Class 4 Week 11 and 12!

Cant believe Class 4 has come to an end!! I think this was definitely the quickest term so far!

In week 11 we had to hand in our final polished dialogue shot and our week 12 tasks were only to have our final Q&A with Dana, fill in a short survey of our experiences this term and also submit our Progress Reel so far for backup on the site.

Below is my final pass at my dialogue shot, We are going to be adding proper facial animation to the shots in week 1-3 of Class 5, Im very happy with the outcome of the shot and how much I've learned about acting this term - although i've still got some body mechanics issues i need to iron out!

...and here is my Progress Reel for Class 1 - 4 so far!

Class 4 week 10!

This week we had a lecture on In-depth hand animation by Charles Alleneck - who is an animator at ILM (Industrial Light and Magic).

Our assignment for this week was to submit our shot adding more polish and hitting the notes we received in our ecrits last week. There's only 1 week left, so this will be the last time I get feedback on it before final submission!

 My main notes from Dana were to polish up the eye movements to make the character feel more focused and also to add more interesting hand movements in the transitions between poses. We also had to submit a single hand pose showing 'surprise', Check it out below! (I also added the hand poses I forgot to add the last couple of weeks showing anger and relaxed moods)

Surprised!

Relaxed

Angry

Class 4 - Week 9 recap

Week 9! this is currently where I am at until I work on the shot tomorrow for week 10 submission...

I have refined the shot even more adding more offsetting of the limbs as my mentor felt the overall feel was still too 'pose to pose' and didn't feel fluid enough, I also tried to correct the eyes a bit more, added more overlap to the hands and tried to make the bug slap read a bit more, I still have more to refine as I have feedback from this submission too but will be updating again on sunday!

Class 4 - Week 8 recap

Here is my blocking plus pass, basically adding more detail and breakdowns to the shot:

Class 4 - Week 7 recap

This week we had to submit our first blocking pass of our chosen dialogue shot, My mentor Dana taught us a new method of doing blocking in Spline mode (smooth curves) using the 'copied pairs' technique rather than using stepped keys. I loved using this technique as I still had the holds but could also see transitions between movements and get a better feel for the timing and rhythm of the shot.

Here is my first blocking pass:

Class 4 - Week 6 recap

This week we had to submit 3 choices for our next shot - Our first dialogue shot!

Here are my 3 dialogue choices and planning for each:

Class 4 - Introduction to acting! Weeks 1-5

Class 4! this is where it starts to get tricky :)

For this class my mentor is Dana Boadway - She is currently a freelance animator and has worked on a range of different types of animation such as Video game cinematic for Bungie on Halo 3 , animated disney feature 'The Wild' , advertising whilst working at Framestore CFC new york and also various TV shows.

here is a link to her showreel! - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evHDxC0VEFU&fmt=18

In this class we are learning how to take all the body mechanics work we have learned in the last 3 classes and combine it with creating an acting performance.

Our first shot had to be a pantomime shot (no dialogue) which showed a contrast in emotion, I decided to do a shot based on a character receiving bad news to show the change in emotion. We had 5 weeks to work on this here is my planning as well as the final version!

Class 3 Summary!

In Class 3 "Advanced Body Mechanics" I had Jay Davis as my mentor once again, which was great as he gives really good in depth feedback and also is a great laugh!

For this Class we had to choose 3 body mechanics shots - I chose to do an 'Anim-jam' as they called it which was 3 shots linked by a similar theme. The theme I chose was Tomb Raider and I created my own version of Lara Croft using 'Stewie'! - Stewie Croft as I called her... :)

I chose this theme as I thought it could encompass a good range of different body mechanics actions. I chose a lifting shot, an acrobatic shot and also... an underwater shot to try something a little different!

Class 2 Summary!

I can't believe I haven't updated for so long , shame on me!

Im currently now in Class 4, but will quickly update on the stuff i have missed out!

Here is my final progress reel from class 2 with mentor Jay Davis, the 3 shots I animated this class were a basic walk down stairs exercise with the 'Ballie' model which consist of just a ball with two legs, a 'Parkour' or free running inspired shot using a version of 'Stewie' with no arms and my final shot I chose to do a dance shot to the song 'Groove is in the heart' by Deee Lite - This time i got to use the full version of 'Stewie' with arms as well!

CLASS 2 week 3

I am currently at the end of week 3 as i'm writing this :)

Our lecture was hosted by Bobby Beck (CEO of animation mentor) and was an in-depth look at hips and the importance they play in animating a successful shot.

Our assignment this week was to tweak our blocking pass using Jays feedback and submit a Re-block, which Jay wanted in Linear keys. My current attempt (as of writing) is below :) i have tweaked it a few times using the great feedback from my fellow students and classmates, I'm pretty happy with it so far and think I have executed most things quite well - see what you think :)

CLASS 2 week 2

This week our lecture was a walkthrough of Blocking to Final by Dimos Vrysella's

Our assignment this week was to submit our initial blocking pass in stepped keys to show our key poses, breakdowns and timing. We also had feedback from our mentor on our progress reel and our planning and video reference - luckily Jay seemed to like my reference and planning! but advised I simplify the sequence and concentrate on the last few steps as it would be enough work to achieve this to a high standard.

Here is my blocking pass :)

CLASS 2 week 1

I'm late updating this as usual! - am currently in week 3 of class 2 but here is a recap of week 1!

Class 2 is called Psychology of Body Mechanics and focuses on body movements in more detail. My Mentor for this class is Jay Davis who worked as an artist/animator at Disney for over 12 years on 2D and 3D productions, after that he moved to London and was a supervising animator on 'Hellboy II' - supervising the animation of the 'Golden Army' sequence. He is currently a full time painter - you can see his work here - www.jayndavis.com

In the first week I was introduced to my class in our first Q&A, I was happy to see some familiar faces from my previous class and also a couple of people from the Maya springboard workshop (Which i can't believe was over 6 months ago!) as well as a few new ones.

Our assignments this week were to choose a shot from a pick list of 10 ideas that we will be working on for the next 4 weeks, then to upload some video reference and planning for it. We also had to upload our progress reel from class one to give our mentor an idea of what stage we were currently at.

Here is my planning from week 1! - I chose to do a shot of a character walking down some stairs: