Phew - another week gone by, another assignment finished! This week started with an absolutely fantastic lecture about hip motion - really really inspiring. Y'see, up until now I've generally animated hip motion by feel and gut instinct, and whilst that's fine for simple cases or for things I can easily act out myself, there have been times recently where my lack of formal animation training has caught me short. So it was great to finally have things "formalised" in my head - there were several "AH-HAH!" moments when things suddenly clicked together and started to make sense. Lovely.
Workwise, this week was a bit of a pig - firstly we had to finish our shots that we've been working on for the last few weeks. However, my critique from last week raised several issues that meant I had to do a lot of nasty invasive surgery on my curves to make it all work. That'll teach me for being such a messy animator, I guess . Here's how it turned out once it was all polished up:
On top of this (and work!), we also had to go out and film reference/draw poses for our project for the next few weeks. The main themes that interested me were "Walk in a heavy windstorm", "Parkour", and "Drunken stumble". I've decided to go for "Drunken stumble", since it has the most potential for character, and feels like more than just a physical challenge. Acting it out was a huge amount of fun - I got my best results from spinning quickly on the spot for 60 seconds, and then dizzily stumbling around like a lunatic. Not many jobs that'll let you do that for a living, no?
I'll post my planning up next week once I've got some blocking to go with it. For the meantime, it's back to the grindstone for me - alas, these characters don't key themselves. Have a good week y'all!
Howdy all, hope you had a good week? I had an awesome week - last Tuesday, I was lucky enough to watch The Fellowship of the Ring on a giant screen in the Royal Albert Hall, with the music performed LIVE by the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Life simply does not get any more awesome than that, no? It really was an experience - to hear such a powerful soundtrack from a live orchestra, in such a special venue, and to hear a film score take "front stage" over the top of the dialogue for a change was something very special indeed. I gather they're going to be doing the same thing with Two Towers next year - if you enjoy film soundtracks and enjoyed the LOTR films then you REALLY owe it to yourself to see it.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled Animation Mentor update . I have to admit that the "blocking plus" that was the goal for this week rather confused me - I was torn between doing a block on 2's, or doing something closer to splining. Since the course handbook said we should leave stepped mode this week, I chose something closer to splining, although I fully expect to be marked down for jumping ahead!
So, here's the blocking. I eventually picked the scared jump-and-turn, since it seemed the more interesting of the two options, and had a lot more opportunity for exaggerating spacing and timing. I know that we're meant to be focusing on body mechanics this term but honestly, if I had to animate a person turning around on the spot for 3 weeks, I think I'd probably go insane. Well, more insane at any rate.
This week I'll be getting a round of criticisms from my tutor and other students, and pushing the blocking further to create a "blocking-plus" as they call it. I'm guessing it's some sort of sponsorship deal with Pro Plus. Then next week, we finally hit good ol' splining and make it all look pretty!
Have nice week y'all, and don't eat all your chocolates at once!...
So, here we are! Somehow I've survived the first class (which wasn't always easy), and after a much-needed week-long break, we're now back to the grindstone. Class 2 is all about body mechanics, so there should be a lot more full-body stuff this class (although many more of the projects we get this term are multi-week affairs, so expect fewer than last class's one-per-week madness!). The students have been all been mixed around, as is the tradition; my new class seems like a very happy and friendly bunch and should be great fun to work with. Once again I'm under the stewardship of the mighty and wise Shaun Freeman, although this time instead of meeting each week at 10pm-11pm, I now have the slightly more anti-social 3am-4am to content with. Eek. Good thing animators never sleep, eh??
This week I don't have a huge amount to show you all I'm afraid, since our assignment is simply to take one movement from a list of 12, and...umm... now how did they put it? 'Analyse the heck out of it'. I've picked a 180-degree turn, and so far between sketches and video reference I've got two potential approaches - a simple swing turn, and a scared oh-crap-jump-and-turn:
Next week we start blocking it up, which I'm really looking forward to.
So, sorry if you were expecting something a bit more meaty to get your critiquing teeth into - check back next Monday for more. Still, to try and make up for it, I'll post some other vaguely-related news. First, the film I've been working on since November, "Where the Wild Things Are", has put a trailer online! Feedback online seems to have been good, which is always nice. I'm now in the process of moving project onto James Cameron's blockbuster "Avatar", which is due out sometime round Christmas apparently, and what I've seen of it so far looks very interesting indeed...
. Here's how it turned out once it was all polished up:
Good thing animators never sleep, eh??
