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.

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!

Week 2 (Week 14)

Alright so it's week 2 (not really though, it's really week 7 at the time of writing) and there is more stuff to cover from last time. First, my new mentor. His name is Morgan Kelly and he's an awesome guy! (His blog can be found at http://www.morgankelly.blogspot.com/) He currently is an animator at Dreamworks and has worked on practically every CG movie they have done so far! The amount of knowledge and insight that he has is remarkable. I'm really glad that I have him as a mentor, though I'd be happy with anyone probably, although the class time is a bit odd, 11PM-Midnight! But whatever, I'm usually up anyways. There are a bunch of new people in my class, 2 from my previous class, and they are all great and super helpful in feedback. We all feed off each others' excitement and enthusiasm and it makes the class really fun and entertaining. I'm really looking forward to see how everyone progresses and what great ideas they will come up with for shots!

Right, now on to the meat and potatoes. This weeks topic, getting the most clarity out of your blocking phase. Hosted by Brian Mendenhall (thanks Brian!), he went over how much is enough to get across your point in just blocking, which is essentially just the key poses and maybe a breakdown or two. There needs to be enough information in your shot, but not too much as that it will probably be changed around with the notes received from the mentor, so you have to find a happy medium. After which, we were to apply this new found knowledge to our blocking of the shot that we planned out last week. As I moved into Maya, I had to consider which poses were essential to the shot and which I could forgo at the moment. In the end, I pretty much used all my poses from planning and it came out alright. I had some difficulty trying to figure out how to show Ballie off balance, since he has no arms to help steady his balance, so I gave it a shot, but in the end, had to change it.