daniel-lim.co.uk » Class 3

Class 3 Progress Reel

Daniel Lim — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 17:33:36 +0000

So here we are ladies and germs! We’re at the end of Class 3 – Advanced Body Mechanics. It’s been a great class, despite numerous external factors hampering my ability to dedicate proper time to my assignments in recent weeks. So without prattling on too much longer, here’s what 3 months of hard AM work has bestowed upon me:

As I said, it’s been a great class and seems to be a welcome addition to the AM syllabus. Although I don’t feel like I’ve actually learned anything “new” as such (I think the lectures are still in need of reshuffling/revamping), this term has been awesome for really solidifying the concepts of body mechanics from Class 2 and indeed the fundamental principles we learned Class 1.

What’s more, Bryan has been a superb mentor to me this term. I was in a bit of a weird place after Class 2 (I think it was that tap dance that nearly finished me off!) and it carried over into Class 3 as well. I was under a lot of pressure from various quarters and things were pretty bleak for a while. Thankfully I had Bryan to pick me up each week during the Q&As and the critiques.

It’s definitely the most open I’ve been during Q&As; it’s quite weird when you’re venting in front of people you barely know, but it was incredibly cathartic and I felt a lot better for it. Just as well Bryan is a pro at keeping you motivated! At no point did he ever tell me to just “man up” or anything like that. Always understanding, always encouraging. It was just what I needed so thanks a lot Bryan, you’re awesome!

Bring on Acting in Class 4 (right after I’ve had my week off! :P)!

Class 3 Week 12

Daniel Lim — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:51:02 +0000

Spliced the best chunks from week 10 and week 11′s assignments and I’m pretty happy with the results, especially compared to last week’s work when taken in isolation!

And that’s it for this term! Progress Reel to follow shortly!

Class 3 Week 11

Daniel Lim — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:37:54 +0000

OK, so Bryan asked for more contrasted spacing… and I took it a bit too far. I tried to make the spacing on the legs more extreme, but I lost some of the timing. In fact, I went back a calmed it down a little bit at the start of the bicycling section because I thought I’d lost some of the nice overlap between the different motions of the leg.

Overall, not massively happy with this effort, but that’s what you get when you can only really spend a day or so working on your assignment! 8) I think I’ll have to chop bits of this and the previous week’s assignment together to get the best bits for my Progress Reel!

Class 3 Week 10

Daniel Lim — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 13:46:18 +0000

This week has been absolutely brutal. Only really had (maybe) two days to work on this since my last critique, so my weekend was very stressful shall we say! I therefore do not recommend trying to move house, polish an AM assignment AND have a major work deadline all in the same week – It’s not healthy!

Class 3 Week 9

Daniel Lim — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:34:28 +0000

Rather than spline out my shot this week, I concentrated on adding loads of keys and inbetweens to really nail down what’s happening. That’s the first version! Since there is so much data now, I thought I’d literally just hit the ‘spline’ button on all the curves and see what happens! That’s the second version. I think it’s working OK, despite a few instances of gimbal and a dodgy FK/IK switch that I’ll sort out next week.

Thanks to Karl for the suggestion to raise Stewie up at the end to really emphasise the exhaustive collapse. Great idea!

Class 3 Week 8

Daniel Lim — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 13:29:59 +0000

Here’s my hand-in for this week’s assignment! Pretty happy with it overall. Took out two of the swings so I could get some more rest time at the end and try to show Stewie’s relief at not falling off the building and dying ;)

I eagerly await my critique! In the mean time, comments, questions or suggestions are always welcome!

Class 3 Week 7

Daniel Lim — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:20:43 +0000

Polish pass for my latest shot. Still a few things that could be better – the swinging at the end was incredibly difficult to achieve good results because I didn’t do an IK switch on the spine and an FK switch on the legs.

Now it’s time to do the final shot for the term! Luckily I managed to find some footage of a strange man caught hanging around a children’s playground!

Here are the planning sketches for the next assignment. Stewie attempts to correct his bad jump by making sure he doesn’t fall to his death!

Really pleased with how these turned out actually. For the record, they’re done with REAL pencils on REAL paper! Amazing!

Class 3 Week 6

Daniel Lim — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 12:54:20 +0000

I didn’t feel there was quite enough information in last week’s block, so I went back in and added some more to really nail down what’s going on. No Maya, you will not have control over my splines! This was the point I was at before I went into splining the animation:

And here’s the first run at splining the shot:

Class 3 Week 5

Daniel Lim — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 12:50:16 +0000

The blocking pass for my rooftop vault and jump animation:

Class 3 Week 4

Daniel Lim — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:44:00 +0000

The polish pass on my previous shot:

Video reference compiled from various sources to describe the next sequence I’m working on:

The main actions from my new shot: the vault over some piping/AC unit and the leap across to an adjacent building:

The jump section of the animation broken down into key poses:

The last few key poses from the sequence: