Playing Catch Up

I know, I know. I've been slacking. But that means you get two weeks worth of homework in this post! PLEASE CONTAIN YOURSELVES. First up, my revision of my two bouncing balls from Week 4:

I had a few little things to change for this revision, my mentor just had a few minor notes on timing that I needed to fix. Though I do need to start getting in the habit of planning my shots under the amount of required frames so I have some wiggle room if I end up needing it (which I almost always do). If I had 20 extra frames here you would've seen some nice settle on that beach ball but alas, I was at my frame limit and my due date loomed.

Okay next up is my actual assignment from last week, which definitely the most fun assignment we've had so far. Bouncing ball obstacle course WHOOOOOOO. We were given several obstacle course sets to choose from and then pretty much let loose to do what we wanted after that, as long as physics still applied. And we even got to squash and stretch the ball, huzzah! Lucky for you, I already revised this shot as part of my homework for this week so it's already all nice and neat for you.

I had a lot of fun with this one. And for a bit of experimentation, I did it pretty much straight ahead and put a key on every frame. I used to think 3D animators who did this were crazy people but I actually loved the amount of control it gave me. So screw you computer, you're a terrible inbetweener, anyway.  Heh. But be forewarned, if you don't plan well when doing a shot this way, things can get messy fast and it might hurt you more than help you.

And here is the final devastation pose I went with (thanks for all your help, darlings). I revised it a bit for this week after some feedback from my mentor and hopefully it reads more clearly than it did initially. But man, I'm never gonna get used to Stu's huge head. 

And finally for this week's assignment! Our lecture this week went over overlapping action, which is fun because stuff we're animating is actually starting to look pretty cool. I always think that overlapping action is one of the more straight forward principles. When I think about it, I'm like, "Yes, that makes total sense, breaking of joints, wave motion, drag, follow through, simple BOOM." But actually animating it and getting it to look juuuust right is deceptively difficult. AKA: this shot took me way longer than I thought it would. Heh. 

And hey guess what? I came 30 frames under the limit. I planned for 50 under the limit and then I added 20 because my pendulum settle felt a tad too fast. I'M LEARNING!

I hope you enjoyed my homework dump, readers. Next week I'll have a new emotion pose for you to vote on so keep your eyes peeled. I won't slack I promise! If you get bored in the meantime, go read Ryan Lochte's Twitter feed, especially if silly spelling errors make you laugh.