AN02 - Fourth Assignment Wk.4

Hey guys!  So this past week we had to create more of a polishing pass for our animations.
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My mentor gave me a lot of good critique that I took into account when going through my first polishing pass.  Some of the critique I was aggravated with at first, like my mentor said I needed to take out the stretch on the leg completely.  I was all like, why would I take out all the stretch on the leg when I'm trying to go for lots of exaggeration?  Turns out my mentor knows what he's talking about, crazy I know, and my animation looks tons better by taking out the crazy stretch in the leg.  Another major issue he pointed out was that the hips were not traveling in an interesting path, they were more translating across the screen rather un-interestingly, as well as looking like they were hitting a wall.  So I made adjustments and here's my most recent pass...

Now I'm off to see what my mentor has to say about it!

AN02 - Fourth Assignment Wk.3

Hey everyone!  So this past week we had to bring our shots from the blocking pass to blocking plus, which is basically first spline pass.  I really wanted to go cartoony and exaggerated with this shot so I added some stretch in the arms, legs, and torso. Here's what I submitted...

I'm not completely happy with the way it turned out but I still have two weeks to polish it out.  We'll see what Steve says!

AN02 - Fourth Assignment Wk.2

        Hey guys!  So this week we had to take our planning and reference video and start to make our locomotion animations come to life!  First off, for my animation, I had to take off the end bit from the reference of me falling in order to make the animation fit in the 250 frames limit.  I know, I know, it would have been hilarious and awesome if it could still be there but I'm fairly certain that, if I had tried to fit that in, I would not be able to play with the timing of the rest of the actions in the shot and it would have just been a garbled mess.

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So here is my first blocking pass...

        So far I'm liking this animation!  I was able to use some of the stretch controls on Stella, which made making some of the poses pretty fun.  Also, my memory is not the best, so when I went to constrain the hand to the chair at the beginning of the shot I received much help from my friend, Nick, who helped me figure out the best way to go about constraining the hand to the object in the most efficient way.  One of my peers mentioned that her head is leaned back for the majority of the animation so I might adjust that, we'll see what my mentor says.

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On a side note, I got my first contract animator position this past week!  Yay!

AN02 - Fourth Assignment Wk. 1

Hey guys!  So this past week for our assignment we had to make the final touches to our quadruped walk as well as start getting the video reference and creating planning sketches for our next assignment.

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To start off, here's the final version of my quadruped assignment that I submitted...

There's still some back and forth motion on the head that I wasn't able to correct before submitting it that I'll have to go back to, but other than that I was pretty happy with how it turned out.

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Onto the new assignment!  This week we had many different options for what we could do for the assignment that were rated based on their difficulty.  My thought is go big or go home so I decided to do one of the highest rated ones, carrying/moving a chair, placing it, and sitting down.  Now I couldn't really find good reference of this on youtube so I ended up filming myself for the idea that I had for this animation.  Let me tell you, it's quite funny, you should watch at least the first few seconds of this reference video of mine (sorry the video quality is not the greatest, I had to upload the lower resolution one so it wouldn't take forever to  upload)...

  So ya that's my idea for the next assignment, let's hope I can pull it off!  Also, here are the sketches I created from viewing the reference video...

Have a great week everyone!

P.S. I just received the book Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation that I ordered in the mail, and so far it's awesome! http://www.anamie.com/book/simplified-drawing/

AN02 - Third Assignment Wk.3

Hey guys!  So yes, I know it's Tuesday and I should have posted this over the weekend, but things happen.  Also, all the stress was to be had this morning because I had to go through the insanity that is class registration for Animation Mentor, seriously, the struggle was real.  After two hours of insanity and much needed help from Julia Campbell, I am registered to have Steve Cunningham as my mentor for next semester, here's his imdb page, http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2827812/ .  

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And now for my assignments from last week!  So this past week we had to have our quadruped animation splined out and finalized as well as have poses of Sloan looking playful.

First off, here are the sketches I drew showing animals being playful...

And here are the ones I chose to create in Maya...

I ended up submitting the top two ones mostly because I tend to like the poses where a prop isn't necessary to get the point across.

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Now for the animation!  Like I said, this week we had to smooth out our quad. animation, so here it is!  

I still have issues with the head/neck area, but I shall fix that this week, let me know what you guys think!

AN02 - Third Assignment Wk.2

Hey guys!  So this past week we had to continue on with our quadruped assignment by blocking out the contact poses and breakdowns as well as pose out Sloan in some motion poses.

To start off, here are the sketches I drew this week for the poses...

For the assignment it said that we could draw any animal we wanted, but I figured I'd stay with dog poses since the rig that I would be using to pose out these sketches was a dog rig.  Here are the three that I attempted in Maya...

I chose to submit the first and third poses for the assignment after getting feedback from my peers suggesting that those were the most interesting ones, and I agreed.

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Now for the quad. blocking!  Recalling what my mentor had mentioned to me about the blocking for my walk from the last assignment, I decided to go with a less is more approach for the blocking.  I think that, for the sake of blocking, I have all the needed information without filling up my timeline with keys that I may have later needed to delete during the splining phase.  So here's my blocking!

Hopefully my mentor will appreciate that I'm trying to apply his critiques to my animation!

  

P.S. Last week I forgot to post the reference video I used for studying a dog's walk, so here are the two Youtube videos I used the most for my reference...

AN02 - Third Assignment Wk. 1

Hola!  So last week we had to start the planning phase of our quadruped walk, ooooooooo exciting!  We also had to sketch out poses for Sloan showing movement and recreate them in Maya.  I learned so much this week in the way of quadruped walks, it's insane!

To start off, here are my sketches for my poses...

And here are the ones that I chose to create in Maya...

Just kidding about that last one there ;).  I attempted a few more as well but I didn't get very far into them before I started to hate them, so the top two here are what I submitted.

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Now for the quadruped walk!  This assignment is split up into three week where on this first week we had to plan out our walk.  Here are the planning sketches I created for the walk...

The timeline at the bottom of the page shows the walk and he's a stick figure because I didn't want to get bogged down on the fact that I can't draw a dog over and over, so I just drew what was necessary.  This coming week we will be blocking out our quadruped walks and at some point I'm going to go back and revise my walk that I "finished" for the last assignment, so stay tuned!