AM Q3 ASN3 refining01

This week end I went to the mountains with Laura and her family and needed to turn in my assignment early. This is what I had gotten done by Friday before I left. I continued to work on it over the weekend cleaning up splines.

AM Q3 ASN3 Blocking01

I really love blocking. It is my favorite part of animation, probably because I haven't figured out how to clean up my animations very well yet. As always my reference was not honest enough, next time I have to make sure I have everything that I am going to use in my animation on hand before I start planning so it is as honest as possible.

What I did to make the animation more honest was duct tape a varnish spray can on to one of my cheaper hats (not going to ruin my nice bowler hat) and used that as a proxy for my drinking horn. I knew I couldn't really tape my horn on my head it is way too heavy to stand up properly and to be pulled off multiple times. I had a lot of fun re-shooting my reference and trying to do different and more interesting things to use in my animation. These were the best ones. Though I had a couple that had some better starts that I might want to look at again later.

This week I tried to find stuff to live in my scene and I had trouble finding it for free so I decided to just make it myself and that went pretty well. I had to remake the horns on the helmet so that they could be taken off of the helmet, and it ended up making bigger more intimidating horns so I was pretty happy with that. I'm looking forward to my critique and moving ahead with the animation.

AM Q3 ASN2 Final and ASN3 Video Reference and Planning sketches

The Critique I got this week was hard for me to watch, because it was so true and so easy to see the errors afterward. Pretty much watch Jalil told me to do was to look at my reference and copy it as best as I could. So I started over I re-blocked the shot watching the reference and started getting my key frames from the reference.

I don't think I broke a lot of my keys down enough before I moved into splines, wich has lead to some linear looking movements at time, lesson learned. This shot is not done, and it needs more refinement, but it is well on it's way. The first 100 frames are the most refines and I spent a lot of time making sure that the sword arcs are really smooth in that section. The only down side is that it make the elbow do weird things and now it has a jittery quality to it that I'm not 100% on how to fix, because I tracked the arc on the elbow and it makes a smooth arc, but looks jittery.

For the next assignment I wanted to do something easier with less big broad movements and more subtle and direct movements. No more swords! So I decided to go with drinking.

The thing taped to the counter is supposed to represent a keg. I tired to tape little paper horns to my hat, I don't think they were good substitute for real horns, though luckily Laura has given me a a big drinking horn from Scotland so I had that. Next Halloween I need to buy a viking hat, for reference. Based off of the reference I came up with this planning.
Here is the lay out with the key frames. I'm going to have to make some barrels or hope I can find some free models on line.
I'm looking forward to refining assignment number 2 and for working on my next assignment.

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.