AM Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament splines 01

Splines! I was able to get it to splines and I was able to clean it up pretty well. This was the least painful transition for me and I am pretty happy about it as well. It still needs some work and the timing needs a little work but so far I think this is the best assignment I have worked on at AM. Hoping I get a good critique and I will be able to get a nice piece out of it.

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 Q4 ASN1 The Painters Lament

Whoo! Another quarter has started and I am excited. Had some trouble getting started but once I did you couldn't stop me.
This quarter I am in Introduction to Acting with Dave Vallone, who has been in the business for 25 years and has done it all. he seems like a cool laid back guy, I'm looking forward to having him as a mentor.
The first assignment is to have two different beats, I chose to star out with a happy painter who steps back and looks at his piece and realizes that it sucks and then becomes very sad and decides to quit. I started out by filming this reference.

I ended up filming like 40 or so of these, most of them were very similar, I don't think I need that many in the future, or next time I will try and make them more different. I picked the 8 best to put into the reel to show my mentor.
Based off of my reference I started planning out my shot. I wanted to make sure that when I planned the shot that I left the character more open to the camera. Most of my reference was in profile, not the most dynamic angle for silhouettes. When drawing this I tried to get as many poses in as I could, it ended up making it look more like a mess then usual, however, I felt when I took any out that it felt bare.
Here is a closer look with some more break downs as to what I want to do. I tried to add as many break downs as made sense and adding as many actions as I can, I probably have too many, but it will be easier to cut things out then have to think about what to add.
I have already got a bunch of great suggestions on how to make it better. I think to make it work the best I need to play down the change from Love to sad. Make him step back and instantly know that he sucks. I think I need to shoot a little more reference with that in mind. I am going to try and keep it in the 10 range this time. 40 was far too many.