Class 3: Weeks 1-3

Guh....where's the time gone?!

Been busy as HEEEY-YELL with actual 9-5 work, on top of school, so I haven't posted anything lately. I know, I know. *shame*

At any rate, I've thrown up my most recent blocking + pass for the current sequence I'm working on. It's basically a third of a complete shot that we were responsible for working up, storyboarding and animating over the course of this 12 week term.




And here are the planning sketches for the whole sequence:

Fin: Class 2

Meant to throw this up here earlier, but have been taking it easy the last few days. That last 12 weeks flew past, but they were brutal from a "amount of work" standpoint, what with school/real job/freelance.

Was a great term though. Lots of cool takeaways and inspiration from both mentor and fellow student alike. Kick ass.

At any rate, here's my progress reel from AM Class 2. Still a long way to go, but I think I'm on the right track:

Overlap test

Get Yer Knees Flexin' and Yer Arms T-Rexxin'

Do da creep!



What I've discovered this week: Dances are HARD.

Week 7: Shot Comparison

Wrasslin' with the knees/legs here as I finish up polishing this assignment.


Straight legs on the extremes:



Less straight legs on the extremes:

Wind Walkin': More Timing Tests

So, I tweaked out a bunch of stuff based off of my mentor's notes here, and I've thrown up two options for timing on the initial reaction/resistance when the door blows open and knocks Stew off balance(around f16-f30 in both shots). Thoughts, as always, are welcome:

A...



B...



I think B "feels" better, but I'm open to hearing arguments otherwise. :)

Heel Click Final Pass and Pressing Forward

So, I figured I'd hit Dimos' notes from his "final critique" for this assignment then throw up my final pass of this thing here for posterity:




Moving onto assignment 5 with the blocking of this little number:




I should probably see what he thinks of it this afternoon. This one was a bit more challenging than I anticipated, or rather different parts of the shot were more challenging than I thought they would be while other parts were more straightforward than I expected. Go figure.

Re-timing tests

Tweaking(probably OVER tweaking) the timing of the heel click itself(around f55).


A:



B:



C:




Original Timing:

Clicks McClickinghan

That's right.  He's Scotish. ;)

Just throwing up my re-block of this heel click shot here, with Dimos' notes addressed/a few other massages and tweaks...

Re-block:



And here's the first dirty(nothing adjusted at all) spline blast....

Spline:

Still Clickin'

Throwing the newest revision of my advanced blocking up here for posterity:



Still wondering if I need to hold a few of the poses there for a frame or so longer. I think I may need a breakdown or two in there as well, but think it's going to negatively effect the timing I've got rolling here(which I'm warming to. Hmmm....decisions, decisions....).

Timing tests

A:



B:

Class 2 - Week 2: Blocking for Heel Click Shot

So, for the next couple weeks our task will be to take the reference we shot and planning sketches we came up with and realize that in a short animation with the Ballie character.

For this week's assignment, we were to get our basic idea fully blocked out for approval.  Here's what I came up with:




This was a interesting exercise, in that Dimos(our mentor) has challenged us to try and completely think about our animations this term as nothing more than a sequence of drawings(in this case, "poses", but it amounts to the same thing), and treat animating in CG more as you would if you were animating traditionally with pen and paper.  Along those lines, he advised that at this stage of the process worrying about how curves look in the graph editor is pretty much a complete waste of time...a departure from just about any other training I've ever received("I animate characters, not spaghetti" is how I believed he expressed it.)  This kind of struck home about halfway through my blocking, as I realized I was busting this stuff out waaaaaay faster than I normally had been. 

To this point, and that includes going back to my original training in 3D, it has been pretty much hammered home that clean curves in the GE are paramount...and keeping them clean from the earliest stages is "the preferred method."   So, after getting initial poses I would spend a great deal of time adjusting tangents even in the earliest of stages.  I can understand why one would think this way, and totally understand why one would want to use that method, but after doing it this way for even just a couple weeks......I'm pretty much sold.  Yes, I get that I will still be in the graph editor cleaning up stuff later.  Yeah, I understand that maintaining control of the tangents is paramount in some instances, but for getting down good looking blocking that will allow me to quickly begin adjusting timing/spacing,  using this method(treating the 3D poses as 2D drawings) just seems to blow my old method completely out of the water. 

It also dovetails nicely with another suggestion that Dimos has made a few times already this term: If you feel that you need another pose to control timing/spacing/whatever.....just create another pose and adjust the timing/spacing/whatever already!  If that means you're dropping poses on ones, then so be it.....yet another thing that was anathema, in my experience, so far.   "Economy of keys" has been pounded into my brain for so long, particularly when working on games, it's going to take some work to stop worrying about that. :)

As with all things, I'm sure there are instances where this method won't be as optimal.....but I'd be willing to wager they're few and far between.  To be able to do something that took me a day, or more, before and be able to get it to the same level of completion in hours is pretty awesome.  Hard to argue against something that makes you more efficient without losing any quality(and in most cases is improving it).

AM Class 2: The "Dimos on 3" World Tour

So, we ramped up into "Class 2: Intro To Body Mechanics" this evening and I got to meet all my new(and a few old) classmates, as well as our mentor for this go-round, Dimos Vrysellas.

At first blush, this really seems like it should be a kick-ass term.  I think I may have a complete, platonic man-crush on Dimos already. :)  He's been doing this a good while, has a background in traditional animation as well(which I dearly love.  Miyazaki FTW!), really comes off that he knows his stuff, but also totally seems to understand that even if you're an avowed workaholic(guilty) you can't take yourself  TOO seriously or you're likely to go ape shat.  In other words, he "gets it"(in my opinion, anyway).  I dig that.  He's reputed to be a "harsher critic/grader"(he, however, insists that "harsh" should be replaced with "honest"), but I sort of welcome that.  Can't get better if you aren't pushed/held to a higher standard, etc.
 
This crop of co-students seems to have a nice range of folks with some prior/current experience in CG and a few with next to none.  I tend to prefer a mix like that.  I get to learn things I may not have known from the fellow "industry experienced" folks, while at the same time get to pickup on some of the more basic fundamentals that I may have been taking for granted since the less experienced individuals will be more likely to ask for those things to be explained in greater detail.

Even more stoked to get this ramped up this term after this evening.

Bring it!!

AM Class 1: That's a Wrap!

So, I managed to muscle through the last couple weeks(so. friggin'. busy!) and we're at the completion of the first term.  It's been awesome, but I'm certainly stoked to ramp up into the more advanced work in Class 2 and beyond.

Got to meet a bunch of cool folks, got some excellent input from our mentor(thanks again for everything, Scott) and really got "re-inspired to make this happen" pretty much every week.  Thanks to everyone for all the help/commiseration/criticism/encouragement. It was always truly appreciated.

For posterity's sake, here's my progress reel for perusal if you're feelin' that way:

Fair and Balanced

Rolling into the home stretch here for Class 1 with AM. This, for all intents and purposes, will be our final week of assignments. On the docket this go round will be a refinement of last week's character walk, as a perspective shot, and our final pose with the Stu rig.

I've decided to jump on the pose early and get it out of the way prior to descending into character walk splining/polishing/etc. Here are my initial sketches:

I'm feeling #'s 8 and 9 the strongest.  Thinking #8 is going to be the winner.

A vs. B?

Trying a couple different sequences here for my personality walk. Undecided on which one I think "feels" best:

A


B


Thoughts?

Mr. Personality.....Walk

Okay, I went back to the planning phase on this(a bit) and tried giving the ol' ball w/legs more of a "motivation" instead of having him just immediately marching across the screen:

I've also thrown together an initial shot for the pose assignment due this week, in which we were to have our biped emote "exhaustion."  Here's that first pass as well:

More Silly Walks

Second pass, adding in more steps/refining the poses a bit:

Ministry of Ballie Walks

And we're off!

So, here we sit in Week 10, out of 12, in the first block of AM.  This is flying by.  Gah.

This week's go-round builds upon the last few week's "vanilla walk cycle" and entails creating a "walk cycle with character."  A walk with character, you say?  Well, if you insist.....

:)

I've soooo been intending to give this a shot since I saw this assignment on the syllabus in Week One.  Here's my initial planning doc:

I'll be diving into blocking this bad boy out later today.  This should be fun.


And here's the aforementioned first "dirty pass" at blocking(the timing still needs serious work. I'm just getting down poses at this point):

Tests

I think the tumblers may have finally fallen into place

At least I HOPE they have**crossing fingers**

This @#$#*^& overlapping pendulum has been kicking my ass for damn near two weeks.  I've been "close" on it the entire time, but just couldn't get my head wrapped around what was wrong with it.

After re-watching(and re-watching....and re-watching) the Lango tutorials/lecture, and getting some fresh input from Leigh Rens(one of the mentors at AM), I THINK it has sunk in...or at least it's a lot closer to where it needs to be than it was.  And, as usual, it was the simplest solution that worked the best: Force the shapes with as few keys as possible, worry about what it looks like on screen instead of how it looks in the graph editor.  When in doubt in regards to weight/inertia, make the end of the chain reach back towards its position in the previous frame.

"Ye Olde Way":

"Ye Newe Way":

In the newest revision I also applied the "keyframe shift" gimmick.   It still looked pretty good without it, but when I shifted the keys ahead for each joint in the chain, the effect was pretty noticeable and really added a lot.  I can see why in certain situations you wouldn't prolly want to go that route(it really does make editing afterward a real chore), but I like the result even more with it here.

"They rally roun' tha family....wit' a pocket full of shells"

"Balls on parade! Uhh! Yeah!  Come wit' it now!!!" 

:)

Okay, so now that that's out of the way we're on to week 8 and a generic Ballie walk. Yay!  Inching closer and closer to that full character. 

Here's my initial planning sketches for ballie:

 

And here's the first pass of basic key/passing/breakdown poses:

**Insert crazy Morello/scratch solo here**

Oh, brain....you wacky funster, you.

So, Week 7 was starting off on a fantastic note.  I burnt an entire day yesterday working on revisions from Week 6.....that are completely optional and don't retroactively effect grades in any way.  For whatever reason, my gray matter decided not only MUST I complete those revisions, but they MUST be done prior to starting this week's round of work....

:-\

Yeah, so, that was pretty stupid, Brain.  I'm afraid I need you to turn in your keys.  *holds out hand*  Awesome, you can go sit in the back now.  Everybody out for new management!


So, now that I have that under control, here's my initial planning and uber-dirty blocking for this week's assignment with the Tailor rig.  More overlapping action goodness, coupled with all the other fundamentals we've been covering so far with the bouncing ball.  Boss(that's right, I said "boss."  I'm bringin' it back).

Planning:

Dirty Blocking Pass:

BBVD would be proud...

...cuz of how much swing I was able to generate this week. (Yeah. I know. They can't all be gems.)

So, week 6 is a wrap. This week's assigment covered nailing down the physics and timing of the successive breaking of joints on a rudimentary pendulum object. My final version for submission is as follows:

This was actually sort of a pain in the ass. :) It's one of those things that you figure you've seen about a million times, so you should absolutely know what it looks like and how it reacts. And that all makes sense....until you actually try and figure out how the damn pendulum should actually react.

@$#* you, Isaac, and your "Newtonian Laws"! Jerk!!

Squastacle Course: Part II

After thinking it over, I decided to do something a little more involved with this. Figure it'll give me more opportunity to play with squash/stretch.

Planning doc:

First dirty pass:

As always, comments are welcome.

Week 5....wait, what? Week 5? Already?!?

Indeed.  Week 5 is upon us.  This term is really flying past.

At any rate, just chucking initial planning sketches up here for this go 'round.  Two assignments this week include animating a ball through an obstacle course, using anticipation/squash and stretch, and another pose with everyone's favorite melon head, Stu, with this week's emotion to depict being "devastation."

Here're the sketches so far.  Rip 'em up/share your thoughts if you're feelin' so inclined:

And here's the initial blocking for the ball animation:

Dueling Spheres: Fin

I think I'm calling this one done for the week.  Here's the final rendition, after much tangent tweaking to get the rotations/drop rates to look more realistic:

(Incidentally, those physics classes from 18-19 years ago actually came in handy, after I finally forced my brain get out of the way of fighting Galileo's case studies. :) )

I feel pretty okay with it.  Still a few minor things I'm convinced I could noodle to death to get looking "better", but in the grand scheme I'm not sure anyone would even notice them.

Beach vs. Billiard--

Just chucking up my initial blocking/tweaks for this week's assignment. Input is always appreciated if you are so inclined.

Planning:

First pass:

Rio = Win!

So, my bride and I just got back from catching "Rio" this evening. Really, really enjoyed it. Story wasn't exactly groundbreaking or fantastical, but the animation WAS.

All the "arial dance sequences" were excellent and among my favorite shots. So much going on, but it was so fluid and meshed so well with the music. Favorite sequence though? Easily "Bird vs. Monkey!!" Hell, all the squirrel monkey stuff was great, actually.

Looking forward to finding out what shots my mentor at AM,(Scott Lemmer), had a hand in on Tuesday.


(Full disclosure: I'm pulling for "It was the monkey stuff", Scott. Cuz monkeys rock. :) )

Quick Render Test

Probably getting way too fiddly here, but I've tweaked out a handful of poses in an attempt to get rid of the "twinning" feel of Stu's arms in this before I submit it as final(don't want to keep noodling this to death, no matter how fun it may be. :))

Any input is appreciated.

Stu-sain Bolt

Throwing up the first pass I took at this week's posing assignment.  We were to sketch a bunch of different poses that would evoke the feeling of "excitement."  I chose to take a swing at the one that I used a photo of Usain Bolt crossing a finish line as reference.

What say ye?  Swing and a miss?  Solid single?  Ground rule double, maybe? :)

Second Planning Attempt

So, I wasn't digging my initial attempt with the wall collision much and after discussing it a bit with our mentor, I thought perhaps I should "go back to basics" and eliminate the wall thing altogether at first.  Lock it down without it first, then toy with that afterward if there's time.

At any rate, here's the thumbs for this one:

And here's the initial blocking:

I'm thinking my "hang time" may be a little too long on most of those bounces, particularly the first and second one....but I've been staring at this too long and it could just be my eye.  Would love to hear what others think if you feel so inclined.

We Gots Ta Bounce

So, I figured I'd chuck up my initial scribbles/animation pass of the second portion of my assignment for Week 3 here.  We're required to animate a simple ball bounce(basketball weight), and provide the requisite thumbs to sorta outline what we were envisioning prior to diving into Maya.

Here's the quickie thumbnail:

And here's the first pass at the animation:

Rollin' on to Week Three

So, in this episode we'll be animating a simple ball bounce as phase one of our assignment.  Phase 2 is another sketch element which we'll be using as reference for the next bipedal pose we're required to do with Stu.

In the same vein as Week 2, I've chucked a couple pages of sketches up here that I'm contemplating using.  The poses we choose are supposed to invoke "excitement."  Tried not to fall into the trap of using cliches....which at first I failed at.  That was pretty much my entire first page of sketches that I didn't bother posting here. :)

At any rate, I'd love to hear any feedback that anyone would like to give about the sketches in general, or other ideas that I may be overlooking to get a more "non-traditional" representation of excitement.  I think I have a few of those, but maybe not.   Anyway, here're the sketches:

Messin' Around For Practice

Figured I'd play around with a second pose from my crop of sketches this evening, just for fun.  I went with this one:

Here's the initial pass:

Komments, kondemnations or kudos(see what I did there?!), as always, are appreciated.

"Whatchoo doin', Stu? Waitin' for a bus?!"

I think this may be my last "twiddle" with this pose. I'm happy enough with how that left arm looks now, and I think overall it holds up better as a silhouette than the previous iterations. Plus, if I spend much more time staring at this one pose I'm either going to:

1. F- it up all to hell, or...
2. Break things. :)

I'm starting to get the feel for this rig though, so I'm excited to try another pose or two as I head into the weekend.

Thanks for all the criticism/help to those that criticized/helped. Appreciate it.

Crack That WIP

Tried adding more exaggeration to the curve of the spine and a more relaxed, "just hanging there" look to the left arm.

More WIP-iness

Still tweaking the left arm and a bit of the spine.

This one ain't bad, I guess. I posed this way myself and it didn't feel "unnatural", which was my concern.

This one felt more natural(supposed to have his thumb hooked in his non-existent pocket), but I don't think it reads as nicely as the other one.

Week 2 WIP: Reloaded

Did some more twiddling here, and eliminated the props.

Trying to work that left arm and left leg a bit.  General consensus from input I've received is that the dangling arm didn't read well(I agree).  A few folks commented that the leg needed to look straighter too, since it's what's driving the character's back into the post he was leaning on.

I may need to make the arc in his torso a little more pronounced, from left to right too.

Week 2 Pose WIP

So, I decided to go with the sketch of the guy leaning against a column at the airport for my first foray here. Here's the first pass:

Thoughts are welcome.

Descent Into Week 2: Sketch-o-potamus

So, given that I knew we'd be needing to dive into gesture type stuff pretty quickly in this term, I've been carting around my sketchbook the past few weeks just in case I saw anything interesting.  Figured I'd go ahead and throw up the better stuff I was able to tweak out.

First couple samples are from the past weekend at the beach.  It's been forever since I've done any gesture drawings of this type and I realized quickly that my speed has semi-deserted me. :)  I was hoping for more action-y type stuff, as it was a beautiful day and not very hot, but everyone was content to loung/stroll it seemed.  Didn't get much of anything dynamic, and what little I did get I had to capture in just a few seconds and then tweak out from memory afterwards:

These next crop of thumbs were from a couple weeks ago at a few airports while my wife and I were traveling.  Most were more interesting looking than the beach stuff, but were also generally a lot of people doing similar things.  One plus about these was that I could typically get more sketch done before folks moved, since you're doing a lot of standing around waiting at the airport, so I was able to flesh these out a little more on the spot for each of these:

At any rate, that's where I'm at so far.  Haven't started playing with any actual posing in Maya yet, though I think a couple from this group could be interesting, but I'm hoping to hit the dog park tomorrow.  That's usually a decent place for people watching and I may get something I like a little better.

Time to throw it DOWN

 

Bring.  It! (How can you not throw it down after looking at that album cover?  Rope chains?  Track suits?  Awkward stacking?  It has everything except for the quirky Asian DJ on the wheels of steel in the background. *swoon*)


So, for all intents and purposes today is my first official date of being an accepted Student at Animation Mentor.  The past 12 weeks I've been going through some Maya training, also provided by AM, since it had been, quite literally, years since the last time I had even touched the Maya interface.  Figured it may be a good idea to brush up. :)

With that "Maya reload" out of the way now, I get to begin my journey into "Class 1: Basic Foundations" this evening with 13 other individuals under the supervision of Scott Lemmer.   Upon "e-stalking" Scott, I realized that he has possibly worked with a couple acquaintances of mine that I just may happen to have embarrassing stories about.  Methinkst this could be fun.  :)

Commence rocking in 3....2....

Who is that skinny fellow behind the curtain?

"No!!  Don't pull that back! I don't have my face on yet!!" 
 *puts arm over face Lugosi-style and hisses*

Greetings!  If you've found your way here you're probably either a fan of animation, a fellow animator or a friend who's feeling bad about my low traffic and decided to throw me a bone.  Regardless, welcome.

I decided to ramp up this blog to catalog my travails during the training that I'm currently going through at Animation Mentor.  I also figured it'd give me a place to evacuate my brain droppings on anything else in the creative vein I feel the urge to "wax poetic" about.   (I will try and keep it as PG-13 as possible.....but I'm not making any promises. You have been warned. :) )

A brief history of me:  I've been a 3D pro for about 8 years now, primarily for the gaming industry as a modeler and texture artist(I was a graphic designer for about 10 years prior to that).  I've done my fair share of animation as well, and some of its offshoots(rigging, etc.)   Here's a(somewhat dated) reel with some of my game stuff if you feel like perusing(or you can check out the full-sized version here):

If I'm being 100% honest though, I feel like I'm a "generalist."   That's what I was trained to be, even though my primary goal and reason for entering the industry was to become an animator.  What skills as an animator that I do posses have pretty much been self-taught or gleaned from the brainpans of  friends, supervisors, fellow employees, et al.

Which is pretty much the reason I decided to actually take the plunge back into full-time studies again.  I have not lost the focus of wanting to animate, and even though I technically wear an "animator" hat where I currently work I want to get better.  A lot better.   I feel that if I continue to try and piecemeal together my knowledge that I'm doing my career, and myself, a disservice.  I have ideas and stories in my head that I want to bring outside of it, but I'm honest enough to admit I can't do them justice quite yet.  So that's the goal:  Feature-quality animation skills so "justice can be served", so to speak.

Anyway, this has gone on long enough for Post #0001.  Thanks for shuffling past and I'll see you next time.  Mind the dip on your way out.