Archive for March, 2009

Class 2 – Psychology of Body Mechanics: BEGIN!

Monday, March 30th, 2009

Well, they say there’s no rest for the Wicked and they’re right! With only 2 days off after that absolutely exhausting first term, we’re already starting Class 2 – Psychology of Body Mechanics! Argh! I need sleep! I’ll also get round to posting my Progress Reel (all my work) from Class 1… soon.

Anyway, about the class – this should be a pretty exciting one! We’re finally moving on to some more complex body mechanics exercises, looking at movement, weight, balance etc. whilst solidifying all the foundation principles we were taught last term.

From the curriculum page on the AM website:

Body mechanics is the place where most animators “go wrong.” If an animation does not have convincing mechanics, it does not look right even to the average untrained eye. For this reason, we spend two quarters on this important concept as once body mechanics is mastered, students have the confidence they need to tackle almost any situation their character gets into.

Students will focus on exercises with a simple character, which allows them to focus exclusively on the core concepts of body mechanics thus creating physical movements that are believable. Focusing on a simple character for these concepts will allow our students to make mistakes quicker and recover from them much faster. This allows them to soak up the concepts where they will be able to apply them more confidently next quarter to more complex characters.

Sounds exciting, right? Yeah! I know! Once again for this class, I’ve got Shaun Freeman as my mentor. This is great news as Shaun was a big, big help last term and I’m really looking forward to working with him again. The Q&As are fun and interesting and he’s always got great tips and advice in his eCritiques! Also, the Q&A times are ideal as I don’t have to get up at 4am to chat to people all over the world :)

LET’S DO THIS THING!

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Reboot

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

Hello all! Here we go again. I’ve forgotten how many iterations of this site have come and gone since it started, but “all this has happened before and will happen again” as they say on BSG. The past 12 weeks have been incredibly busy for me as I’ve started Animation Mentor and I’ve been meaning to sort this place out that whole time so you can check out the work I’m doing. Hopefully I’ll be dedicated enough to actually update it at least every week!

So as I come to the end of a very successful, if tough, first term, I’d like to share with you all the stuff I’ve done. I think I’m going to backdate the posts, so apologies if things appear wrong or out of sync! Just leave a comment or send me an email. Please bear with me as I have to collate and post 12 weeks worth of stuff!

Oh and don’t worry about the generic theme – I’ll be sorting out all the graphics and visual niceties as and when I can!

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Class 1 Weeks 10 & 11

Sunday, March 15th, 2009

Ok, so with the (boring) standard, vanilla walk outta the way, it’s time to add some character! Another 2 week assignment, again the first week was video reference, planning and blocking and the second week obviously the final polish. The planning looked like this:

Which was based of this video reference I shot in the motion reference area at work (super-useful!):

Here’s the block:

And here’s the final animation:

Really happy with this bad boy. I think I really got the character across and I’m particularly pleased with how I managed to capture kicking of the front leg before it comes down to contact the floor. A great end to a great class I think! Woo!

Week 10′s character pose was ‘exhaustion’ and here are the sketches I did:

And the pose with Stu:

Fairly happy with this one. Shaun thought the ehad could probably be tilted back even further and he’s right but Stu’s head is so incredibly massive, it makes it a rather tough proposition! Still, on a technical level I think it works and I’m pleased with the solution I came up with for that screen-right arm – his hand wouldn’t have comfortably reached the floor if I’d put it down on the other side of his body.

Week 11′s pose was ‘balance’. Here are the sketches, some of which I re-used from the ‘physical strength‘ week:

And the final pose of the class:

Not my greatest pose, although I was focussing all my energy into the character walk. Still, I think it works. Shaun said there wasn’t anything wrong with it as such but it was a little bit flat, which I’d agree with. It’s lacking a little punch. Shifting the camera round a little bit to the left might have provided a slightly better overall shape, although I was worried about losing the negative space between the sreen-right arm and the head.

And that’s it! The end of Class 1 – Basic Foundation! Huzzah! Really pleased with my overall performance this term. OK, so it wasn’t all brand-new to me but it definitely helped cement and clarify everything we covered – I didn’t really get any proper animation training at Bournemouth so anything I did know was what I’d taught myself! For someone to spell it out and really be clear about all aspects of the art was incredibly refreshing and exciting to be a part of! Can’t wait for Class 2 – Psychology of Body Mechanics, it’s going to be awesome!

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Class 1 Weeks 8 & 9

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Ok, finally onto character animation! Woo! To start with, a very basic (or “vanilla”) walk spread over 2 weeks. No character, no excitement, no cartooniness, just a walk from the side view. Still, not an easy task. Here is my planning for the exercise:

So far, so good. Here’s the blocking pass:

And the final animation:

Reasonably happy with it. There are a few hitches and glitches in the movement that need cleaning up a bit, but it is a vanilla walk! Week 8′s pose assignment was “physical strength”. Let’s take a look at the sketches:

And the chosen pose on Stu:

I was really happy with this final pose. I think it’s really strong (if you’ll forgive the pun). I also like the fact that it’s not your typical ‘strength’ pose i.e. not pushing a piano up some stairs or lifting a heavy box or doing weightlifting – something different!

Week 9′s pose was “concern”. Here are the sketches:

And the final pose on Stu:

Reasonably happy with this pose. Shaun said that technically-speaking, it was excellent but it was conveying more a sadness rather than concern (although he did provide the caveat that sadness is often a product of concern).

So a good week in all!

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