AM Q5 ASN2 Dialogue Week 4

This week is the start of a new assignment. This Assignment I will have until the end of the quarter, this one will be two character dialogue scene.

Here are my audio clips, the first one is from Serenity, the second one is from Office Space and the last one is from Planet of the Apes, I didn't list the source in the video because I got kinda chewed out for being excited about clips because of their sources. I picked these 3 clips out of a total of 12 that I found and showed to people and probably twice that many that didn't work for one reason or another.

 

This is my character description and scene description, hopefully you can read this if not well you'll get the feeling for it from the pictures and from the later animation I will do.

Based on what I can do with Bishop 2.0, I created these sketches for my potential characters and sets.

I have already hear from my mentor on this assignment and I got and A, which is awesome because those are hard to come by, and he was impressed with my drawings which was also a feather in my cap seeing as he was an old school animator for Disney. He really liked number 1 and number 2, those were my favorites as well, I am kinda leaning towards number 2, I have a better idea on what I want to do and what it is going to be.

This week I also had to make another face, I really like doing these assignments. I bought two books all about people making faces a reference for artists, one was all adults and one was babies to teens. These books are great references for people making faces, I could do with out the images of people using them to make art, those seem kinda dumb and make it seem more like a joke then actual reference book. Great books though and I recommend them.

AM Q5 ASN1 Dialogue Week 2

I got some great feed back from my mentor this week and it helped me to create a better look for the animation that was more consistent with the feel I was going for. I still have one more week I think it still needs a little TLC and then I could have a piece that I really like.

This week we had the additional assignment to copy faces that we found in "magazines" I took magazines to mean the internet. This assignment was really fun. I love playing with faces.  I hope we get to do a couple more of these.

 

Giddy

 

Confused

AM Q4 ASN2 Week11 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

Aaaaand Done. Well done until next quarter where I unlock the face and get to do the lip synch.

Well I think I find my self where I usually find my self at the end of the quarter, understanding the all the lessons at the end and wanting to start over because I now see what that shot could be. But that is how I learn, there are a lot of parts that I am happy with, but mostly all I can see are the flaws. From what I understand that never goes away.
I don't really like the beginning any more, it feels like it's there for the sake of animation not to explain who this guy is. I think after the quarter is done I will get rid of the swooping look up and have him fingering the jar more and then having a curt look up and then reavealing that he is happy to see Johnny Ringo. I would have incorporated it this week, but I didn't realize that until it was too late. Oh well, that is enough for this quarter, maybe one more cleaning pass before I turn in my reel.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week 10 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

Two steps forward two steps back seems to be the way that I animate. Here is hoping that that isn't true this week.

This is feeling closer and closer. I know it still needs some more polish and I need to track some arcs, but I feel that this is well on it's way to being a complete piece.

AM Q4 ASN2 Week9 Dialogue The Sweet Shop

Splines have been kicking my ass and once I have everything moving smoothly I can see what is and what isn't working. Looking forward to a good crit so I can get it to a nice clean space. I still have 2 weeks to make it all spiffy. I think I can do it!

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 ASN2 Week6 Dialogue

YAY! I finally get to animated a character with a face, I love drawing faces and I love working with animation face rigs.

I shot reference for this assignment however, for some reason I was feeling really self conscious and out of my element having to shoot it on vacation, so I really didn't like what I did and didn't find them useful (so I am not going to bother to post it like I usually do). So when I went into planning I decided to just ignore it and try and do something better. This actually led to how I want to plan animation from now on. Before the way that animation mentor kinda taught me was to film reference first and then do sketches and now I want to do sketches and then film reference and change the sketches to fit the reference. I still need to re-shoot reference for these shots but I think it should make things a lot faster this time around.

SHOT 1: the idea is that this a high ranking knight (I have been reading "A Game of Thrones") is sending his lacky squire to go retrieve something for him, the knight is preoccupied with something else in the room playing the squire little mind.
SHOT 2: a creepy, vicious and soft spoken sweet shop owner who has a malicious relationship with his customers sees a regular who loves a particular candy that he buys exclusively and the sweet shop own is out of the candy and takes great pleasure in pointing out to thus man that he is out of the candy.
SHOT3: a father playing with his daughter who is a selfish who always wants more, he is fed up with her materialistic attitude. He can not take any more when she was complaining about how the couch she just bought her was wrong and she wanted the nicer one.