Concerning Week 9

Hello darlings! For those of you back in school, happy first week. To the rest of you, happy Week 9! This week I had to finish up my walk with Ballie, which meant getting the little guy out of blocking and into splined mode! This has historically been a difficult step for me but as I'm learning more about how to thoroughly block in a scene, it's getting less scary to hit spline in the graph editor and watch the playback. Plus, this walk is fairly straightforward so I could be nice and methodical about it. Here it is!

Turns out that fixing knee pops is quite a chore. So is keeping Ballie's giant feet from intersecting the ground. But all in all, I'm happy with how this came out. Keep your eyes peeled for a revision of it next week!

The other part of our homework this week was do sketches and a Stu pose that communicate "concern". For me, this is the most difficult posing assignment we've had so far, mainly because I think concern is difficult to communicate solely through body language, especially if the viewer is unaware of what circumstances are causing the character to be concerned. With this in mind, I thought I would probably use props and a set for my pose, and I asked my mentor if if would be okay to even use another character in the pose to help it read. He said he was okay with it but urged us not to rely on it and especially not to let a secondary character distract from the main concerned character. And so I did a mix of sketches, some with props, some with other characters, some with just plain ol' concerned Stu:

I actually like how these sketches more than I thought I would when we got the assignment. I tried to vary between different kinds of concern, some mixed with worry, anger, sadness, etc. I picked out my favorite ones and took a shot with Stu:

Surprisingly, I think my favorite of this bunch is F. It's based on drawing 9, which was kind of a throwaway drawing. Inversely, drawing 2 was on of my favorites but I think pose B is too busy. My classmates also liked D and E but I think that F is similar to them and a bit more interesting. Leaning towards F for now, but if you've got love for any of them, please let me know! I have until noon tomorrow to turn this in.

And one last bit for this week, a revised physical strength pose for your viewing pleasure. My mentor asked me to tweak my pose from last week:

Hopefully it now looks more like Stu is lifting up rather than back and away (and his back looks less broken). Welp, that's all for me this week! Next week I'll be blocking in my personality walk (SO excited for this) and there'll be more poses for you to vote on! In the meantime, have a lovely week and go Giants!

Walking in a Straight Line is Harder Than You Think

Well hello! Week 8 is upon us, readers, and it is the most exciting one yet! We got to block in our very first walk cycle, huzzah! One Leg grew another leg and turned in Ballie, thankfully, or it would have been a really tough walk cycle (well, jump cycle). AND we have another Stu pose this week so I will need your votes to help me pick once again. But first! My revision from last week:

My mentor had a few notes about Tailor, mostly concerning his small hop from frames 47-51 and his flip around frame 36. As for One Leg, he was pleased that he made it into my shot and just had a few notes on tweaking his jump. All in all, I think this is my favorite shot I've done so far as it was definitely the most fun to work on.

ALRIGHT WALK CYCLE TIME. Our lecture this week was fantastic. We got a full blown walk cycle demo from AM's CEO Bobby Beck and tons of great info on walks. Now, unlike some of my classmates, this isn't my first go at this. I've done walks in the past so I know that they are WAY harder than you think they're going to be (I did a quadruped walk cycle while I interned at DreamWorks and it took me freaking forever to get it even halfway decent).

Our assignment this week was to do a vanilla walk with Ballie, meaning just a plain ol' no personality walk that gets him from one side of the screen to the other. As walks go, this is on the easy side since you get to be fairly systematic with it. Plus, there are tons of resources out there that map out exactly how to do a vanilla walk. And Ballie is essentially just a pair of hips with two legs so there's no need to worry about arm swings or overlapping spine/neck/head motion or anything like that. Here it is:

Now keep in mind this is still in the blocking stage, as per our assignment this week. So, since there's only a pose on every third frame, it looks a little choppy but hopefully you still get a solid idea of what the walk is going to look like when it's done. 

Okay, onto the fun part. Our pose this week is supposed to communicate "physical strength". In a sense, this was an easier assignment because it's not an emotion like the past ones have been, so Stu's lack of a face didn't pose as much of a problem. On the other hand, Stu's distinct lack of muscles made it hard to communicate strength without some kind of prop. In my sketches, I did some exploring, doing some poses with props, some without, some with superhuman strength, some poses out of comics books, some from photos, and some out of my head. Here is what came out:

I also decided to add in the silhouettes with this week's poses, because I think it's even more important to have a strong (heh) silhouette and line of action for this particular assignment, again, because it's not an emotional pose and it needs to read right off the bat (and as you can see from number 9, I'm still feeling the gymnastics love even though the Olympics have ended). 

Something I dwelt on a lot while doing these was whether or not it helped the pose if Stu was struggling to push/lift whatever prop he had. In some cases it seems like that would take away from the pose immediately reading as "strength" by making Stu seem weak and unable to move the object, but in others it seems to help the overall reading of the pose. Since I'm still unsure, I'll let you decide! Here are the Stu poses I came up with after getting a bit of feedback from my classmates:

You know the drill by now, right? Which Stu or sketch looks the strongest? Vote away!

And don't forget to come back next week when I'll have a finalized walk cycle and another round of poses for you to vote on! 

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!

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. 

Devastation and Stuff

Hello lovely readers! This week I need your help again! Part of our homework is to find a pose that communicates "devastation" (bit of a bummer after drawing a bunch of excited guys last time) and since all you lovelies were so helpful last time, I'm asking for another round of votes! Here are the sketches I did so you can see where I started from:

I thought devastation would be relatively easy to portray, but I think some of my drawings just came off as "tired"or "suddenly dizzy". Heh. After getting some feedback from my peers, I posed a handful of them with Stu, as seen here:

Stu's enormous head and tiny legs proved to be a challenge for me again (I did attempt to pose drawing 7 but it proved impossible with Stu's head). Even if I scale the arms enough so that Stu can wrap his arms all the way around his head, it still looked weird. Anyways, I would love to hear your thoughts! Which Stu looks the most devastated, A-F? Or do you like one of the drawings better? Sound off in the comments and check back at the end of this week, when I'll post a revision of my two bouncing balls from last week as well as my obstacle course assignment from this week! Much less depressing!

EDIT: Okay I did one more, we'll call this Pose G. I went back drawing 7 and tried to make it happen and I'm actually rather happy with what came out. Feel free to vote for this one if you like it best!

Bouncing Balls Galore

While I unfortunately have no drawings for you to vote on this week, dear readers, I do have two (count 'em, TWO!) animations on which to feast your eyes. Now, I'll admit they are not the most exciting things in the world but they are very important exercises that will do nothing but help in the long run. You know, like learning your scales (don't tell anyone that I never really learned my scales on guitar I'm gonna do it right this time shhhhhh).

First off, I've finessed my single bouncing ball from last week. My mentor was generally pleased with it but he did ask me to tweak the timing a bit so here is what resulted:

With animation this simple, I think I sometimes get too caught up and overwork a shot, past the point where I should have stopped, to the point where I no longer have a clear vision in my head of what I want to be doing (this definitely happens to me with more complicated shots as well, just not as quickly). Then suddenly, I'm at a point where I can't make it look good again and I've also lost my ability to tell what looks correct anymore. At that point I usually flip my chair around to my TV, play a couple rounds of Mario Kart (or Super Smash Bros. if I'm feeling especially frustrated and feel the need to Falcon Punch the crap out of a tiny, electric Pokemon), and come back with fresh eyes. I find that it really, truly does help to take a break every half hour or so and stop staring at your animation (sidenote: the pomodoro method is so effective, it's insane. It seems too simple to be as effective as it is but TRUST ME. Google it). That way, your eyeballs don't fall out of your head and your mind and body get a little break. Oftentimes I come back and boom! I see exactly what I couldn't see earlier, and am able to fix the mistake. I think this is good advice for any level of animator, or frankly for anyone who works at a desk all day long. Breaks are good. They will help you.

Okay tangent over. HOMEWORK! This week we were assigned another bouncing ball shot (but this time we used two. Schwing!) One ball was supposed to be a very heavy one, like a cannon ball or a bowling ball. The other was supposed to be very light, like a beach ball or ping pong ball. The point of the assignment was to understand how differences in spacing and timing affect how the audience will perceive the weight of an object. How does the timing of a bowling ball bounce differ from a beach ball? What are the differences between a ping pong ball and a cannon ball as they roll off a table? After watching practically every youtube video of people throwing beach balls around and dropping bowling balls in parking lots, here is what I came up with:

Pretty happy with this one too, though I might make a few tweaks to both shots before Sunday. Thanks for reading! I'll be back next week, when I'll have a new emotion to pose out and I'll need your help again, friends! So stay tuned and go see Batman this weekend so I can geek out with you about it. 

So begins Week 4

Today I wrap up Week 3 and move on to Week 4, where I'll be learning more about timing and spacing in this week's lecture and work a more complicated bouncing ball assignment. But before I get to that I thought I would post up my finished products for Week 3's homework, part of which you so graciously helped me with! But first, my bouncing ball:

Looking at it now, I still feel like the ball's translation across the screen needs to be finessed. But luckily I get to revise this for next week, so I get to see what my mentor's thoughts are and work on it further. As for my Stu pose, I decided to go with number one of the four options I gave you guys since I think it reads the quickest as "excitement" (though I still hold a special place in my heart for number four because I think it's just a funny image). After a bit more tweaking, here it is!

I am quite happy with how it came out and would like to thank you all for your feedback, it truly did help. And there are going to be several more of these poses down the line so I will be needing your help again in the coming weeks, so stay tuned! I'll be back in a few days with a revision of this bouncing ball and a first pass at the new assignment. Schwing!