AN03 - First Assignment Wk.4

So for this past week we had to submit the final splined version of our animation.  In addition to that we had to also submit the reference video and sketches for our next assignment.  Yes, I know I didn't mention the second part in the title, that would have just been too long of a title.

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Alright, so something I re-learned this past week, splining takes a while and should not be left until later than half way through the week to get started on...ya.  This is what I ended up submitting...

I think there were still some things that could be polished more, but alas, I ran out of time, I will have to go back and adjust them though.

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And onto the next assignment!  This next one is going to be the character picks up an axe, chops a piece of wood, and walks off screen.  After filming my reference I realized I'm going to have quite a bit of anticipation on this one so that should be fun!  Also, the hammer in this reference is suppose to be an axe and the shoes are pieces of wood...

And here are the sketches to go along with the reference...

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Also, here are the poses I did last week for the pose a day challenge...

Have a super fantastic week everyone!

AN03 - First Assignment Wk.3

Why hello there!  So this week we had to submit the blocking plus pass of our animations.  I am also going to post all the pose of the day poses that I created last week as well.

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So here's my blocking plus pass...

I was pretty grateful that my peer buddy actually played baseball in college so he was able to give me some great critique while I was working to get the throwing movement down.  This next week will be the last week we have to work on it, as well as start the planning for the next assignment, so it's going to be quite a busy week for me.

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And here are the poses I created for the pose of the day challenge, I wasn't too excited about all of them, but here they are...

Have a fabulous week everyone!

AN03 - First Assignment Wk.2

Hi guys!  So last week we had to create our blocking pass for our animations, which was pretty fun!  I also started the pose a day challenge where I pose a character every day I sit down to work.  So first off, here's the blocking pass of my animation...

I was okay with how this turned out.  I wish I had had more time last week to spend on adding more poses but it is what it is.

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Now for the pose a day challenge!  Below are the poses along with little mini pictures of the photos that I used for reference...

There was a quote that my mentor mentioned in class last week that I really liked too.  It's "Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes.  Art is knowing which ones to keep" -Scott Adams.  Have a great week everyone!

Life Drawing Post 8

Hey guys!  I bet you're all puzzled right now like, hey it's not Sunday yet why is she posting already?  Well I realized last night that I still had life drawings that I had not posted yet for the world to see!  Also, if you're reading this and somehow haven't seen the pictures further down the post yet, the drawings below are in fact naked people, if you don't want to see naked people drawings, you might want to stop reading now...

So there you have it, the last of my life drawings for a while!  I actually like the first and last ones a lot, I think they turned out well.  Have a great rest of the week everyone!

AN03 - First Assignment Wk.1

Well guys this past week I started my third class at Animation Mentor, Advanced Body Mechanics!  Also, my teacher, Steve Cunningham, is pretty legit.  The second day of the semester he sent all of us an email breaking down the guidelines for the term, which are above and beyond AM's curriculum for the term.  So that was a bit intimidating haha.  Overall though he seems like a pretty awesome teacher and I'm pretty excited for this term!

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So this past week we had to plan out a physical shot containing at least three physical elements to it.  Now Steve, in that intimidating email, actually set up some scenarios for each of the three assignments in the class so that we could already have an idea and get to the planning stage.  Seeing as coming up with a decent idea is half the battle for me, I decided to go with his pre-thought up assignment.  For the first one, the idea was the character kicks/throws a ball.  The variables of how the character goes about doing the action are the things I had to come up with, so this is what I've come up with...

And here are the sketches I gathered from watching my reference video...

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We also have a pose a day challenge in class where every time you sit down at the computer to work, you first find a pose that goes with the week's pose challenge theme and pose it out with one of the rigs.  The idea is from a quote that says "every artist has 10,000 bad drawing in them (or poses in our case), the sooner you work through the bad ones the sooner you get to the good drawings/poses."  This past week I wasn't really on it so I'll be starting in the second week.  That's all folks!  Have a great week!

AN02 - Final Week

Can I tell you guys right now that these past twelve weeks have just flown by??  It's crazy!  I am just so grateful for the past two mentors I have had.  They have really changed the way I animate for the better and I think I have already become a better animator having them as my mentors. 

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 This past week was my last week having Steve Cady as my mentor.   Steve has taught me so much about rhythm, timing, spacing, and I just thoroughly enjoyed every minute of his class.  Here is my final reel for the class, along with my assignments from my first semester at Animation Mentor...

You may notice there are some changes to the most recent assignment, if you would like to see the updated version of just that shot and me explaining what I changed, I have posted it here for your viewing pleasure!

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This past week I also went through and adjusted most of those poses that I created from this semester based on the critiques I received for them from Steve.  So below are the revised poses on the right and the original poses on the left...

And now onto the next semester!  Unfortunately there's not really a break, at least I get a weekend where I'm not up until 5am haha.  I'm super excited to start the next semester with my new mentor, Steve Cunningham!

AN02 - Fourth Assignment Wk.5

Hey guys!  So I just finished the last week of my last assignment for Animation Body Mechanics Basics, these past 11 weeks have sure flown by!  Since this is the last assignment week, next week's post will be updated poses and my demo reel from the class.

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Alright guys, this week for our assignment we had to add the "final 10%" to our animations.  I had a lot of suggestions from Steve for my assignment, some that I was eager to change and others I was more aggravated that I had to change.  If there's one thing I've learned throughout this class is that my teacher knows what he is talking about so I need to just suck it up and change those sections of the animation because it will look 10x better afterwards.  Seriously, I was all like, gaaahhh I don't want to change the gun motions at the end and the recoil looks fine to me!  I wish I could travel back in time and smack myself, I was wrong, I changed it and it looks better.  You'd think I could have gotten that through my thick skull already, but anyway, here's the version of the animation that I submitted...

So I don't know if you guys can really tell, but I think it's looking a lot better than last week's version.  This week I'll have a few things to tweak on it and then I'll go ahead and add it to my demo reel!
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*Update* - So I wanted to post the updated version of this shot because I tweaked some things before putting it in my reel.  So, with these tweaks, I added a little more overlap with the arm movement when she recoils from that drastic move, adjusted some timing with the legs to add interest, adjusted the eyes some, took out some of the gun actions at the end to put emphasis on the placing of the feet, as well as adjusted the hips slightly so there's more of a weight shift when she goes to take that small step.  Overall I'm pretty happy with it, I may even render it at some point, but here it is!