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.
It's hard to believe I am at the end of class 1 already. Time flies when you're living your dream and it's great to share it and have it all in this space.
My Mentor Bryan has been amazing this term and has always steered me in the right direction with detailed notes and given fantastic advice, and he is just an awesome guy as well. I couldn't have asked for a better kickstart and it is always a rush to feel that you have improved over time and am making your way to where you want to be.
Here is a progress reel (AM archives all our work) I'm sure my next mentor will be interested to see what I've been up to!
Enjoy
I'm jumping right into Class 2 next week with a new mentor and some great animation tests in Psychology of Body Mechanics!
There is much more hard work and twice the fun ahead so keep staying along for the ride
As the title might suggest this week I drew and moved Stu around to the very cool theme of Balance.
Finding reference was very rewarding and I found myself investigating everything from beam balancing to ballet to yoga.
There is something graceful about our body adapting to imbalance using our muscles and the knowledge of our own bodies.
Cue the pink panther music, because I'm going from plain vanilla to interestingly sneaky!
These two weeks I worked on a personality walk, building on what I learned on the standard vanilla walk and adding character and switching up the timing up some.
As you can see I've still got those main key poses and then I also mapped out my inbetweens in green to give me the best possible chance of getting the swift lift and careful step motion. This is immediately apparent as you can see the passing position is in this walk the most extreme down. Here's my blocking phase
I really enjoyed pushing the poses (stretching and squashing some in the right places) and especially telling the whole story with just that contact pose. I gained a lot of experience and am really starting to get the locomotion of the hips, how they rotate and all axis and compensate and shift weight side to side. And all this changes with the type of character,emotion and personality we're dealing with!
Here are some poses I think we can all relate to, after a big day or a giant project or a week of doing the same thing over and over we are in an utter state of exhaustion. These fellas are out of gas, deflated, struggling or even entirely limp.
Number 1 and 7 were very much inspired by toddlers and little kids, the way they seem to just crash once they're ready for a good 'ol nap. "Any place will do, and on my face will be just fine:) "
(Sleepy drunks also have this attribute, but kids are more cute)
I love the idea of being so exhausted but still having the will to go where you need to be.
"I have to support myself I'm almost there"
And the theme for this one was Concern, and it is certainly one that is much more subtle to effectively achieve. There are also different degrees of concern, varying from deeply distraught to mildly worried. It proved a bit of a challenge without the aid of facial expressions, but was a lot of fun.
As with acting and performance the head is very important and where the character is looking can really add to everything that is going in that moment, showing some internal thought and inner dialogue
I went with number 7 because I liked the idea of pacing and the character thinking and weighing up options.
"How can I fix this?" "What is going to happen next?" "Maybe if I do this? or that?"
Here I've got some more poses I got down! The theme for the week was physical strength, so it was really fun to try an really get a sense of strain or an interesting centre of gravity within the drawings. I have actually begun exercising more regularly as of late, and so it was rather fitting in really getting the essence for the idea of strength!
As with many good poses, I realized the theme lended itself to curved lines meeting with straight lines. That general combination is appealing to the eye and makes the action that is occurring that much more clearer, since this is a exaggeration of something that actually happens when we do these exercises.
The one I went with actually turned out better than the original drawing, and makes really good compositional sense:)
See how everything draws a curve or line straight back to the head? definitely one of my favourites so far
Hey All!
It's been a while since I've typed up a post, and I think it is definitely about time for an update. Week 8 I jumped straight into creating a vanilla walk, which is essentially a walk without personality. Just a plain step step step. It is of course not so plain to animate.
Walks are one of the more difficult things to get right, since it involves every moving mechanic within our body and every moving part is influenced by another (As I've touched on with the overlapping action and the importance of the hips when we are in motion). A great way to have looked at the walk and the best way to apply the principles of animation is to see it as a bouncy ball. Yes indeed!
In fact that's exactly the point of ballie here. As with the bouncy ball, we have our ups and downs with the appropriate ease ins and ease outs and squash and stretch (not just of the shape but through the compression of the limbs as well).
As illustrated by my planning you can see a walk consists of 4 main poses. If we were to change some of these poses up into different extremes we can get some pretty interesting walks, but for now we want something basic. Here is my blocking for the cycle; note how you can tell exactly what the walk is like without any inbetweens or smoothing
And then finally the polished version with all the breakdowns and inbetweens in place
I am confident in saying it was a challenging but very satisfying 7 days as well, despite being extremely sick and literally bed ridden for my saterday. This week was in the same line of focus as last week and involved diving deeper into overlapping action and really getting that flexibility, as well as getting the most out of my animation using the graph editor (which I briefly explained in one of my previous posts)
This week I got to work with Tailor, which is basically a ball with squirrel tail attached. He is very annoyi.....uhum..uu.. Cute!
As I'm starting to fiddle and getting into the details of controlling more indivual parts of a character/object, I start to realize how much the subtlety of every ease in/out, squash/stretch, timing/placement impacts upon the final result.
As a short synopsis: Tailor heads to a acorn that has fallen from a tree, only to be excited and lured away by another as it falls from another behind him: P
Just for the sake of interest here is a look at all the curves that are behind the animation. Each curve represents the amount of translation or rotation (in a certain axis) occuring over time. Each curve also corresponding to a particular part that I manipulate.
In this particular case you can actually see the cascading curves representing the delayed overlap of the different segments of the tail rotating in the x-axis (highlighted in red).
How Cool!
Last weeks assignment marked my 6th week at Animation Mentor (wow halfway through Class 1 already) Time flies when you're having fun and even faster if you're working hard, so I think I'm definitely going at light speed over here; )
The goal for this assignment was getting to grips with the concept of overlapping action, which is basically the idea that everything does'nt just start or stop moving all at the same time (unless it is of course entirely mechanical). Different parts break up in terms of movement, by way of drag and objects exhibiting inertia. This translates into limbs swinging and arcing in a wave type effect. Applying to things such as a piece of clothing,hair,tails etc.
And so I started swinging around with the pendulum, as you can see. I started out with the idea of a figure 8 motion, and then thought it would be cool to have him move down. I feel its always better if there appears to be some sort of intent or place something wants to go, even in these small exercises. In keeping with this thought and after I had the right timing and spacing I decided to add a second pendulum and have it be a game of tag!
As you could possibly guess we got a pose for week 5 as well!
The emotion we're communicating this time is devastation. The things I tried to keep in mind for this pose were thoughts of being broken down, hurt, thrown aside, discarded or even abused in some way. All very depressing, but very powerful and definitely very inspiring. Here are some doodles I got down quickly before I really dove into it
Admittedly no.4 doesn't appear to be the standout, but I knew I could really push some things and get out of it what I intended. And rather selfishly I also felt it had the most me in it haha
You could almost imagine someone saying to him "Stu your head is freaking huge, you must hate yourself..?!"
Jokes aside, I tried to really make him unable to support himself anymore (hence the railing) as if the life is being sucked or stolen from him for some big reason. His right leg dragging, almost like it's dead and getting him real low for that sense of desparation. Composition wise, both the railing and his shadow draws the eye right back to Stu with his head in hand. This was intentional; )
I was a little Squashed and Stretched last week, what with having my birthday and a range of celebrating times. It was all special and unforgettable, but I was still an eager beaver and turned out to be rather ambitious in what I wanted this week!
We had to animate a ball going through an obstacle course of our choosing (or making), this week incorporating squash and stretch as the ball builds and releases energy. It was a lot of fun to play with, but also proved difficult as working in the graph editor (where you basically change different curves on a graph to determine how certain values change from any given frame to another) didn't give me the resultsI wanted.
I resorted to doing frame by frame animating for alot of it to try and get the spacing correct. I really enjoyed giving the ball more a mind of it's this time round and working out the timing of the paddle giving it a whack. In hindsight I would do something simpler, but I would not give up the learning experience I had last week. I did gain alot of insight, and it does not look too terrible.
Boing.boing..boing....
For week 4 there was no pose (oh no!) but we did get to dive deeper into the world of weight,density and physics by animating two balls with different weights falling and coming to rest within the same scene.
What I decided on was a really heavy ball slowly rolling and dropping with a thud over one ledge and then another to really sell the drop. Versus a bouncy ball dropping down and bouncing its way around. I decided to make the two balls the same size, which really helped me make sure that the different properties of the balls came through.
Here we go, let's drop 'em!!
What I will keep an eye on is just how the ball loses it's energy depending on what happens, and importantly; how that effects it's speed and trajectorty.
My first video assignment is none other than the bouncing ball. It's basically a ball bouncing across the screen with the consistency of a soccer/basketball (how exciting right), but as I'm learning all the animation ingredients going into these basic excercises apply directly to pretty much any shot. So I'm starting to exercises my instinct for easing in and out of motion, timing, spacing, arcs and so forth. Here is the planning that I did
And here is the resulting animation: )
Can always be better of course and I think at the end of March I will be having a revisionfest and splicing it all together so all my clips are better than ever!
Haven't found the gap in the last few weeks to make a post since I've been rather busy and I kept postponing,also had my birthday last tuesday and made some great memories during the week. But I have not forgotten you! so let us play a little catchup and see where I'm at.
So week 3 we started jumping into themed poses and got to hopping with our first bouncing ball. Appropriately enough the theme for the pose was excitement woo. Here are a few of the sketches I jotted down for it.
Was definetely interesting trying to convey an emotion without facial expression, and I think I was definetely challenged again by Stu's massive head as far as translating the drawn poses to CG is concerned, ecspecially getting the silhouette and negative space correct. Lets see how my jumping for joy no.7 went!
I was very pleased with the outcome as was Bryan in seeing how I'm getting more comfortable pushing my poses and getting cleaner flow and arcs with the spine,arms and legs. He also pointed out it would make a fantastic urgent run if the right arm was brought down and back. Maybe for my future run cycle, could be very fun!
There is something I've always tried to tap into and internalize when I watch a movie or especially when I observe people in life as they go through the motions, and that is everything that they're saying by not saying anything at all. Now before you get that Ronan Keating song stuck in your head, just think about just how much we can tell about a what a person is feeling,thinking or intending by simply looking at them.
Without even interacting with someone we read their body language, facial expression, where their eyes are and we can deduce (to a degree) what kind of day that person has had or even what sort of indivdual that person is. As a good friend of mine aptly put, if he doesn't want someone to sit next to him on the bus he doesn't need to say a word. He can close off himself by folding his arms, make himself more dominant by taking up more space than he needs (gotta love the nature channel) and he can look them dead in the eye as to show his dominance even more. I know what you're thinking, but he's actually a super nice guy:P
It's amazing that we can tell the difference between just a look and a "I'm in love with you"- look, that we can feel safe walking up to one person and terrified of another without having met either of them! Where this becomes even more interesting and certainly relevant to animation (I'm slowly learning that nothing isn't) is that this language of the body can be unique to a particular character.
I for instance used to scratch my thumb when I was nervous, or tense up my stomach muscles the same way people generally hold their breath. And when I get agitated my head starts to itch.
Taking note of all these things can open up a whole new dimension, one that shows what's going on in the real world and not just the world of words. Here's a fun example from The Office where Jim gets jinxed by Pam. The only background you need is that Jim is in love with her, and the last bit is wonderful and real.
So I ended last week by posing out some of the sketches I did using Stu and narrowing it down to one I felt I should submit. An interesting challenge was playing around with Stu's head, which is....well....huge and round like a medicine ball. In the end it simply adds character, and knowing your weakness can be your greatest strength. So I tried to use it to an advantage. Here's what I came up with the end
Having worked on it, it will never feel perfect. But I learned a great deal by exercising and experimenting through this one and the others I posed out, which I will revise and also render out for your and my benefit soon:)
I'll leave you with this final thought..
"A work of art is never perfect or completed, it is only abandoned"
As promised this week is all about posing characters. Some of the things that you look for in a pose (that you might not even know that you did) is
- a clear line of action through the pose
-something simple and clear
-believable balance
-some exaggeration when looking at animation
and lastly, a pose or gesture that shows character. Something that tells a story and communicates something. As with animation or any form, you want people to relate to it as easily as possible.
So without further delay here are 15 poses I came up with.
After gaining some feedback feedback from my mentor, fellow students and basically anyone I can grab and go "Hey you!! look at this, tell me the good news and then the bad" I'll then be picking a favorite, refining it and posing it in 3D using AM's Stu character.
Friday 6 January 2012
Greetings!
and a happy new year to everyone stopping by. I'm certain 2012 has a whole lot of excitement and wonderful experiences in store for us all individually and collectively.
Some resolutions that I'm going to keep in mind this year:
Go outside more. Ride my bike,swim, go for a walk and just feel the sun and air (I was much like a vampire last year ^_^)
Read more books, and not just fiction
Be more in tune to current events and news
Stress less about things out of my control and just work hard and have fun
But anyway, back to my adventure!
This week I found out who my mentor is and had my first Q&A with Bryan Engram, who is Director of Studio Animation at Reel FX in Dallas, Texas. He introduced himself and gave his backstory of how he got into the craft and the industry, and myself and the other students had the chance to do the same over webcam. He seems very down to earth and easy to talk to and most of all loves,cares and takes animation seriously. So I'll be doing my best to tap into his experience and knowledge as much as possible. If you want to check out Bryan's site here, there's some great content of what he and Reel FX have worked on.
This weeks assignment was just to set up my profile on the site and introduce myself to Bryan, so nothing too pressing yet. Next week however I will be getting into sketching out some poses and picking out a favorite. So get ready for some drawings.
My first lecture was also very inspiring and was a great introduction to the life of animation by Shawn Kelley (one of the three founders of AM) and a whole bunch of other great animators.
I think the biggest thing that I took away this week from both the lecture and the Q&A was that when working in animation no past experience is a wasted one, as you are always going to find yourself applying certain things that you've done and internalized at one time or another. From the same vein as this fact it's also good to know that you can use each of your personality traits to your advantage to create something that is unique and conveys something that is real and human when bringing a character to life. No need to be ashamed of who you are and what you're about! And so observing and taking note of life around me is what I am going to use to inspire and drive my work.
Thanks for stopping by once more,
Here's a short that Reel FX did for Warner Bros. It should look familiar:)
