Right, if you'll indulge me dear reader, I'm going to make this one nice and short. This week, our mission was to animate not one, but TWO bouncy balls with a clear difference in weight. One had to be very light, and the other very heavy. Both had to come to a stop, and the time limit was 60-120 frames (between 2.5 and 5 seconds for the non-animators amongst you). So here's how it went!

Phew, this was quite a week! Between lots of jobs to do at work and a larger number of tasks to do for AM, it felt like Sunday would never come... Here's hoping next week will be slightly calmer!

This week we learnt about blocking and planning (which in the animation world is a bit like wiping your bum - you could skip it, but everyone would quickly disown you, and you'd really stink). We were then given four (!) tasks to do for this week:

1. Make sketches on the theme of "excitement"
2. Pick our favourite pose and take it into 3d (like last week)
3. Plan a bouncing ball using our newfound knowledge on the subject
4. Animate a bouncing ball of maximum length 100 frames

Oddly enough, it was finding excited poses that I found the most difficult of these - "being excited" is such an abstract thing to express without knowing what the person's excited about; especially if you want to avoid cliché'd poses and when don't have a face to help sell the idea.

So, here are the results in no particular order. First; the poses:

Then animating a bouncing ball (man, it felt soo good to be animating again). It ended up a bit like this:

Planning link (jpg)

Download Quicktime version (225k)

Apologies if the flash video doesn't work, I'm still wrapping my head around it and it's very possible I've done something wrong... Hope y'all like the animation anyway, have a lovely week, and feel free to send me any praise or abuse through the traditional channels

So this week we had a fantastic lecture introducing us to the principles of animation. Even though I'd encountered them plenty before when animating and in books and daily animated life, it was still really interesting to hear what these principles meant for so many accomplished animators. Plus, the lecture videos are very well edited and put together - even if it's stuff you mostly know, you can't help but sit and smile at Bobby Beck, Carlos Baena and and Shawn Kelly just because they're so damn entertaining to watch

But anyway, onto this week's task. Our mission was to head out to various public places, sketch the people we saw and the poses that interested us, and then take our favourite into 3d by posing our character using the sketch as a basis. I ended up going to Waterloo and Marylebone train stations during evening rush hour; the circled one is the one I chose to develop further (click to zoom in). And note to self: whilst train stations may be fantastic for finding poses, they're also bloody freezing!

And this is the result in 3d:

Hope you like it; all feedback welcome!

So, after almost a year of talking, planning, dreaming, saving, and oh-crap-look-at-the-exchange-rate-followed-by-slightly-more-frantic-saving, I’ve finally taken the plunge and started studying at Animation Mentor! So far it’s all been surprisingly relaxed; lots of people to get to know and a HUGE site to get acquainted with, but apart from that no crushing deadlines or stress or screaming or anything like that.

It’s almost like they’re trying to lull us into a false sense of security…

The class I’m with all seem really enthusiastic and friendly, as does our tutor, Mr Shaun Freeman. And, in a rather improbable twist of fate, I’ve found myself in the same AM class as one of my Bournemouth Uni classmates, Dan. I guess truth really is stranger than fiction. Everyone at Framestore’s been really enthusiastic about me studying at AM, which is also great (and odd, seeing as it means they’ll be seeing considerably less of me… oh… hang on a minute…)

So! Expect animations and sketches and such posted here on this blog as-and-when I have something to show. Commenting and poo-flinging at my work is expected, and even encouraged. Until then, as you were.

Karl