AN04 - Second Assignment Wk.4

Well lookie here!  I'm actually making a blog post on a Monday!  Yay for being productive!  So for last week we had to submit the first of two weeks of blocking plus pass.  Yes folks, for this one they are really breaking down the process and stretching out the assignment for a total of 7 weeks.

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So, for my blocking plus pass I wanted to add more needed breakdown poses as well as get the shot out of stepped mode and into spline mode.  So here is what I submitted...

Now I'm going to be completely honest with you guys.  You can probably tell, but I did very little in the way of working in the graph editor with the splines on this pass.  In fact I just took the whole thing and converted everything to Auto Tangents.  I know!  Some people say it's bad, but for me, I think converting everything to Auto Tangents and then going into each and every channel of every curve and adjusting the tangents from there really helps me get started on the whole splining process.  Don't judge me!

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Alright guys, I hope you all have a great Monday as well as the rest of the week.  See ya!

P.S. - This past week I was introduced to the Crypt of the NecroDancer soundtrack and it is awesome to listen to in the background while I'm animating!  This great soundtrack was composed by Danny Baranowsky who coincidentally composed the soundtracks for Super Meat Boy and The Binding of Isaac, which are also quite awesome!

AN04 - Second Assignment Wk.3

Hey guys!  So this past week we had to continue blocking out our shot and add more key poses and breakdowns.  

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In the lecture for this past week, they talked about important mouth shapes to hit in your dialogue animation.  So that is where I started with this pass of animation...

I still have to adjust some head movements and eye direction things that my mentor pointed out, but after those fixes I can head into the blocking plus/first spline pass of animation!

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Have a great week!

AN04 - Second Assignment Wk.2

Hello everyone!  I'm finally making a post before the weekend!  So this past week we had to submit the first blocking pass of our animations, along with the phonetics of our dialogue and two more of those poses showing the acting beats from our reference.

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I can't remember if I said this in the last post, but I ended up going with clip number two.  To refresh your memory, here's clip number two...

And here is the first blocking pass that I submitted...

My mentor gave me some good notes about certain eye directions that I should change, as well as some head movements that should be altered slightly.  I'll make sure to add those this week!

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I also had to break down my dialogue and write it all out phonetically.  I had to do this because when animating dialogue, you don't really want to have the character pronounce every word that is in the dialogue, they would end up looking very chattery.  What you want to do is animate what you hear.  There's a difference because generally when we speak we don't enunciate every word.  It's also a good idea to make note of what has a stronger emphasis as well as weaker emphasis in the dialogue to help plan out the shot.  So here's the phonetic breakdown that I created for my dialogue...

Also writing that out made me feel a bit like I was in first grade and didn't know how to spell things correctly, haha!

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And finally here are two poses that I took screen shots of that showed a couple of the acting beats...

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Well that's all for now, have a great week!

AN04 - Second Assignment Wk.1

Well guys, I did it it again.  I forgot to make a blog post until almost the end of the week.  I really should make a reminder on my phone or something so this doesn't keep happening...  So for last week we had to come up with a few different options for our new dialogue assignment.  We also had to shoot reference and sketch out our ideas for all of those clips as well.  And finally we had to practice posing our character's face in a two poses using two of the acting beats from our reference.

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First off, these are the three audio clips that I was able to narrow my search down to with the help of my peers...

1. Game of Thrones, 2. Community, 3. Game of Thrones

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And now for the embarrassing part, my reference video.  I do not claim to be an actor so this is pretty embarrassing, but it's for the greater good!  Or something...

Jeez that was rough to watch, haha!  I really did try to get in character though, it can be pretty difficult.  However when I was filming the reference it was pretty fun!

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Here are the sketches of the main story poses that I jotted down from watching my reference...

And here are the poses that I created with the Maya rig that I will be using of two of the acting beats from my reference video...

My mentor ended up telling me that he thinks I should do clip number two for this assignment so that's what I will be working on this week.  

Well this has been sufficiently awkward, have a great rest of the week everyone!

P.S. I will really try to get my next blog post up sooner, haha!