Epiphany! ...maybe!

Last week was blocking plus on our dialogue shots.  This is also the week we transitioned to spline in the graph editor (which, quite frankly, I ALWAYS hate because that's the moment where everything I worked for usually gets blown to smithereens :[ )After hitting mentor Ray's notes, the action become more understandable and simple.  But there was still lots to work on! Things I had missed in the blocking plus turn in: overlap! follow through! anticipation! So, you know ...only some of the most basic and important of the animation principles :/ But its okay... the whole point of this journey is to make mistakes and learn from them!  And I've had PLENTY of learning so far :D Here's last weeks blocking plus shot:

This week I had a mini epiphany that I hope I will remember in the next classes coming up.  On Q and A night, one of the other people in my class asked mentor Ray about how to get better control on your animation.  And what did Ray say? More breakdowns! And it then occurred to me: holy crap! THATS part of all the trouble I have when I move to spline! friggin not enough breakdowns! Instead of fighting the graph editor to find just the right curves, I needed to physically put all those little nuances and slow-ins/slow-outs in my actual blocking! It was so simple and yet has sadly eluded me since I started! Well after that, I went to town on my shot trying to refine the movements by adding actions where I sought fit.  It definitely helped :D There's still plenty to do (there always is!) but I'm actually feeling good about where I am with this shot.  Usually by now I feel tired and kind of defeated... no more I say! More breakdowns, that's the ticket!

And lastly on this Sunday morning: there was a special Q and A held for us at Animation Mentor.  It was a Q and A about The Avengers movie and some of the difficulties that came about when animating earth's mightiest heroes! It was hosted by none other than my old mentor Travis Tohill!  He gave a lot of great information on his workflow and tips on demo reels (when the time comes!).  It was great seeing him again and seeing all he has accomplished! And, lets be real here, it was great nerding out with the other fanboys and girls :P

...Awkward Silence...

Wow. It's not even 10pm on a Saturday night and I've turned my assignment in :/ This could either be a really good sign that I've hit the notes of my mentor and managed my time wisely or a OMG WHAT CRAP IS THIS assignment :/ I have to say I'm kind of nervous! Who gets nervous about turning work in early?!  In all honesty to myself, I DID work on it this week instead of leaving it all for tonight ...its just weird breaking out of that habit (even if it was only for one week!).  Hopefully I can keep the momentum going and don't get too freaked out by this!  But I digress ...this weeks assignment was to start refining the animation for our dialogue shot.  This included (for me anyways) adding more breakdowns, playing with the eyes and mouth and hitting all of the mentors notes.  I think I did pretty well, if I do say so myself :)  This shot is really starting to flesh out and I am beyond stoked to finally feel like I'll have something worthy of a demo reel ... *gasp!* DEMO REEL! It's nearly that time! And only a year ago I was starting Maya Springboard .....

Oh Noes!

Where have I been this past month?! Oh that's right! I was in Hawaii for two weeks :P The beginning of class 4 and its first shot (pantomime eewww) were riddled with problems.  Not to mention that that awesome Hawaiian vacation definitely took a toll on that assignment.  I'm not happy/proud of it AT ALL but it was a learning process (I learned not to take vacations during crucial weeks of work!).  So the first video will just be the refined blocking of AbracaStewie.  The backstory is that Stewie here is a magician about to do the oldest trick in the book: pull a rabbit out of his hat.  But lo and behold when he reaches into the hat, no rabbit! He panics a bit and shuffles off stage.  The idea for this assignment was to be able to tell a story through body language (pantomime) and make it clear and readable.  I think I did that for the most part (it was the spline that killed me =C )

Next assignment (and the one I'm currently working on) is *drumroll please!* DIALOGUE!  I think I can safely say all students wait for this day... the "holy grail" of animation!  Below is my FIRST dialogue blocking: the story is The Blue Shield (tentative name) is an aging superhero who thinks he's relevant ...but maybe he isn't.

Mentor Ray gave me great notes (along with fellow classmates!) to make this shot stronger.  I feel like its got a solid base right now and can only go up from here! ...please tell me it can only go up from here :/ Till next time: excelsior!

Let It Begin!!

Whew!! What a whirlwind last couple of weeks at AnimationMentor! After reblocking the baseball swing shot, I really feel like I got a sense of what was missing (especially after hearing encouraging feedback from past mentor Arnie and Saturday mentor Sandy!).  I'm very happy to say that despite the hiccup RIGHT before finishing up class 3, I proudly moved on to class 4: Intro To Acting!! This is the meat and potatoes of character animation! The actual act of ...acting! Up till now it has been all about body movement and mechanics of the body.  We finally get into the internal (and eventually, external) dialogue of a character! What motivates your character from the inside that affects the action on the outside! It's only the start of week 2 in Intro To Acting, but I can already feel livened up by the prospect of being able to REALLY give the character life and thought!

First, the video is of the "polishing" of the baseball swing.  Still needs tuning here and there but overall, I'm pretty happy where it turned up :) Especially since those arms were literally spiraling out of control a couple of times!

Second, my awesome new mentor is Ray Chase: this guy ...this guy is amazing and I am extremely pumped up to be learning from him! He's on YouTube so I FULLY encourage you all to check out his demo reels.  I had been holding on to an idea for the first pantomime shot of Class 4 (pantomime: Express or represent (something) by extravagant and exaggerated mime) and am really juiced to finally get to try it out!! The idea is that a overly confident magician (...I always wanted to be a magician lol) comes on stage to do the "Rabbit-Out-Of-The-Hat" trick.  He shows the hat to the audience and after a couple of "hocus pocus" and "alakazam"s, he reaches into the hat to find .....no rabbit! Panicking, he feels around the inside of the hat, brings it up to his face to have a look inside to see no rabbit ....looks at the audience and then runs off stage!  Blocking will be coming soon!! EEEPPP SO EXCITING!

Dismal! ...Oh Wait, Comeback!!

The week of March 5th was a dark week in my short AM history.  I received a grade and (more importantly) a critique that were really, REALLY below par.  I was very upset, pretty much the entire week.  The good that came out of this is that my mentor suggested to Student Care that I take an extra class that Saturday.  I had the option to not go to this extra class, but let me say: I am seriously happy I did.  My Saturday mentor was Sandy Christensen and she's worked in video games as well as at Pixar.  She helped me hone in on what my animations were lacking and let me kind of vent about my frustrations with this class.  I think it was exactly what I needed to really break out of my mold and get things done right :) This isn't to say I won't have tough times ahead, surely I will, but at least I know that when the tough times come I'll be able to handle them and learn from them!!

This first video is the dreaded blocking plus I did.  Mentor Pete had told me to change the camera to 3/4 so you can get a better sense of whats going on.  I wanted the walk up to the base to still be in front camera but was told in the critique to keep the camera 3/4.  The swing was also not working for Pete and he gave me a lot of pointers and quick sketches to explain what he wanted to see in the next assignment.

This next video is of the assignment I turned in at the end of bleh week (after having that extra Saturday class).  It obviously still needs some work but a lot of things are working better here.  Everything my mentor told me helped make this piece so much better.  It was worth having a really crappy week to transform my work.

Theres still a long road ahead of me but I'm feeling a little more confident about it now :) Good things to come hopefully!!!

Excelsior!

Buy Me Some Peanuts And Cracker Jacks!

Last week I finished up my shot of Stewie Vs The Big Balls.  Overall, I'm happy with it, although it did lose a little sparkle once I got into splining it.   All in all, a success :) Hey, I'm still learning!! The biggest issue with it (and actually the blocking for the last shot of Class 3) is TIMING.  I'm having a real issue with making all my timing too even, a comment I not only got here in class 3 but also got in class 2 with Travis.  Talking it over with mentor Pete at this weeks Q & A, he gave good advice on recognizing/alleviating some timing problems.  The best example he gave was thinking of timing like a heartbeat: the beats aren't exact from the beat before it.  Its this variation in timing that makes what we see on screen more interesting.  Definitely good advice and I can't wait to dive back into my latest shot and play around with the timing :)

Speaking of my latest shot, I've titled it Stewie Strikes Out.  As you can imagine, this will be a baseball shot!! Swing batter, batter! Below is my first blocking pass.  I think I need to have better/longer holds before actions and speed up that swing!! Onward and upward!

 One more thing I should add: Sunday was OSCAR NIGHT and I'm weirdly proud of my previous mentor Travis Tohill and his work on Rango, which won best animated feature this year!!! Excelsior!

It's ....A Work In Progress

I'm not going to lie ...I'm pretty pleased with myself this week :) Although I don't think my blocking (or rather, re-blocking) is fully FULLY complete, it's close enough that I won't be stressing about it tonight/tomorrow morning!! Its a good feeling ....I need to have this feeling more often lol Time management people!! Gotta keep it going :D Below is the re-blocking of Stewie versus the Big Ball! Comments here or on Facebook are always more than welcome! Thanks!!