Right, apologies for the delay for this week's post - now that class 1 is basically finished, we're currently in the middle of a week off, and I've been enjoying the fruits of Real Life (tm) for a change. It's been great, catching up with friends and family and reminding myself exactly what the British countryside looks like (hint; much nicer than central London!).

Still, before class 1 ended (I still can't believe how fast it's flown by!), we had one last task to do - to take our character walk from week 10 and spline it. Regular readers may recall I wasn't very happy with my blocking for week 10, and before I started splining it I essentially reblocked it to get some slightly nicer hip timing. It's still not great, but it's a vast improvement on what I had last week.

As an experiment this week, I'm going to try encoding my website Quicktimes as iPhone/iPod compatible MPEG4 Quicktimes, instead of h264 (which both devices seem to have trouble with). It's passed my 5-minute "does it work on PC and Mac" test, but if anyone has any trouble viewing either the flash or the Quicktime this week, then please let me know. Or alternatively, a quick "yep it works for me!" would also be great!

And this week's pose theme was "balance":

Finally, as a little treat, here's a little progress reel of everything I've had to make for AM this class (music is "Eple" by "Røyksopp"). Enjoy!

So this week, we were finally given the green light to move on from dull, boring, no-life-whatsoever walks, and start work blocking a "character walk", ie a walk with personality! And in the interests of learning and development (and masochism), I deliberately picked the hardest and most difficult type of character walk I possibly could...

Truth be told, I'm not all that happy with how it turned out. It reads, but there are serious timing issues (especially on the hips) that I'm really not happy with, and which I'm definitely gonna have a go at solving before splining this week. Rather interestingly, my best feedback so far for this hasn't come from my class (all men), but from my sister and her housemates (thank you so much!!). I just wish I'd thought of asking them earlier - in the end I didn't had enough time to implement their feedback...

So I was semi-successful - I learnt a ton, but too late to use any of it. Ho hum. Anyway, I'll leave you with this week's pose, which was on the subject of "exhaustion" (surprisingly easy to get in the mood for after nearly 3 months of work and AM!):

Have a great week everyone!

I'm going to conduct a small experiment this week, and try totally ripping off brazenly copying faithfully drawing artistic inspiration from a well-known TV show. There's no pictures, so you'll just have to use your imaginations instead (sorry, this is blogging on a budget)

(Bip....bip....bipbipbipbipbeeep)

(WHOOSH)

(Previously, on Karl's blog): 'The intention is that we then spline our walk and make it look generally presentable for the end of next week'.

(Cut to black)

(The following takes place between Monday 2nd, and Sunday 8th of March)

(Events occurred in real-time): Okay, one splined walk and one "concerned pose" on the way.(tippity tappitty) Stupid knee popping...(tip tip tap)

(Beep-bom, beep-bom, beep-bom, beep-bom)

(click click tippity tappity) There we go, all done!

...No, I'm not convinced that writing experiment was a total success either. I seem to recall 24 had much more backstabbing and general plot-twisting mayhem. Not to mention that you can't ever do any (tippity tappity) in 24 without being asked to "open up a socket to division", whatever the heck that means. And I'm also not sure if animators are much of a replacement for Jack Bauer either - sure, they've got the whole battle-hardened-guerilla look going, but if they need to extract information from someone, they just ask politely. How dull is that. Oh well. Next week I'll try ripping off Lost instead - shouldn't be too hard to make something more exciting than that

Have a great week, y'all! (all feedback welcome as always)

So, this week *drumroll* we moved onto walks! Our mission was to use our newly acquired information in the ancient and noble art of cycle-making to create a "vanilla-walk"; that is, a walk with no personality and no unique character traits. To be honest, I found this exercise quite difficult (even having done a walk or two before), as making a walk with no personality is a bit like trying to draw a face with no personality, or write a story with no personality. I kept having to mentally slap myself and say "No! Bad Karl!" every time I accidentally introduced the slightest bit of exaggeration.

This week we only had to block our walk; the intention is that we then spline it and make it look generally presentable for the end of next week. So here it is in its current block-a-licious state:

And to remind us that for the next 18 months there is no such thing as free time, there was also a pose theme of "Physical Strength":

Finally, to round this post off nicely, here are two little-known facts about me and walk cycles:

- I animated my first run about a term before I made my first walk cycle (a classic case of "running before you can walk" if ever there was one )

- The tutor marking my first walk rather famously looked at it for a while before pronouncing in front of the whole class "He walks a bit like you, doesn't he?". Everyone thought it was hilarious, but to this day I still haven't worked out if it was a compliment or an insult...

Have a great week everyone!