Got my critique through yesterday morning. It was another good one, but once again I’m terribly concerned about how little time (and how much there is to do) before Sunday’s deadline. On top of that, I’m coming down with a cold and that certainly isn’t going to help proceedings! Here were Michelle’s main points on my work from last week:

• Tip the ankle of the SL leg to improve the line of action (FRM15).
• Do something with the SR arm. The hand pose is ugly (FRM24).
• Tip forwards more during the look. See if you can push the weight forwards a little more (FRM45).
• Remove the SR leg step. Keep it back and then slide it round the tree to catch up with the rest of the body (FRM85).
• When grabbing the apple, make sure we see the hand near the apple before it grabs. Also have Stewie look at the apple before he goes to grab it.
• To convey the physical act of grabbing the apple: Once the hand is on the apple do a slight anticipation up, a quick jerk down, stop and then continue the motion into the ‘looking’ phrase. Maybe add a slight twist to the hand motion as well.
• Watch the positioning of Stewie during the squeamish section; at the moment he’s too aligned with the edge of the tree and it’s visually distracting.
• Add around another 8 frames of squeamish action.
• For the squeamish quivers, add loads of keyframes (on 1s and 2s). Small movements at a high frequency.
• The exit poses need more work; at the moment they’re too upright. The spine and legs are currently a bit boring (~FRM207).
• Make the tilt forward even more extreme (~FRM210).
• In general, try and have a bit more fun with the end section. Play with it a little more and get a bit more energy into it. It’s too literal at the moment; look to the earlier sections of the animation for inspiration!

So there you have it! Plenty of stuff to sort out and not many days to do it. Oh well! Here we go…!

Here’s my Blocking Plus assignment! It’s been a tough week. Didn’t get quite as much time to work on my shot as I’d have liked, so I didn’t try splining it. That said, I tend to prefer to have everything really nailed down with plenty of keys before I move onto spline anyway.

I tried to cover all the notes from the great critique last week. The one main I couldn’t manage was the increased time during the squeamish “Oooo” section near the end. I didn’t have enough time (that’s two weeks in a row now where I’ve not had my critique until Wednesday) and I’m also concerned about making my shot too long because of all the fiddly refining I’m going to have to do over the next few weeks.

Also, I’ve set up the apple constraints and blocked in the animation. The worm is built, rigged and working but I’m going to block the movement in next week once the apple animation is ready.

Here are a few additional notes that I want to address this week:

• I’m having trouble conveying the physicality of actually picking the apple. It would be nice to get a small tug in there, like he’s actually plucked the apple from the tree. I’m thinking it might be easier to switch to IK for that part.
• I’ve been trying to work out what to do with the screen-right (SR) foot during the sliding section (around FRM95-110) and most of the things I’ve tried to do with the leg have just resulted in knee pops! I think it’s working OK for now but I feel like I need a more elegant solution.
• Finally, I’m wondering if I should I start putting in the squeamish “quivers” in the arms and hands this week or if that’s more a polishing task? Hopefully Michelle will address that when my critique lands.

Has anyone got a good method for doing shakes or is it just put in lots of keys and jiggle them about in the graph editor? Haven’t really done that before!

Have a great week everyone!