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 ASN1 Week1 Redux No More Milk

Once again back into the breach.
This Quarter my mentor is Melanie Cordan and she has quiet the impressive resume. She seems super nice and intense as a mentor, I am really stoked for this quarter this I feel will be my make it or break it quarter.

It took me about half the week to come up with the concept for this. I kept trying to figure out a catalyst for the change in emotion, this assignment needs two different beats where the character changes emotion. Last time I did this I tried to have the character have an internal shift, and it just takes too long for 10 seconds of animation. All the other ideas had to do with the character getting hit on the head, which felt too cliche' and then one morning I drank all the milk and Laura was none too pleased and I thought this would work great for a change in some ones attitude, from tired/ lethargic to angry/ energetic.

I started out by shooting video reference again, I feel a little out of practice and I have to be mindful that I am in an apartment now and can't just bang about really loudly. I wasn't 100% on what I wanted to do so i tried to shoot 10 different attempts. From those 10 I decided that these 3 were the best of the different ideas that I came up with while we were filming the piece.

Based off the video reference I started picking and choosing my favorite parts, the first shot was my favorite and i tried to base most of it off of that one and I took what I wanted out of the other ones.
I stated as I usually do by just kinda hand animating/ laying out the scene in photoshop, however this time the end result was less then aesthetically pleasing. Because all of the action happens in a limited space it's hard to see the variation in the movements, I usually take up more space in the scene, so the layered effect was not very effective. However, the point of this is to get my break downs looking correctly and help me to make it all flow and look correctly with each other. (I already saw my crit, because I forgot to post this on Sunday, and my new mentor Melanie was to take this and make an animatic with it, which sound like a great idea)
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Based off of my critique I need to work on the ending where he is mad. Some of the things I did were kind of Cliche and I need to add more fury and make him a little more animated in the end. I have a couple of Ideas on how I can improve them and Melanie gave me a couple of starting points for me to jump off of to improve the idea. I am really looking forward to getting back into Maya and doing some blocking.

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.

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.

AM Q3 ASN1 Final and ASN2 Reference and Planning

The final animation was due this week and I didn't quite make it. This week felt like two steps forward and one step back the whole time. I actually made a lot of changes to my animation, however, after I got pass the brick wall I had when working on re-blocking most of the scene I was pretty much out of time. This week I am starting on Monday and going to get as much done as possible. Not going to let this happen again! I am also going to continue to work on this shot and take it as far as I can. I hope that my mentor Jalil will continue to give me critiques, if not I will have to start bugging my friends.

This is also the start of Assignment number 2, I wanted this one to be the counter point to the first one where the first one was chaotic and haphazard, I wanted this one to be more subdued and controlled. I don't know if it is reading the way I want or I am just tired and hate everything. I think most of it will be in the timing.

Note to self week 8 go out and film reference with a friend, last time it went so much better when I had the help of Rick to act it out and just do some different things and give me ideas. I feel like a lot of my reference is all the same. Maybe I will try and hang out with a friend this week and shoot some better reference, damn why does it have to be raining this week.
Yes I know this looks like a jumble, in all my other addignments this worked really well, I guess it is all too close to one another to work well visually. I was also surprised when I brought in a render from my scene from last week and that the spacing was really close to how I drew the planning for the last assignment. I didn't even know, it was kinda cool.
Here is the break down where it should make some more sense. The shot has pretty much 3 steps, he picks up the sword, he hacks at the tree and then he kicks the tree down. I'm hoping that I can get some subtle animation going on, where he is breathing heavy.
I am hoping that due to the fact that there are less keys that I should be able to add a lot more interesting texture in my timing and get more a sense of thought from the character.
On a side not I plan to give the viking character a beard, mustache and an eye patch, so no matter what it will be more epic

AM Q3 ASN1 VIKING reference and planning

A new quarter, a new mentor and new exciting assignments. This quarter I got Jalil Sadool an animator at Weta, he has a reputation as a tuff love kind of kind of mentor, I'm looking forward to it (and dreading it) becuase I know it will be tough but it should help me to be a better animator which is the whole idea. This quarter I am doing the animation Jam, where we pick a theme and animate a series of exercised in the theme, when the week started I was overwhelmed with the possibilities and had no idea what to do. Then I looked at all the props that they gave us and found I could make him look like this!
It was now clear what I was going to do. VIKING WARRIOR! So seeing as I wanted to the animation jam the idea is to make 3 different excersizes that embody this theme and relate to one another with out be necessarily seamless. So my idea is that in the first assignment that he is a viking in training and he isn't very good. Then assignment number two he is still in training but he is awesome! Then in assignment number three he goes out to fight the mythic beast, played by our old friend Ballie.

So this week I was hanging out with my good friend Rick-O and I asked him to help me film my reference video. I didn't have a real specific plan, just to have the viking use his shield and sword and attacking a tree (pillar) with mixed success and then reacting by running away. Here is the best of what we came up with, we shot 36 shots and I picked the best ones that had similar things going on in them that I really like.

We filmed a couple of other ideas too but I liked this idea that he screamed and ran looking all crazy and bad ass and then when he hits the sword flies out of his hands and he freaks out throws his shield and runs away.
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I drew out the whole scene with the staging on top of each other like a 2d animation along with arcs and general notes about how I plan to break up the scene.
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Break down sketches of all the keys with notes on how to change between them. I needed more break downs for the run, but it would all just be a repeating cycle of the run and I felt it would be redundant. I feel the hardest part is going to be this swing over the head.
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Fleeing away very timidly breakdown sketches and notes, again here I didn't full draw out the keys because it is a simple bent knee run.

After shooting the reference I am really excited to start animating this! I can't wait to hear back from my mentor and get a feeling for his critique style.

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 1 Polish and Assignment 2 planning

This was the last week for assignment number 1, this week I turned in my polished version of my animation. It is really smooth and i'm pretty happy with it. I'm sure when a more seasoned eye sees it there will be some errors that I can tweak but for myself I am really happy with how clean it is. Never got it this clean at Ai.

I also started assignment number 2. I chose to do a drunken stumble, because i thought researching this part would be alot of fun. I'm always amazed at how difficult it is to get get drunk when your plan is to get drunk but not sick. Needless to say I was unable to get drunk enough to do a proper drunken stumble, but I think my acting skills make up for that.

From the reference I created my planning drawings. I only did the main keys, except for the last line they are broken down a little more. But last time I did this I found more inbetweens when I was working on the blocking. So i figured that should all work out well.I wasn't really sure what to do with the second page. I did the same thing that I did last time where I layer all of the poses on top of each other and it turned out looking really clutter and made me feel like it was missing something.

AM Quarter 2 Assignment 1

Ref Yay quarter 2 has started! I'm in Psychology of Body Mechanics and my mentor is an animator named Chad Seller who works at Disney Animation studios right now.
The first assignment for this quarter was to pick an action from a list, there were about 10 of them varying in difficulty. Students were supposed to turn the actions into an animation and work on it progressively for the next 4 weeks. I chose to do jumping over a gap. When I was reading the list the first thing that popped in my head was the scene in "Up" where young Mr.Fredrickson jumps over a small gap in the sidewalk.

The best way to figure out how to do the jump is to do it myself and film it. Reference footage helps for noticing small things that one wouldn't think about as well as provide me with real body mechanics to refer to.

Planning sketch 01
The assignment didn't have any limitations beyond the motion. Though after watching the lecture I decided to give myself the limitation of 120 frames and to try and make the character look proud while he is doing this action. I decided to do this with some cocky hip gestures.
Planning sketch 02
This is the break down of the motion, all the key poses with notes going along with it to explain how the motion works. I didn't add any real frame notations on these notes. I feel that that should be a much more organic process and something I have to see and feel right now. One day I hope I can look at an action and just know the timing.

The next step and the next assignment is to block this motion out - so stayed tuned.