Hey guys! So I forgot to make a life drawing post on Friday, so I'm just going to do it today. These ones are more current since they are from around the beginning of this school year.
I think these ones are okay, not my best. Definitely good for me considering this was after not drawing for a few months due to summer break happening!
For this past week we were studying overlapping action, so we had to animate a pendulum doing an action. For mine I wanted to pendulum to be sort of playing with a ball where it would bounce it once, toss it off screen, and go after it. Here's my planning for the assignment...
I still can't quite get the hang of knowing what frame numbers actions will happen on before actually going into Maya though, because these frame numbers ended up being pretty wrong haha. My mentor suggested for this kind of overlap to try using the idea of copying the rotate curve that I made for the top joint of the chain, and pasting it on all the other joints and then just offset it on the other joints by a frame or two. This worked for the beginning part for the most part, but when the pendulum went into the loop, the joints ended up wrapping too much and then it just looked like it was stuck like that until the end, so I had to go back and do the overlap for the joints from right before the loop until the end by hand. So here's what I turned in...
I'm still not completely happy with the overlapping action on the chain near the beginning just because it feel more like a tail and less like a chain being acted on by inertia, but we'll see what Anthony says!
Also, this week we had to pose out Stu in a pose conveying devastation. Here are my sketches that I came up with, with the one I ended up submitting circled...
I actually posed out 3, 5, and 8 and ended up having difficulty deciding between 3 and 5...
(pose 5)
(pose 8)
(pose 3)
I liked pose 5 because it was dramatic, but from the critiques that I got from people 5 was more of a dramatic portrayal of devastation and took a minute for people to realize it was devastation, whereas pose 3 more immediately read as devastation. So I ended up submitting pose 3. I feel like something could still be refined on it though, the line of action feels a little off to me, but with the hectic week I had, staying up until 6am this morning to finish all of this and the revision of last week's assignment, it's turn-in-able haha. Now I just have to wait and see what Anthony says!
*UPDATE*
Hey guys so this animation went through quite some revision. Anthony suggested that the beginning would work better if there was less tilting of the base before it throws the ball, and that some parts of the chain motion were off. I just kept not being totally satisfied with it, but I finally have the finished revised version of the pendulum for your viewing pleasure!
So my assignment for Animation Mentor last week has us dealing with 2 different bouncing balls of 2 different weights. We had to plan out the action for both balls, so here's my planning...
From the critique I got for this assignment, I've been told I need to work on my planning, in particular the frame numbers. I just find it difficult to figure out what frames things should be on without being in Maya seeing what works, so I should work on that. Here's the playblast that I submitted...
I found a lot of good footage again on youtube, which was great because I don't just have access to a beach ball or bowling ball. Here's one in particular that I liked, mostly because it shows both types of balls side by side...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocn2Mhzrdl4 . Some of the critiques that my mentor gave me was to take a frame out of the beginning bounce of the heavy ball to give it more of an impact on that first hit and to have it not roll so far at the end. He also said that for the light ball, the bounce was really good but that I should have it start at where it currently is at frame 31 so that I can have time to add 2 smaller bounces at the end and have it come to more of a stop. Once I revise it, I'll be posting the update here so be on the lookout!
*Update* So I revised the animation and submitted it with this week's assignment. The critique that he gave me for it was that I should place the small ball more in front of the light ball, the heavy ball should come in at more of an angle, roll not quite as far at the end, and add one more residual bounce, and that the light ball should start at the position it was at frame 30 so it can have more of a stop at the end. So here it is!
Hey guys! So here are some more of my figure drawings from UCF. I think I'm going to post more in this one so I can get to some of the drawings that I've done so far this year, since I think some of them are better, but I still want to show these ones as well. So here they are!
Alright guys so for this past week my assignment for Animation Mentor was to create a pose portraying excitement as well as animate a bouncing ball.
So for the poses, here are the sketches I came up with for excitement...
I looked at a lot of videos of soccer players and football players for the most of them, those guys can get pretty animated, as well as some videos of children getting super excited about everything lol. I was trying not to pick a cliche` excitement pose, which actually turned out to be kind of difficult. These were the options that I posed out to pick from...
I ended up submitting the second one just because I loved the line of action it created. I think it possibly is in a cliche` pose since it was pointed out to me that it looks like the Mario jumping pose, but oh well, cliche` isn't always bad.
And now for the ball bounce. I was actually surprised how enjoyable it was to animate this. Maybe it was because I haven't done simple animation in a while or maybe because it was nice to re-learn the basics in an understandable way, either way, it was enjoyable. In the assignment we had to have the ball bounce across the screen and, if we wanted, have it roll to a stop. The weight of the ball also had to resemble the weight of a basketball or soccer ball. While I was looking for reference I came across this lovely video of a basketball bouncing across the screen...
I am so happy there are other people with access to sports balls that actually post their videos to YouTube, makes my life so much easier!
So here is the final playblast of the bouncing ball animation that I created...
Now all that's left is to watch my e-critique and see what my mentor says about it!
On a side note, I don't think I ever mentioned who my mentor was for this class. His name is Anthony Wong, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0938933/, and he is currently working at Pixar Animation Studios. Now I'm not saying I only signed up for his class because he worked on The Emperor's New Groove, but if you know me, then you know that that was a big deciding factor, I freaking love that movie lol. He's worked on so many amazing animated films and so far he has been a great teacher.
And now onto the next assignment!
*Update* - So I received my e-critique from Anthony and he said that my ball bounce was good but for this first ball bounce he wants to see more actual physics taking place and that there should only be rotation on the X axis so no crazy rotations. So I went through and made the bounces less lopsided and fixed some of the timing, so here's the revision!
He also said that my pose would work a little better if his right arm was straighter, and if he was turned counter clockwise some so that his right arm is more prominent and so that his left foot would go more into perspective. So when I update that I'll make sure to post the revision.
So I was just finishing my Animation Mentor assignments for the week and got to thinking "you know it's been a while since I posted about my life drawing stuff..", and so here I am about to show you some more of my favorite life drawings that I did while in the UCF Character Animation program!
If you can't tell, I really like drawing legs! They often times come out the best when I'm figure drawing.
Yes, there is a lot of old man body parts that I'm sure you'd rather not see, but it's a figure study. I know a lot of my friends are all "ew you draw naked old guys..", but when I do figure drawing I've come to really view the model as just another object to draw, like a tree or a statue, it might sound bad, but I'm numb to it lol.
Hello everyone! So I just recently finished my first assignment for Animation Mentor. For the assignment we had to go out in the real world and sketch random people, then choose one of those poses and pose it our with a rig that Animation Mentor provided. So here are my sketches that I was able to get from going to the mall and park last week.
I found that there are a lot of people on their phones, everywhere haha. I did like a few of the poses that I was able to get though so I posed out 3 different ones using the Stu rig.
I ended up choosing the bottom render because I felt like, out of all three poses, this one had the most emotion and even a bit of a story. Stu looks kind of down and sad in that one, whereas the other renders were more relaxing poses. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, now I just have to wait and see what my mentor says!
*Update*: So I got my grade and e-critique from my mentor and I got an A-! I also got some great feedback about how to improve the pose so, when I get the time, I will be updating it and re-posting so you all can see!
