It is hard to believe that we are almost half way through 2012, the way we see and feel time is just amazing. It feels like yesterday that I started, yet I am fully aware of the many hours I have sat right here working and detailing away on clips that last 10 seconds or less. I can happily say I don't regret one second, I cant imagine doing anything else but transforming an empty canvas into what is the illusion of life.
It is all very grand, and nice to look back. But my gaze is ahead, and facing the excitement of Class 3 and advanced body mechanics! I'd like to thank my mentor Nate Wall for the directions and extremely sound advice throughout my contact with him this term, the opportunity to let people who are great at what they do influence the dream you have for your work is truly fantastic and I as always look forward to continuing.
Thank you for peeking in on my little adventure, I will be back next term after a short (Hawaii!!) break to introduce my new mentor and plan of action for the class.
In the past weeks I've had my nose down to the grindstone that is my computer getting rid of all the rough bits in the shot I introduced in my last post. It was a very physical shot and I am glad for what I could pull out of it. It's still missing that little something, but I am very pleased with the progress and am frankly ready to move on to the next thing to further the improvements I've been making in my work. So please, enjoy: )
I did fight off a rather fierce cold throughout this shot, hopefully it does not show; )
After getting the approval based on my planning and many sketches, I was able to create the scene I wanted within Maya using some basic shapes. Most importantly I went through my first phase of posing and timing to tell the story of the shot.
Hopefully makes you want to see what happened before and what happens after!
I am pleased with my first step and the sense of action I'm getting within the character at each pose. I'm excited to pedal onwards and bring some more progress to it and this space =D
It's hard to believe the end of another class is fast approaching! I have started the final shot for this class and it should hopefully be a nice and dynamic one that I can sink my teeth into so everyone can enjoy watching it:)
It is again another step up character wise, and this time we've got stuwie with all limbs attached and ready to roll! or swing I should say
Now that I have had some experience in posing and getting into communicating internal and external forces in a character with legs, torso and head; I can add the arms to my thinking as I pose out the character as he further feels out his balance.
For this Assignment I decided to do some swinging action, both broad and more compact (so stuwie's arms in fact become rather essential right here). I draw my inspiration from a lot of physical game characters I have played (i.e Prince of Persia titles) as well as some fantastic olympic uneven bars routines.
With this one I intend to steer my focus on getting the weight right (such as with the slow movement at the outer edges of the swing and the acceleration through the middle. Conveying the fact that Stuwies arms are really under strain and has influence will be key to avoiding the appearance floatyness.
Something rapid but smooth, energetic but controlled.
Heya!
There has once again been a bit of a gap in updates, but always for the right reasons; )
Have been hard work and facing all the challenges of keeping my head on straight as I worked through my shot and started a new one, whilst having the most fun I can mostly have at the same time.
Whilst keeping a very close eye on my video reference that I shared and the planning I had as a foundation I went into blocking out the shot with the intention of really pushing the poses and making good use of the spine throughout the motion to make it nice and dramatic where I could.
After getting my scene in place and getting a sense for the timing and the rapid motions that I have going, I really started getting into adding a bunch more frames and actually doing alot of leg work due to the fact that I was essentially working no more than two frames apart. So almost traditionally. This means I got to put in as much information myself and letting the computer do little to no smoothing and calculating without my help this time around.
The main points I addressed while working towards having all my inbetweens in place was dialling down some of the floppyness in the spine and head, as well as fixing that last anticipation into the final jump.
Getting the snappyness going out of the jumps and into the landings to contrast with the nice hangtime as the character arcs over in the air really made this a fun exercise. This made me less fearful of trying something a little different in terms of the characters attitude to what he is doing with his body.
It's brand new week and since my final backflip shot is all done submitted it means I get to dive into something brand new. Trying something different and finding new challenges and goals to chase with each assignment is part of the fun, so let's do it.
On the weekend I started laying down the foundation for what will be Stuwie will be doing (another bipedal character, but still no arms. He's kinda cute)
This time around the movements in the shot aren't anything too crazy, so I actually had a lot of fun practising the exact actions of hopping, shifting, splitting and rolling (yes rolling). I did all the actions with my hands in my pockets as to be as close as possible to the character, and not leaving too much up to my imagination when using it as reference later.The animation will basically be Stuwie jumping and hopping from one stone to another across what is essentially a river/pond to get to the other side, stumbling forwards at the very end into a roll and funny little butt plant.
(A shout out to my sis Anya for filming take after take and doing a pretty good job)
After feeling out the rythm I developed in the video reference I got a clear idea of the important beats I want to hit in terms of the poses and timing involved. In my planning I attempted as much as possible to make clear to myself the shifts in weight, as its integral to making this shot convincing.
Sketching out the poses from a more side on perspective in conjunction with analysing my video reference will also help me make the right changes when going from pose to pose once I start bringing it together in CG:
Stay tuned as I head into blocking this week (with hopefully no stumbling!)
It's been a few weeks since the end of class 1 and since there was no real break involved I have been happily animating for my newly assigned mentor Nate Wall. His background is with Blue Sky Studios where he did work on Ice Age 3, as well as the wonderful Rio which I absolutely adored. He is now working for Dreamworks and is super nice and chill, but most importantly knows his stuff when it comes to feedback and working through a shot. So I am very lucky indeed!
So for my first shot of class 2 I decided to do something I've been wanting animate for quite some time, a backflip:) Before taking it on I did a whole load of research ranging from pictures to tutorials and videos on youtube.
I came across plenty of flips and gained enough insight on the physics and body mechanics, but as far as the anticipation beforehand and the recovery afterwards went I wasn't entirely sure what I wanted. I did the best thing possible and acted it out myself and came up with a great improvised sort of stumble. Here's my compiled reference:
With a nice idea taking shape I dove straight into sketching out my important poses and breakdown keys, and making a rough plan for how the shot would play through in terms of the timing and spacing.
Now having a clear idea of all the goals I want to achieve with the shot I can start blocking out and putting down a solid foundation to work with in Maya. In this stage I'm setting clear story telling poses in place as well as poses that really point out the given amount of change that happens through the timing from pose to pose. Treating every pose in CG as a drawing makes this a fluid and creative process.
After this the process of getting feedback and making changes is very important, and not being afraid of changing something you worked on (or redoing something entirely). Here's first pass at seeing what the inbetweens are doing:
At this stage I needed to further implement some intelligent feedback. Mainly concerning some of the timing; like the hangtime at the apex of the jump, as well as correcting some of the drag and follow through in the recovery. After working through the feet,knees and body some more (tweaking those curves we all know and love) I came up with my final result
Is by no means perfect, but deadlines are deadlines;) and I am pleased with the result and am again much better off in terms of my workflow and creativity as a result of challenging myself.
