop Blocking

Yay, for the most part my mentor really liked what I did. After a couple of weeks of less then being with pleased with my assignments I turned one in that I was happy with and my mentor liked. It is nice. She gave me some great notes on how to improve the motion. I really like everything that I have going on in it now. Just need to finish cleaning it up so I can start adding some and flourishes.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week7 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

I chose Clip number 2 with Val Kilmer playing Doc Holiday from "Tombstone" I feel that it has some more fun and subtle face animation to play with and I am more excited to try and do a creepy character.

I was disappointed to find out that the Bishop rig that I got for this assignment has next to no face controls, just eyes, eyelids and jaw. I was all gungho for playing with a face and a lot of what i have planed for this shot and that I want to do with this shot has everything to do with the face. Oh well, it can wait, I will get the body down and then have whole weeks to play with his face. This blocking pass was meant to just get all of the body movements going in the right place so I can start smoothing those out as soon as possible. I want to mostly play with hands and the face in this exercise so I am trying to keep his body movements as simple as possible.
Though I do love working with Bishop he seems to be pretty easy to pose in appealing poses and his head is a reasonable size, so far he is the best model that I have worked with. I look forward to bishop 2.0 when I really get to play with the face.

AM Q4 ASN1 Week4 Redux No More Milk Spline Pass 1

Blocking for 3 weeks in a row, but the end goal is to have a good piece of animation and if that is what it takes then that is what it takes. My not from my mentor was to keep it simple so I eliminated a lot of business at the end. I think it is a stronger piece now. It still needs some work, but I feel like all the pieces are there now and after a few small tweaks I should be able to get into splines next week without too much pain.

AM Q4 ASN1 Week3 Redux No More Milk Blocking Part2

So last week, my mind was all about working on the part where the character was tired, I am not sure why. I think it was different from what I have been doing, but that is not where the entertainment is or where the point of the scene is. So I kinda needed to go back to the drawing board and needed some new ideas for the ending. I decided to go back to planning. I started by going to facebook and asking people what I should do, after my mentor that we should consult with more people and that it doesn't matter where an idea comes from. Facebook quickly devolved into something unhelpful and very internet like, it was not the most focused feed back. Though it had some cool ideas and helped me to actually think of what I wanted to do that would not be cliche. After I figured out what I wanted to do I filmed more reference, where I broke a bowl trying out my new idea, for that reason I only shot it once, but I was able to get everything that I wanted from it.
Revised page 1
This is very similar to the last planning or more it has the most repeated drawings from my last planning. My mentor said to nix him turning to the fridge it didn't add emotion and it just wasted time. This was great and gave me a lot more time for the tired part to be slow and for there to be more ideas in the angry part.
Revised page 2
Here are all the new ideas that I had for the little tantrum that the character has, I have him slam the empty jug down, throw the bottle cap and then shove the bowl of cereal back into the box. I know when i discover there is no milk when I have already poured a bowl of cereal I put the cereal back. With that in my i figured this character was so mad that he wanted to do that but was too angry to simply do that and just shoved the cereal bowl into the box. I also like the idea because it leads to lost of big fast movements to be a counter point to the minimal movements of the tired part.

Revised blocking for this week
I feel like it could still use some fine tuning, I didn't have the best time management skills this weekend and could have spent more time on it, but I feel like I have all the ideas there now and that I could move into splines and refine as I go. I am looking forward to my critique and I want to try and show it to more people and get more feed back so I can be doing splines all week.

AM Q4 ASN1 Week2 Redux No More Milk

It feels great getting back into blocking, it is my favorite part. I wish I could just hand it to some one else to clean up now. But Right now I know this piece still needs a lot of work. Though I Had a good timing modeling and getting the scene ready, even if maya tried betray me and caused a few headaches. In the end I was able to block it out. I wish I had more time to play with the timing more and add more things on the back end.

So just a refresher, the idea is the the guy has just woken up and he is not a morning person, he is on auto pilot and is being slow. Every day he eats a bowl of cereal, it's his routine and it is important to him. He trys to pour his milk on his cereal and discovers that, his douchebag room mate has once again drank all the milk and put the freakin carton back. This disturbs him and he is feverish to try and get any milk out and he explodes in to action.

While I was working on it I was also on auto pilot and when I started animating him taking the milk out of the fridge I instantly animated it like it was a full jug. I was about half way through before I realized what I had just done, and then I thought, this might actually make this more entertaining, the guy is so on autopilot that he moves like it is full.
I regrettably just had this idea right before I am about to turn the assignment in but, I think for Next week I might have him start at the fridge and have him open the door and then turn and pour the milk and have him explode more. Right now I feel like I can't feel the beats because of the movement and the time, like I see the beats, but I think the beats can be push way more.

AM Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament Blocking 02

The painter's anguish is not over, here is my second blocking pass. I got some great feed back from my mentor, I like his critiquing style. Next week I will be going to splines I hope I can get everything I want done in blocking early in the week.

AM Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament Blocking

So I wake up on Monday, I make my coffee and breakfast then I was going to get started on working on my homework. I go to turn on the machine, and it won't turn on, I try several outlets in the house and the AC adapter won't light up. I end up taking the laptop to Geek Squad and they tell me that the mother board is fried and that it would cost 700 dollars to send it in for a new one (F*ck). So I order a new computer, however, it is going to take several weeks for it to show up. In the mean time, it is the return of Kuchunka, my 7 or 8 year old desk top that has an angry whurring noise when it is on. It runs maya 8.5, which initially caused me some problems when it came to loading the Animation mentor assets, however after a couple of days I got it all worked out.
Sadly this lead to less time to get the actual assignment down. Some of my poses are weak and my timing needs to be worked on and I need some more break downs. It's an OK first pass, I was hoping to take it farther, though I have 3 more weeks to make it shine.
After My critiques last week I filmed some new reference, I shot about 10, where it had a quicker timing. Less time thinking about does the work suck and more of a visceral reaction. I attached one, so I could get some feed back on it and see if I need more reference. I'm looking forward to spending more time on it this week.

AM Q3 ASN2 Refining 01, More Blocking, More Sketches, More Reference More Everything

OK so it seems like I'm going all out every week, it is tiring but I am still figuring out what I want my scene to be. Before I wanted it to be a super powered viking getting revenge against the tree that he failed against years before. I realized that it was too fantastic and I couldn't get something believable and honest with what I had going so I decided to change the end so I knew better what his motivator was. I changed it to him being just a better warrior training against a tree.

This one I made more honest I used a "real" sword and a real tree. Something that I could really swing at. Though I bent the sword, so maybe you wouldn't want to train against a tree seeing as people are softer then tree and you don't want to mess up your equipment while training if you don't have extras. I really enjoy playing with swords they are so much fun. I'm glad I have an excuse just go out there and swing sword around.
I drew some really rough sketches for this, not wanting to waist too much of my time on drawings instead of animation I didn't go into to much detail beyond a really rough thumb nails. I decided not to add them to the blog.

Here is my refining. I wanted to get it into splines because I get harder critiques from Jalil when it is splined out, which is hard because it makes watching the critique painful, (I already watched it) though I now know what I need to do and how I need to push it. I feel pretty confident that I can push it and make something really awesome for next week.
I also need to plan my next shot and I think I am going to do the Viking pouring Meade out of a barrel into his helmet and drinking it, this one should be fun.

AM Q3 ASN2 Video Reference, planning and Blocking

After my e-critique from Jalil, I decided to start over and redo my reference and my planning for this scene. He suggested that I use something that I can actually hit with all my might so that I can get better arcs in my body and more honest acting and poses. He said to make it simpler and to take out any walks that I had going on it it. So I spent a couple of hours shooting reference, it took me a while because there was a guy across the way working on some ones roof and I felt really self conscious. Though I shot it twice after the first time I found out what I really liked about the scene and I was trying to capture different subtle ways of doing it.

After shooting the reference I did my planning drawings. I found a lot more interesting actions to do this time including the sword rolling off the shoulder and moving into an attack stance. I feel that could look really slick.



I e-mailed my new reference and drawings to Jalil and he said that I need to hit the "tree" harder, I'm still holding back. But he said that some other guy from Weta saw my drawings and said they were really nice, so I got that going for me.

Though I didn't get that e-mail until after I had already finished my blocking because Weta is in New Zealand and is a day in the future and He doesn't answer our e-mails on weekends and I sent the e-mail on Friday.

I feel pretty good about my blocking. I think I need to do some more reference with the sword hits and to vary those two hits a little more. But this is a great start.

AM Q3 ASN1 Blocking

I was very excited to get started on this project this week. What could be better then animating a character with a sword and shield. I also liked that for the first time I feel like my character has a real personality and not just doing an activity.
Though I had all kinds of problems with this project. First I updated to Maya 2010, which was free for students, thanks Autodesk! Though it appears to be a memory hog and at times runs really slow on my machine, there was no hope of playing with any good timing, Which lead to lots of playblasts.
I ended up animating this scene twice. The first time I animated it I had set up how the sword and shield leaves his hand in a weird way. The way that the extra items get attached to Stewie is simply by parenting the object group to the hands, this would not do me any good for what I want them to do. I will make sure in my survey this quarter to mention adding better option when it comes to parenting. I ended up parenting the object group to the hands, which made keying the sword and shield weird and hard to mess with in the time. After I did the first bit of blocking I didn't like what I had so I decided to start over and set up the items in a much better way.
After setting up the sword and shield with splines for controls and to hold the parent constraints I had a much more efficient and keyable and adjustable set up. I reanimated the scene and I changed some of the actions and it didn't turn out as nice. I ended up liking my first pass better. So I had to figure out how to copy and paste animation into my new set up. It took me a while to figure out, it turned out to be really simple, it was more about importing the animation the copy and pasting it. After that I cleaned up as much as I could of the old blocking and for some reason some of the controls didn't transfer, I reblocked those and got as far as I could. I just ran out of time jthere is still more that I want to do.

I think this week I might try and do a couple of run cycles from the Richard William's The Animator's Survival Kit, because I feel like there is something off with my run and I can't figure it out and the best way to learn something is by doing it.

Animation mentor Q2 ASN3 Backflip Blocking02

After last assignment I was determined to get my blocking in splines this week, so I had more time to clean them up and figure out how to keep nice hold and get smooth splines. Try and get that elusive "A."

This week I decided I wanted to add some work with the hands because nice hand animation always really wows me so I added a brush off after he gets up. I first Shot reference for the end of the shot.

Based off of the reference I drew these panning sketches.

I added these keys to the blocking, which went really smoothly and added a few additional break downs. I had thought it was going to get complicated and messy for some reason, but it was pretty straight forward.

This week I got into refining, I decided to post the stepped key blocking as well as the refining because I think the Blocking looks stronger in stepped keys. Though after I spend some more time cleaning up splines and and working on some of the timing I think it will be pretty good. Though I do like the feel of stepped keys for some reason, feels more like 2d animation which is awesome.

AM Quarter 2 Assignment 3 blocking01

I have discovered that I love blocking out animation. I was unaware of this before. Now when I do it it feels more like sketching for movement, where I am feeling out the piece that can later be finished, which is also my favorite part if drawing too. Hopefully the more I do this the better I will be at polishing my scenes comes to me, right now I still feel that i don't quiet have the knack of that.

AM Quarter 2 Assignment 2 blocking02

This week I had a substitute mentor, because Chad was on vacation after wrapping up the movie he was working on. The sub I had was Jay Davis who was amazing, he worked for Disney for a while and now he has decided to pursue painting. He is a Erotic Surrealist, and his paintings are spectacular, I really enjoy them. He was a great mentor to have this week because laughed at my animation which was awesome, usually them mentors are so stoned faced it was nice to get a reaction out of him. He also had alot of great insight into my scene about having some texture to the animation, meaning having actions with different speeds and intensities happening in the same shot. I feel I ended up with a much stronger piece because of it and I know next assignment that I will be thinking more about texture and timing. Though because I needed to change so much I didn't feel confident in taking it out of stepped mode before turning it in. Though I have so many keys and break downs it shouldn't be that intense to spline it out.

Animation Mentor Q2 ASN Drunk Stumble Blocking01

After getting some great notes from my mentor Chad Sellers, I changed some of my actions to meet his notes. Which lead to a better more entertaining animation, feel. I went with the pose to pose blocking on 1s and then spaced them out. The only problem I had was that I made a lot of keys which made it so I had not alot of wiggle room when it came to timing.

I posted this on my public review and showed it to Laura. I didn't get much response from the public review. Laura told me that the big step towards the end wasn't working for her, it took 50 frames to do it and I was unsure about the movement so I got rid of it. This solved alot of my timing problems and gave me the extra frames that I needed to pad the changes in direction.

I looked at my planning critique from last week again and I got a couple of new ideas but they are all long the same lines of what I already have, so I will save those for next week if what I have going this week isn't working. I exaggerated every movement with the knowledge that I could tone it down later. I look forward to getting my critique next week.

AM Quarter 2 Assignment 1 Blocking

The lecture this week was done by Dimos Vrysellas, an animator who approaches 3D animation like it was 2D and called all the key poses "drawings." He also didn't time his keys but just did them one after another until he had them all down.This is a good way to do it with pose theory where one pose needs to flow into another. It helped me to simply focus on the poses and not really worry about the timing yet. I found this method worked really well for me and it also helped me to realize where I needed more breakdowns before I started with the timing. It also lead to cleaner poses. I then spaced out all the key frames by 4 and played that. The timing wasn't correct but I just changed some things to be faster and other things to be slower until it felt right. This method worked really well for me and I hope it leads to simpler clean up and better animation as I progress.