Overall Theme Reference for the term:

Video Reference:

Sketchbook Planning 1:

Sketchbook Planning 2:

Stewie’s Constume (based on Faith from Mirror’s Edge):

And here is a rather unfortunate blooper that occurred during my reference shoot:

How embarrassing! :(

Right, so here is my final wallflip animation:

It was well received by Shaun, the main thing to sort out being the slightly too extreme spacing on the body just before Stewie lands. Hopefully I’ll get time to fix that before I have to put my progress reel together at the end of the term.

So, new task!

Being an idiot, I thought I’d go “all out” for the final task of the term. I picked something quite challenging:

Yes, I know. I. am. an. idiot. Well, I’m guessing it will be fun and painful in equal measures! Like I said, I wanted to finish the term with a bang, so what better way to do that than by near killing myself with a near impossible animation!

Here’s the Flipbook planning – there are a ton of poses!

The blocking stage next week is going to take me a very long time!

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!

I went with the second plan – and here’s the final result!

Pretty happy with it, but there are a few areas that could be improved. I think I could probably tweak the path through the air and the hang time to infinity! Anyway, here are the ‘devastated’ sketches:

And the chosen pose using Stu:

Let’s start with the animation then! Here’s some all-important video reference footage I shot in the office:

Here’s the planning:

Unfortunately the truth is often stranger than fiction and having followed the reference too closely Shaun thought there were too many bounces for a football. So here’s the revised animation based on his critique:

Right, onto the ‘Excitement’ pose then. Here are the sketches:

And here’s the final pose I did for the hand in:

I think there are some revisions I can make to this pose, but overall: a good week!

Rather conveniently I had to drop Marie off at Stansted at some ungodly hour so I had the opportunity to sit in the arrivals hall and put pencil to sketchbook:

And here’s the revised version of pose 4 using Stu, one of the provided AM character rigs: