Can you believe it? Class 3 is wrapping up and my three shots have been finaled. Insanity! I spent most of my time in Week 11 polishing my swinging shot and adding in all the little bitty details. Mike gave me some great feedback and after my crit on Monday I went back in and tweaked a few more things and then called it all done! Here are my final shots:
I had a really great time in Class 3 and am so glad I got to have Mike as a mentor. He is a really great teacher and super nice guy! I hope you enjoyed it too, readers. I also put together my progress reel, which I will post a bit later, along with some more cohesive thoughts on my experience this term. See you then, readers!
I KNOW. I'm way late. So late that I have to do a double-post. We're putting Weeks 9 and 10 together so GET READY. Here goes:
So last week I dove into the polish phase for my shots and began detailing out all the little things. The third shot needed the most work but by the end of Week 9 I was feeling good about where I was with two weeks left to continue polishing. Take a look:
Overall I was feeling good, though I see lots of things I still need to work on, mainly on my third shot, as usual. Mike gave me an "auto final" for my first two shots, which was very exciting. In the DreamWorks world, an "auto final" means that you just have a few small tweaks to make to finish the shot, and once a director gives you that, you can make the tweaks and send it on down the pipe. At that point, the director trusts you to make the necessary changes and doesn't need to see the shot again. So that was encouraging! He gave me lots of great notes on the third shot so that was where I focused most of my time the following week.
Though, I had very little time last week to animate. I took a trip with my sister to help her run her booth at AWP, an annual writing conference that takes place in a different city every year. This year, that city was Boston. My sister runs Nouvella, an independent publishing house that publishes small, beautiful novellas by up-and-coming authors. Which you should read because they are amazing. I'm not just saying that because she's my sister, I promise. They are great!
So, I went to help her table BUT I got stranded in various parts of the country on the way there and on the way back. I flew from Sacramento to Salt Lake City to Las Vegas to Boston on Wednesday (left at four thirty in the morning, got to Boston around midnight). Then on the way back I went from Boston to Atlanta, got stuck in Atlanta overnight, then finally got back home to Sacramento on Sunday morning. So many states! So little free wifi!
Moral of the story is: I didn't animate as much as I should have last week. I got the bulk of my work done on Sunday and spent nearly all my time working on my third shot. Things are looking better, but BOY am I thankful I have another week to sort this out:
Mike had more notes for my third shot, most of which were polish-y things about the timing and spacing of the swings. I'm having a really hard time nailing the feel and weight of the swings, even at this late stage. Hopefully I can get it looking and feeling better by the time the week is through. The other two shots just need a bit more attention before I can truly call them final. Overall I'm feeling good about it and I absolutely can't believe that this term will be done in two weeks. Banantown.
That's all for now lovelies, I hope it wasn't too much for one post. I'll be back next week with my final animation (ah!), keep your eyes peeled!
Oh hello! Look how on time I am this week, you guys. Super on top of it.
So, for this week, we continued working on our shots, heading into rough blocking. I am very happy that we get to split up our blocking over two weeks, so that we can address notes in the coming week without having to worry about going out of stepped just yet. Take a look!
Still pretty messy but I like how it's shaping up, especially across the cuts. Looking at it now I think I might have put too much overlap on his body when he's swinging in the third shot, but it's always easier to reign it in than push it further, so I pushed it more than I normally would have. We'll see what Mike thinks of it tomorrow!
Aaaand Lady Animators has a few new interviews up if you want to take a look! Most recently I spoke with Amelia Lorenz, an animator at JibJab and all around lovely person. Okay lovelies, that's all for this week. See you next time!
I know we're already well into Week 6 but I had to take a few days to get over the Niners Superbowl loss. I've decided to just focus on the fact that Spring Training is starting and the Giants will soon be back on my television.
So for Week 5, we had to do shoot reference, do planning sketches, and do rough character placement for our shots in the sequence. I had a biiiit of extra work since I have three shots instead of two like most of my class, but it wasn't too bad and my extra close up of Stewie's hand is actually a lot of fun.
My three shots are fairly straightforward. The first being where Stewie is climbing up the cliff face, the second is the close of his hand slipping, and the third is him dangling from the cliff and looking down. I cobbled together some video reference from clips I found on YouTube so that I could start drawing. For the dangling shot, one of my classmates kindly shot reference for me, thanks Michael! Take a look!
I am very glad I was able to find good reference because there is no way I would have be able to shoot any of this myself. I can't even do a pull-up. Zero upper body strength over here.
So, once I got my reference together, I got to drawing. I knew I wanted to exaggerate the poses a lot for this and make it as dynamic as possible. Actual rock climbing is really slow and controlled, but I wanted to give Stewie a little more energy, even a bit of recklessness, and I tried to convey that in my drawings. Here, have some thumbnails:
So now it was time to dive into Maya. Another of my classmates made an awesome Tarzan mod and spear for Stewie, so that is what will be used in our sequence (thanks Brock!). I can't even really call this blocking since it is still so, so rough, but the general ideas and groundwork is there for my three shots:
Mike had a few minor notes, including some small camera changes and having Stewie's hand enter frame in my second shot, but his main note, really for all of us, was to be specific about the way that Stewie moves. If he's like Tarzan, he should have a very unique style of movement and locomotion that we all need to agree on and really communicate in each of our shots. So, as I start blocking, there is a lot of work to be done, but I'm excited to get to it! See you next week with some blocking, readers!
Well hey there. Are we already 1/3 of the way through this term? What? Huh? Whoa.
So, this week things are a bit different than what we're used to. Since my group of five is going to be working on an entire sequence together, this week each of us is supposed to come up with an idea for the sequence and pitch it to the class. Last week my group met up and threw around some ideas for the sequence, one of which was "Tarzan Stewie."Of our three ideas, that was my favorite so I decided to run with it. My idea developed into Stewie as a hunter, chasing after a bird, climbing a cliff, and trying unsuccessfully to spear the bird in mid-air. Here is a video of me awkwardly explaining it!
The other half of our assignment was to do a playblast of the top view camera for the whole sequence but, I felt like I should do some story boards and rough layout in addition so that the idea was more fleshed out. That way, we could see the actual shots we would be animating, see how the pacing of the sequence felt, and see if it all made sense visually. So, I put together some boards in photoshop and jumped into Maya for some layout. I have very little experience doing story boards or layout (AKA I have no idea what I'm doing) but this was still fun to do. Take a looksee!
Turns out Stewie is not so handy with a spear, but he can climb a cliff like it's nobody's business. Also, I should definitely stick to animation because story boarding and rough layout are hard.
From here, it's up to Mike to decide which one of the five pitches we're going to use (nervous!) I'll be back next week with real, live, in-sequence shots to show you, so come back then and see the collaboration truly beginning! See you then, readers!
Hey there, readers! Are you still so pumped from the Niners win on Sunday that you're just raring to jump in? ME TOO. Let's do it.
This week, we were supposed to finish our shot that we blocked in last week, meaning we were on a bit of a tighter schedule that we were used to from last term. And despite all the football, I managed to get this shot to a point that I liked by the time my deadline hit. Mike's notes were really helpful and just by adding his suggestions to my blocking I got the shot to a place I liked much better than what I turned in last week. I trucked along and polished the thing up and this is what I ended up with:
Mike's biggest note on it was that I could still push it farther by making the jump higher and exaggerating the ups and downs in the runs. But overall, he said it was a big improvement over last week, though in future, don't be afraid to go broad. Extreme spacing, timing, and posing isn't something that I naturally gravitate towards, but I think Mike is right in that I should explore the "cartoony" side of things and not be afraid to really push what I've already laid down. Maybe during the break between terms I will revisit this shot and apply Mike's notes and see what happens. But for next week, we'll be coming up with ideas for our sequences, filming pitches, and doing a previs pass. New and exciting things are coming your way, readers! See you next week.
Greetings, lovely readers! Here we are already in Week 2, which means I've begun blocking my first shot of class three. If you remember, Stewie has taken it upon himself to learn parkour and is doing a wall-flip in this shot. I even dressed him up like a ninja in training! Take a look:
I had a very busy week but I think the blocking is looking fairly good. I didn't get to clean it up as much as I would have liked but I think if I put in the time next week, it'll turn out well. We'll see what notes Mike has in crit tonight but hopefully he's happy with the flip itself, that was one of his major notes last week. Welp, have a good week, lovelies and see you next time!
Hello! So it's that time again, Week 11. Our very last assignment has been turned in and Class Two is drawing to a close! Already about one third done with AM?! Whaaaa?
Well I polished and polished and finally finished up my shot! Take a looksee:
Poor Stewie's never gonna be king. After hitting a few roadblocks with this shot, I'm quite happy with how it came through in the end. Marlon was as well, noting that I could just add a little bit of 'keep alive' with the holds to touch it up. In his end-of-term assessment he gave me great feedback, so I am a very happy camper with Class Two as a whole. Can't believe it's nearly done! All that's left is to put together my progress reel, which I'll have up in the next couple days so keep your eyes peeled, readers! See you soon.
Oh hey so I only have two weeks of school left WHAT?! I know I keep asking this but WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? Really. It's freaking me out. It's Decemeber! How?!
Admist all this freaking out, I did finally take my shot out of stepped, which was scary. But I think that I finally got out of that middle "I've forgotten how to do everything" phase now, and the shot is ripe to be fully polished next week. So I'm thankfully back on schedule! See for yourself:
Marlon asked me to change the ending so that Stewie stays in frame, and to do whatever I could to make the gag as funny as possible. After some invaluable feedback from Marlon and my peers, I decided on this ending, where he lands on his bum, because landing on your bum is always funny, duh. I'm pretty happy with it at this point, especially after kind of losing my way on this shot last week. I still have quite a bit of polish to do next week so come back soon to see what I do with it! Cheers!
Lovelies! Happy Turkey Day to you all! I stuffed my face full of soooo much food this last week and I hope you did too. I also animated a bit of course, but I will say these past two weeks have been busy and it's been a bit tough staying on top of school stuff. As a result, I'm behind schedule with this shot, and it's still in blocking this week:
Marlon hit the nail right on the head during his feedback this week. He said it seemed like I'd been really busy for the past two weeks with CTN and Thanksgiving, and I hadn't put in as much time as usual. Week 9 kind of snuck up on me and I didn't anticipate having so little time for AM last week. But with family visiting, a major holiday, work, and my mother's birthday, my week was jam packed.
Marlon gave me a much needed kick in the butt during my e-critique, reminding me that I needed to really push myself and make the most out of my time at AM. So, I'm kicking it into high gear this week and catching myself up so that I can finish the term strong. Still lots of work to do on this shot, but I'm excited to start digging in! Come back next week to see what I've done with it!
OKAY SO HI. It's been an insane whirlwind couple of weeks and I am about still coming down from my CTN high so please bear with me!. I've been slacking a bit, I know. But now you get two weeks worth of homework all in one post! Brace yourself.
To ease you in, I'll show you my polished Stewie run (from two weeks ago):
Marlon was quite pleased with this and only had a minor note or two on how I could polish it further. I had a bit of a rough time with shot through the middle part of my workflow (namely Blocking Plus) but I am overall quite happy with the finished product. Not bad for my first run, all things considered.
In addition to polishing our shot, we also had to plan our next shot in Week 7. For this last shot, Marlon gave us the go ahead to do something a little wacky if we felt like it. So, I ended up deciding on doing a shot with Stewie trying to pull the sword from the stone, but it won't budge (a variation on the popular "trying to open a stuck door" shot). He pulls and pulls, and ends up breaking the handle off the sword. I figured, it'll be a funny little story and a good body mechanics workout.
So I went to town on one of the door handles in my house and cut together the best bits for my video reference.
The weird cuts are there to make it fit within the frame limit, but overall I liked the buildup and the general idea of the poses, but I knew that I was going have to modify/push the poses quite far from the reference. So, since I had time and I knew CTN would take up my upcoming weekend, I did a little pencil test of my blocking to get a head start:
I liked this much more as a base to go off of once I got Maya open and plus it was really fun to do. From this and my video reference, I did some planning sketches. We had a lecture on force in drawing this week, which was really helpful to me in drawing my poses for this shot:
I hope you are still enjoying my chicken-scratch/fifth grader handwriting.
Okay! Onto Week 8! Here is my (rough) blocking from last week. For this shot, we have an additional week and Marlon told us we could use it wherever we wanted. Because of CTN, I chose to use mine this week and spread my blocking out over two weeks since I knew my weekend was going to be jam-packed and I would have only a little time for animating. ANYWHO, here is what I was able to get through before the deadline hit:
This is quite a bit rougher than I would have liked, though I was able to see Marlon at CTN and warn him accordingly and he was very understanding. I've already gotten feedback on this and he is mostly giving me acting notes at this point, which is encouraging since thinking about acting in Class Two is a bit ahead of the game.
Whoo! Okay that concludes this double header post. CTN is going to get a post of its very own so be on the lookout for that soon! It's gonna be a GOOD ONE.
Where does the time go? I'm already half done with Class Two! How did that happen? I guess we'll NEVER KNOW. So, this week was significantly less busy than the last one, since I do not go to Vegas. BUT I did parade around in a Wonder Woman costume on Wednesday night, which was lots of fun.
And of course, I worked on my shot. This week moved in Blocking Plus, which is always scary and exciting. Things are really moving! But they look kind of bad! Make it look better! Ah! Keeping those four exclamatory sentences constantly in mind, this is what I came up with this week:
To be honest, this week was a bit of a struggle. I got a bit overwhelmed with cleaning up the graph editor, which was a tall order since I set so many keys when blocking. The is by and far the hardest shot I've ever done terms of physicality and I'm still seeing a million things I want to fix. And while it was hard, I'm proud of where I got though I think I've got a lot of polishing to do next week.
In other news, I've put up two more interviews over on Lady Animators! I spoke to Rachel Hanson and Julie Nelson, who both work at DreamWorks and are both fantastic, talented people. Click on over there to learn about how sad Rachel gets when the only "J" available at work for a PB&J is the orange marmalade flavor and read about allll the velociraptors Julie has animated.
Well that's all this week, loves. Come back next week for another double-header: my polished shot AND planning/reference for my next one. Whoo! See you then!
It was another busy week, readers! My big brother turned 30 so I hopped on a plane to Vegas to celebrate, and consequently had less time that normal to work on my shot (I know the title says live from Vegas but I'm actually home now sshhhhh). I was waaaay too busy staring at the INSANE Transformer Halloween costumes that I saw while I was there. Seriously. There is someone in Vegas right now in an eight foot tall fully functioning Bumblebee costume that can actually turn into a car. I know. I saw him. Or her.
But I did manage to squeeze in a bit of time for school and block in my shot. I made sure to fly home on Saturday afternoon with plenty of time to clean up what I had done earlier in the week and this is the result!
Pretty pleased with this. My mentor advised the camera move so that Stewie wasn't so small in frame at the beginning and end, which I think is great advice. I still have have a hard time deciphering how timing will look once I spline my shots but I like how the timing of the shot's feeling now, though I may speed up a few bits and see how it feels next week.
BONUS: I had a bit of free time today before I watched the Giants win the World Series (WHOOOOOOOOO! Two World Series wins in three years! Panda with the MVP! Romo was crying! Buster looked cute as ever!) So I added a few tweaks to my shot with Ballie that Marlon suggested and I rendered a nice, pretty version of it.
And that's all for this week, readers. Come back next week for some splinage, and have a happy Halloween in the meantime!
It was a busy, busy week this week readers. We had so much to do! Polish our first shot, shoot reference for our next shot, and do planning drawings! Plus I went out of town this weekend to watch Cal take a very unfortunate butt whooping from Stanford. :( But, at least we're getting Missy Franklin on our swim team next year. All in all, I had lots to do. First off, let's look at my turnaround with Ballie, which is all polished for you!
Pretty happy with how this turned out. I my biggest hurdle with this shot was it feeling too soft initially. Even from Week 1 Marlon told me to watch out for floaty-ness in my work, since some of Class One work felt a bit floaty as well. I toyed with the timing of this shot a lot and I think the experimentation I've been able to do with it over the past few weeks has really helped train my eye to recognize better timing/spacing. I think the feeling of weight has improved a lot, even just since my blocking plus pass.
And now, it's time for more reference video! For our next shot, we are getting a new rig! His name is Stewie and he is pretty much just a fancier version of our old pal Stu, and thankfully his head is not quite as large and he has eyes! Yay! For the list of actions we could pick to animate, we had a lot of cool options, but I decided to go with "a run with a change of direction." I've had a lot of trouble doing runs whenever I've tried them in the past so I thought this would be a good challenge. On my day off this week I borrowed my dad's tripod, set it up in my backyard and ran around like a crazy person.
After doing about thirty takes of myself running around, sometimes from off camera, sometimes away from camera, sometimes toward it (I got soooo sweaty), I ended up piecing two of my favorite takes together (that's why there's that weird cut in the middle). I liked the takes where I ran into frame but I also like the little skid thing I did on the turnaround from another take. Thankfull, my mentor gave us the okay to piece together reference last week during the Q&A and I like how it came out.
Also, you may be wondering why I was running with my arms behind my back. Our Stewie rig for this shot doesn't have any arms, so I figured I shouldn't use my arms so my reference was as accurate as possible. Fun fact: running with no arms is really hard. Turns out swinging your arms is a tremendous help to gaining forward momentum and balancing as you change direction. Seriously. Go outside and try to do it without falling over.
So, since I had my reference all ready to go, it was time to do my planning drawings. I always liked how our mentors could draw directly over our reference and after a bit of googling, I found out that I could do the very same thing in photoshop! I got really excited and went to town on my reference:
I apologize that this is so annoying to watch this in real time (and on youtube you unfortunately can't scrub through it frame by frame). Also my color key is basically impossible to read, but black drawings are contact positions, green is up and down extremes, red is passing positions, orange is line of action/weight notes, and white is shoulder rotation extremes. I'm so excited that I figured out how to do this and if my shot turns out well, I think I'm going to add this in as a permanent part of my workflow!
Okay, now onto the drawings. From my drawn-over reference, I was able to lift all the appropriate poses for the run pretty easily and separate them into color coded keys, as you'll see in pages two and three. I pushed the poses a bit where I could, but looking at it now I know that I'm going to need to exaggerate them even more when I get into Maya. Something that I noticed while working on my last shot is that I had to speed my timing up quite a bit to get the weight to feel the same as in my reference. For whatever reason, the timing from live action doesn't directly translate into animation and if you lift the timing from your reference, things will usually feel too slow. I did some rough adjustments with the frame numbers I've timed out here on the first page.
That's all I've got for this week, darlings! I'm going to start blocking soon so that will be posted up in a few days. See you then!
