Week 5 (Week 17)

This week, the lecture covered staging and composition in a shot, how to place a camera and set a shot up nice and in an appealing way. Hosted by the very humorous Carlos Baena, he went over how to best set up a shot and have your scene be the clearest as possible. Because what would a scene be if it is unclear? Nothing. And even though this might be more geared toward the later, more acting oriented classes, it is always good to be thinking about when starting any shot and how the composition of the shot is working.

(A million thanks Carlos!)

For the assignment, in typical fashion, we were to take our reference and thumbnails and block out the shot. As an added bonus, I tried out DigiCel's Flipbook application and I must say it is very nifty and pretty easy to get around. This helped out a boat load when planning the overall shot and before moving into Maya.

Week 4 (Week 16)

So, week 4...week 4...Ahh, so this week was an in-depth look at hips and how they operate, hosted by the one and only Bobby Beck! The interesting thing is that most all movements begin at the hips and then travel out to the rest of the body for the motion. So it is very important to get a good hold on hips as it will dictate the overall movement and positioning of the character.

(Thank you sooo much Bobby!)

With the assignment, we were to finish polishing our shot and then move into reference for the next shot. I added more of a stomp to the end as Ballie regains his balance and comes forward, but, as always, could use more work. Also, Morgan suggested that I add some sort of turn around to look at his close shave. I added one, but it feels very linear and needs more breakdowns in it to smooth out the motion.

Also, with the new assignment, we were given a new character, Stewie! This is a more complete character, with legs, torso and a head, but NO arms yet. This is for the better as we can get a better hold of just getting down how to use his essential controls for a physical performance. We were also given a new set of choices for a shot from a pick list. I read through them and they were all pretty interesting and good. But as I came to the bottom, the last one read "Parkour". Instantaneously, my brain went "DING" like brownies were ready and my eyes lit up. Parkour is awesome, so given the chance to animate some would be that much more sweet! So we had to get reference and as I can undoubtedly do none of the death defying moves that they do, I resorted to my good friend Youtube to compile the shot.

Next shot:

Week 3 (Week 15)

This is going to be a major catch-up/ even more overhaul of animation as I will magically try to recollect what I did those months ago and in a semi-intelligent manor. Writings will be noticeably shorter as I attempt to get back to the present.

Week 3 was about further exposing us to different approaches to doing animation by professionals. This week was Dimos Vrysellas(Thank you Dimos!) and how he went about his business. His workflow was cool, treating computer animation more like traditional, pencil and paper, but digital. It was very cool! Again a strong working of the fundamentals in his work.

With our assignment, we were to bring it out of blocking into splines, it was starting to get there, I redid the attempt to catch his balance, but as he came back down, his touch is way soft, hard to believe I did that now!