It's already Week 7?

I don't know how that happened. I'm already over halfway done with Class One! Insanity. In a good way, of course. And what's even more exciting, this week we finally got to animate Tailor! He's the little bouncing ball rig with a squirrel's tail. I've been seeing him in AM student reels for a long time and was super stoked to finally get to animate with him. It's the first time we've really gotten to animate a character who is moving and thinking of his/her own accord. Here's the shot I came up with earlier this week:

(Who has two thumbs and figured out how to make the videos larger? Eh?)


For our assignment this week we had two options to choose from: animate Tailor doing an action of your choice that includes at least three bounces, or animate the one-legged ball rig doing a single jump, landing, and settling. For whatever reason, almost everyone chooses Tailor over poor One-Leg. During my Q&A this week, my mentor mentioned that he likes when his students add a bit of entertainment value to their shots, like a small gag or visual joke of some kind (as long as you don't let the gag take up all your time and attention, causing your animation to suffer).

So, after class I looked back at my shot and thought that, while I had faithfully executed the assignment, it wasn't the most exciting thing in the world. It felt like I was doing an overlap exercise and nothing more. So, I decided to stop neglecting One-Leg and put him in my shot as well. It seemed like Tailor was running from something anyways, so I decided to have One-Leg chase him into frame, only to be foiled by the first wall that Tailor glides over. And so:

Ta da! I'm pretty happy with how it came out and I think it's more fun to watch now. Though, poor One-Leg just can't win. Heh. This week we also had to revise our pendulum shots from last week:

My mentor had a few notes for this, mostly concerning the last swing and settle as the pendulum stops. That section gave me grief the first time around and it was still difficult to get it right for this revision. Plus, while I worked on this, I was at the part of the Return of the King audiobook when Sam thinks that Frodo is dead and it was stressing me out. All around, a stressful shot. But I got it to work eventually, I hope (Sam discovered Frodo wasn't dead, just paralyzed, so it worked out for him at least).

Welp, that's all for this week, lovelies. Get yourselves ready for Week 8, when we get to start our first walk cycle! And there will be a new batch of drawings for you to vote on! And Frodo will destroy the ring! And King Aragon will finally return! HUZZAH!