From One Stone to Another

Howdy!,

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!)

Flipping Into Class 2

Greetings all,

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.