Week 12 (Week 24)

Wow, so this is the final week of class 2! I had a great time continuing to expand my animation knowledge and get to know some great people along the way. I want to give an extremely big thank you to Morgan Kelly for his immense amount of knowledge and being a great overall mentor. The wisdom he imparted on me was priceless and I cannot thank him enough for all his expertise and direction. Also, I want to (this is starting to sound like a catch phrase) thank all my fellow classmates of both the past, present, and future. Without them, I would be nearly no where as they continue to inspire and urge me to do the most I can and achieve that ultimate goal. In typical week 12 fashion, we were to compile all our shots from the term, as well as the previous term, into a sort of progress reel. In my end of the term critique, it was essentially the same as the previous class: it has entertainment value, but the fundamentals are lacking. Got to work on those principles more!

Anywho, time for a week break and then onto Advanced Body Mechanics! But not before I put up my progress reel. Onward and upward!

Week 11 (Week 23)

It's the final furlong as we draw close to the end of this term. This class, we had Kenny Roy (thanks Kenny!) take an actual students shot and add what he felt was that final 10% to the shot. This final bit of polish was that extra spit shine on the shot that made it really stand out, like drag and overlap.

This week was the final week of homework. We were to add our own final 10% on the shot as we saw fit. Fortunately for me in this crucial time, I was on vacation. So I got to work on the shot and try to upload it from a boat, which didn't work out too well but it worked out eventually. (Don't get me wrong, the trip was awesome, but the waning of internet was kinda stressful when the school is based online.) I had been trying to learn some basic lighting and rendering techniques so that I could make my shots look more pretty, as well as make the fire actually look like fire and not green blobs. I got some very helpful tips from classmates and tutorials and in the end came out okay.

Week 10 (Week 22)

In this session, Shawn and Carlos went into further depth about the importance of having clear arcs and paths of action. Having smooth arcs can do wonders to a shot and make it look really smooth and pretty. So it is definitely a topic to touch back upon and look at in more detail.

As for the homework shot, I took it out of stepped and into splined mode. I tried to capture the initial timing of my blocking phase as well as incorporate some some other principles like drag. The arms were definitely feeling a little stiff though and needed to be addressed in the following iteration. Also, the end of his freak out needed to be held longer as it wasn't really reading.

Week 9 (Week 21)

In this session, we had Pixar animator, and apparently the voice of the babysitter in The Incredibles (I'll have to check that out) Bret Parker (thanks Bret!). She went through the differences in how forces can affect the timing and spacing of a shot. Also, how timing and spacing changes as it goes from a more cartoony to realistic form of animation. She went through some of her awesome shots from Wall-E (probably my favorite Pixar film) and showed how internal and external forces influenced the timing and spacing of the shot.

For the combustible Stewie shot, I took the time to re-block the shot since we had 2 more weeks to work on it (rather than the usual 3 total weeks). The overall starting pose was changed and the head scratch was taken out. I played around with the timing a little more to make it snappier and added a few more breakdowns to it.

Week 8 (Week 20)

This week, we had Carlos go through the all important arcs and paths of action in a shot. It makes movements much more fluid and not jittery and all over the place.

So, in usual fashion, we took our sketches from reference and blocked them out in Maya. I discovered this nifty little dynamic flame tool in Maya that made the fire on Stewie's foot practically for me! It was pretty nice find, but that didn't change the fact that my blocking had some problems with it. The overall pose was too not casual and all the hopping around was a bit slow. See for yourself, first without the flame dynamic, then with.

Week 7 (Week 19)

This session, we watched AM graduate turned DreamWorks animator Mike stern (thanks Mike!) go through his process of tackling a shot. It was rather unique as he didn't go with reference as he just used his principles to map out a very cartoony and good shot of army Stewie storming the beach.

With the parkour shot, we were to finish it up with some final polishing and then move onto our next, and final, shot for the term. I fixed most of the concerns for the shot, like the speed he comes out of the head flip, his overall speed to the run and a settle at the end. Morgan made a good point that the shot was rather linear and two dimensional. There was not much outside of Stewie running in a straight line through the course and was no breaking of that path of action. Definitely noted, have character move in the three dimensional space.

For the final shot, I have no clue where it came from, but I went with the idea of Stewie (now with arms!) just chilling and waiting around. Suddenly his foot spontaneously combust without his really noticing. Then, he realizes that something is up and sniffs around and sees the alarming situation and falls over as he attempts to put out the flames. Though you get the joy of seeing me do it first.

Week 6 (Week 18)

This week, we got to watch Ethan Hurd (thanks Ethan!) take us through how he would go about completing a shot. He gave some awesome tips about how to move into splined and give some great animation tips for getting in the mind frame for a shot.

For homework, we were to move into a blocking plus phase of the animation. Basically take it from stepped mode and into linear or splined. Also, more breakdowns were needed to make the motion more fluid and add drag and other principles into the shot. Since I put it through Flipbook, all the poses I moved into Maya seemed to work pretty well coming out of stepped mode and into spline. Some things I had to address were his head moving around on the head flip and the speed that he comes out of the recovery from the head flip.