20 Min Sketches

I had to go to the open model session today to get some ref for my Life Drawing II assignment. Since the models in the long pose room are normally reclining I decided to go to the 20 min room instead. I needed a drawing of one of the models from behind and thus the long pose room wouldn't have provided me with that. Anyway, I hadn't been in the 20 min room since my first quarter at SCAD and am happy to say that I've improved quite a bit. Previously, there was no way I could get a whole figure onto the page in 20 min, but now that's changing. With more practice, I think I'll be able to make some nice and hopefully accurate line drawings from that room.

Anyway, my drawing teacher always says to do a few quick gesture drawings to warm up and that your first picture is always bad. In this case I am inclined to agree with him. I didn't do any gesture drawings before I drew this and as a result it's rather sucky. Oh well, it's not going to be turned in so its ok I guess. The second drawing sucks too. I need more practice at drawing people from behind. :( I like my last drawing much better. I only wish I had more time to develop it. The pose was really appealing and was rather unique since most of the models just sit in the "generic sitting pose".

Oh yeah, I also re-photographed my old lady drawing from yesterday.

20 Min drawing #1:


20 Min drawing #2:


20 Min drawing #3:


Clear Old Lady drawing from yesterday!:

Refining

I've decided to post what I have of my refining so far for my AM assignment. It's coming along nicely I guess. There are still quite a few things that need to be fixed, but I am trying to ignore them for now. I need to concentrate on animating the entire shot by Sunday since this is the last week for refining. I'll go back and fix errors during the polishing week.

Refining

Pictures!

Sorry for not posting recently, I've been pretty busy with my AM assignment. I need to finish refining it by Sunday, so you guys can probably expect to see an up-date soon. In the mean time, I figured I might as well post my Life II homework from last week and a silver point drawing I did today.

Hands Assignment:


Old Lady silverpoint:



WIP Layout for AM assignment:

Disney College

Disney College is finally offering an internship in feature animation! I'm definitely going to apply, even though its highly unlikely that I'll get in. There are plenty of crappy animators who will apply and they'll be easy to beat. But in the mix there are quite a few good ones who are sure to beat my tiny reel to a pulp. That's an extremely depressing thought which is made worse because its true. After sulking for a while, I decided what had to be done. The animation that I'm working on now is the only acting piece I have to put on my reel. Since I'm applying to a feature studio it will have to be outstanding. Simple as that. This single pantomime shot must be good enough to allow me to compete with the seniors and grad students that will be applying for the program. In addition to that, it must be finished early so I can go back and tweak everything else that will be on my reel. I've been watching that Disney College website for too long (this is the first time since I was in the 10th grade that they've offered an internship in feature animation) to simply let this opportunity pass by. I will work and rework my pantomime shot until it becomes feature quality worthy of Disney's attention! >:O

Up-dated Blocking

I got a suggestion from a classmate to start my animation with the gift already on the table to shorten the sequence. I thought it was a great idea and it worked in theory. Sadly, the end made up for the previous stuff that I had in the beginning. I've sent a note to my mentor asking for help so I should be alright.

New Blocking

Open Model Sessions

I went to the open model session today and made a new chest study. It was kinda weird since the model was my age. It felt like I had asked one of my friends to sit for me. I guess I'm used to drawing older people. This one guy seemed to be quite distracted by her. He kept walking around staring at her and when he left his page hardly had any marks on it. During breaks he'd go up and try to talk to her. I thought that was amusing. Anyway, here's my picture:

2d Blocking

I've worked on some blocking for my new AM assignment. I've decided to do it in 2d because I need to get faster and wont be able to if I am sitting at a computer. I also wanted a chance to use a character other than Stewie. Here's my blocking so far. Sadly it's too long, the frame limit is 250 and this is over 300. I'm trying to find out how to shorten it...

Blocking

I did a chest study today in Life II. I was unable to finish and have to make a new one at tomorrows open model session. I'm pleased with my progress though. I took Life Drawing I in the fall quarter and never would have been able to get this far with a drawing during class. I think the drawing looks cool too.

Revision

I had a few things to revise on my life drawing project. Here's the up-dated version:

Life Drawing II

Here's what I have so far for my first life drawing II project...

First Thumbnails of Class Three

I'm back and have brought some thumbnails with me as promised. I have a few questions about some of the poses/transitions from one to the other and have e-mailed Dimos about it. Once I get a response I'll be sure to make the appropriate changes. Enjoy!

Rough Storyboard

I've created a rough storyboard for my first AM assignment in class 3. We have to do a pantomime exercise showing a character going from one emotion to another. My animation will be about a spoiled kid who doesn't get what he wants for his birthday. Here are the boards, I plan to have the thumbnails finished sometime today.

Cow

I drew this cow thing today! Yay for drawing! I'm finally starting to draw more. I really want to draw people, but it frustrates me that I suck at it. I'll keep practicing though. Anyway, I might use this species of creature for my next animation project. It wont be him though, I don't like his face.

Alive

I still exist! I haven't posted anything because I don't have anything to post. I've been working on my life drawing project and haven't don't anything for AM yet. Sadly my life drawing project is over 18"x24" and way too large for my scanner. When its done I'll look for a way to get it onto the computer. I expect to start on my new AM assignment after I finish this entry. I'm very excited about the new quarter. I've got a dreamworks mentor this time, which is cool. He's worked on Spirit, Prince of Egypt, Sinbad, and The Road to El Dorado as well as the studios 3d features. I'm even more excited since I can talk to him about 2d as well as 3d.

I really want to do my assignments for this quarter in 2d. Drawing all last quarter for my SCAD assignments reminded me that I actually enjoy drawing rather than sitting at a computer. I also want to use some made up characters instead of Stewie. My only concern is my lack of speed when it comes to drawing. I've gotten faster, but I don't know if I'm fast enough. I wont improve if I don't practice though. We don't start animating for a week or two so I have till then to decide. I just got my Lion King dvd in the mail today and that really pushed me towards 2d. We'll see how things turn out.

In SCAD news, I've decided to take Life Drawing II instead of Animation II this quarter. It was very hard to do SCAD animation and AM at the same time. I don't feel like I did as good as I could have if I hadn't done them at the same time. Not to worry though, I'll be in Animation II when I return to SCAD next spring. In the mean time, I have the sudden desire to draw people. Last quarter my animation teacher stressed the importance of life drawing, so I guess that's where this urge came from. I've purchased two of Glenn Vilppu's books already and eagerly await his workshops on Friday. Once I have some decent drawings (on paper that'll fit in my scanner) I'll post some here.

An Up-date

I'm still working away on my baseball pitch. I figured you guys would like to see some progress, so here's what I have so far:

Pitch

It seems like the animation gets mushy as it progresses. I could really use some solid crits to get me back on track. My desire to play Elder Scrolls is still as great as ever (and the fact that I'm buying Kingdom Hearts 2 tomorrow certainly wont help), but re-watching reels from StrutYourReel has started to get me back into the swing of things.

I've been to all of my new SCAD classes and am unsure about how my quarter will be work-load wise. I want to do some 2d for AM, but I draw really slow (hopefully Life Drawing II will help me with that). It all depends on what my work-load is like. Digital Form, Space, and Lighting doesn't seem like it'll be a problem as long as I make progress on my assignments everyday. I'm a bit concerned about my 20th Century Art class. I was unable to get a copy of my textbook for that class today. Hopefully ExLibris will get some more of them before we get a reading assignment.

Alright, I'm rambling now, lol. I'm going to go read up on constructing the human head since my first Life II project is to do a portrait. I'll talk to you guys later.

Back to SCAD

Spring break is over way too quickly. I'm back at SCAD and will be receiving my assignments in a day or too. Meanwhile, I'm still working on my AM assignment. It's really hard since I've gotten Elder Scrolls IV and barely had any time to play during my break. I'm working on it day by day and hopefully it'll be presentable before the end of the week.

Layout Final

For my final project in Layout class we had to do a two panel pan layout. I chose to try a vertical one that takes place on a ship. After spending forever researching pirate and colonial ships, I was finally able to gather enough info to make these:



They actually line up properly, but my scanner cropped the images on all four sides. Sadly, my scanner wasn't built for 10.5"x12.5" paper, lol.

SCAD Final

I have finally finished my final project for animation I! It's 1300 frames and 55 second long, making it the longest piece I've ever done in my life. I have been sleep deprived all week because of this project but it was worth it. Sadly, I was unable to work on my AM assignment (or anything else for that matter). I will make up for it this week since SCAD ends on Tuesday. Alright, I don't have time to type a long entry, as I still have an animation layout final to do. Here's my animation final:

Animation 1 Final

New Blocking

My new assignment is to animate Stewie throwing a ball. I've decided to do a baseball pitch. Here's my blocking for this week.

Week 8 Blocking

Sorry for a very short post, I have a maquette that I'm trying to finish by tomorrow night. >_<

Finals Time

Sorry for the lack in up-dates. We have about two more weeks of school left at SCAD and it's finals time. Unlike most schools where you have a week of final exams, SCAD students have weeks of final projects. As a result of that, I probably wont be able to make another entry until after March 15th.

Emotional Sack

I've finished my emotional flour sack exercise for animation 1. Here's the situation: The sack enters and notices someone he knows in the audience. It turns out it's this girl he secretly likes. He waves to try to get her attention, but she doesn't see him. He waves more violently and she turns around mid-wave. He's like o.O and freezes in fear. The sack becomes very shy/uncomfortable, and makes a quick exit.

Requirements: Show at least two emotions with the flour sack without the use of props or layouts.

I'm semi-happy with it. I looked at it a few seconds ago and thought that he holds for a tad too long in the beginning. If I had more time I would have redrawn the frames on the holds rather than holding the same drawing. Oh well, my teacher liked it the last time I showed it to him so I guess thats all that matters.

Emotional Sack

Reworked Layout

Here's the layout I spent 7 hours on instead of doing my AM work >_<. I wish I had done it right the first time. Everything I did on Friday seems like it was wasted. I hate it when that happens. Now I have to wake up extra early to get some more work done on my AM assignment and it's 3:46am now. I also have to go back to Kinkos to copy the new version and then add tone, in addition to working on my animation 1 assignment.

Emotional Sack

Hey everyone! I finished adjusting the timing and started refining my emotional sack assignment today. According to my blocking, the whole sequence will be about 500 frames, making it the longest animation I've ever done. Most of it will be holds and loops though, otherwise there'd be no way I would be able to finish it by Wed. If only I could draw faster :(, oh well.

I like how the animation is coming along so far. I need to fix the seam on the last bounce since it's going the wrong way. I also think the sack should look away from us slower to increase the contrast between him looking away and then suddenly looking back at us. So far I've done about 57 drawings out of 234. I think I'm making good time. ^-^ Here's the file:

WIP Emotional Sack

Sorry about the flashing in the beginning. The camera was acting weird and got darker and lighter by itself.

Reworked Blocking

Hey everyone. I've been working on my AM assignment and finally have some up-dated blocking to post.

Up-date

My mentor has helped me a lot with simplifying the shot. He said to keep everything calm and let the bit where Stewie looses his balance be the exciting part. If everything's big, then nothing is big. I'm still trying to get some personality into the sequence. I just thought of having Stewie look back a couple more times during the animation. I realized that he forgot about whatever was chasing him after he started jumping, lol. When I work on it again, I'll incorporate some head turns. For now, the up-date above will have to do. It's 3:52am and I'm going to bed. Goodnight! :D

Two New Blogs

After talking to a fellow AM student about how she got hired, I've decided to make two new blogs! Both blogs will serve the purpose of show casing my animation. That way any potential employers and friends/fans won't have to search through my previous posts to find some work. The links to the blogs can be found on the side bar and are entitled AnimationMentor: Animation Gallery and SCAD Animation. It's pretty self explanatory what kind of animation each blog will have. I will continue to up-date this blog as usual. I'll simply be adding finished animation to its respective blog page.

V-day

Oh yay, it's Valentines Day. V-day is such a waste of time, you don't need a specific day to show someone you care. I could go on a rant about how bitter I am, but that's not what this blog is for.

I've been very busy animation wise. I've done some blocking for my new assignment. Here's what I submitted last week:

Post to Post Blocking

In my Animation 1 class we did I walk last week. I don't like mine at all. I know it could have been much better if I didn't draw so ridiculously slow. :( I'm not going to bother uploading it since I don't like it. Our next assignment is to do an emotional sack exercise. I wanted to do a sequence about the flour sack coming in, going to sleep and being awakened by a nightmare. Once he realizes that its ok, he would go back to sleep. Sadly, my idea is turning out to be more complicated than I have time for. Or more complicated than I am able to do in one week because of my outrageously slow drawing skills. It's REALLY aggravating. I think being on the computer is taking away my drawing abilities. I've heard of that happening to the pros who used to draw a lot, and don't wish to suffer the same fate.

To try to remedy this, I've registered for Life Drawing II for my spring quarter at SCAD. That way I'll have to draw from life for class as well as attend the open model sessions every weekend. :D Hopefully that'll work. In the mean time I'm trying to draw more often in my sketchbook. Doing stuff in 3d and drawing simple thumbnails has really made me lazy >_<.

Week 4

Once again this will be a short post since I have lots of work to do. Alright, it's time to post my work from week. For my next assignment, I've decided to have stew jump from post to post-the most difficult animation on our pick list. I also picked it because the cool idea my friend gave me for a box jump wouldn't work since stew has to be harmless. My roommate was so kind as to pretend she was jumping from one post to another since I didn't feel well today. Here are the thumbnail I made using the video reference of her:



Last but not least, here's the final version of my animation:

About Face Final

Edited Layout

My teacher told me to change a few things in my layout today. He said to push the line weight so we can see the background, and to make it clear that it's a hill in the middle ground instead of a moss covered wall. Here's my edited version:


Three of the layouts in my class were AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I wish I were that good at drawing backgrounds. I wish I could post them so you guys could see how fantastic they are.

Layout

I just finished my assignment for Animation Layout class. We had to draw an animation flatview depicting the location that 18th century mice would have a secret meeting. I chose the graveyard since I thought it was a cool idea and because I don't like drawing buildings.


I suck at drawing backgrounds. >_<

Our Tarzan assignments were due today and were critiqued by the class. For every assignment people said things like "thats amazing...hahahahaha...thats excellent....hahaha....great job". When my assignment was played the room was completely silent. I sat there waiting to hear some input from the class and recieved none. My teacher pointed out two areas that he thinks should have more slow out, but aside from that nothing was said. After class I approached him about this and he said that he couldn't find anything wrong with it. Later he said he'll try to find something to write about on the grade sheet. While I was annoyed that I didn't get a "thats wonderful/excellent" from my classmates, my teacher's "I couldn't find any errors" made me feel much better. Sure I didn't have time to have my character eatten by a crocodile, bounce off of fish, backflip in the air, or pole vault. You know why that is? Because rather than spending time adding a bunch of extra stuff, I worked hard to make my assignment great. I'd much rather have a great assignment without a bunch of fluff, than to have a bunch of extra stuff with crappy animation. Anyway, my version was complicated enough since I did two extra swings and had to sell the idea of the character really wanting those bananas.

Sorry if I sound arrogant in the above rant, for thats not how I ment to sound. I just get pissed when people cheer for crappy animation with extra stuff that has NOTHING to do with the assignment instead of for good animation. -.-

Products of my Labor

Alright, this will also be a short post since I have Animation Layout homework to do. I apologize for all of the short posts recently, I've been quite busy.

Here's my second assignment for Animation I:

Tarzan Swing

Here's my week 3 AM assignment:

Refined About Face

Working Working

Hey, I haven't posted in a while because I've been working all day! I just got back from Monty since the 3rd floor closes at 3am. I'm almost done with my Tarzan assignment and my AM assignment is going well. I was in a foul mood earlier since I thought I wasn't making enough project with my work. I feel better now since my friends were praising my animation and saying how I inspire them. I should finish my Tarzan swing tomorrow and will post it if I do.

Earlier I e-mailed some Dreamworks animators and told them I plan on interning there over the summer. I asked about their experience there, and if they could look at my work and give me some tips on what to improve. When or if they respond I'll probably post about whatever they said.

The Final

Alright everyone, here's my final version of my blocking that I turned in a few minutes ago.

Blocking Final

My Blocking

I finally have some blocking that I'm ok with. For my assignment I'm doing an about face and its turning out to be harder than I thought. My peers have provided a great deal of help and I really appreciate it. One student even gave me links to some video ref and a detailed description of how the about face should be done. Right now Ballie is doing a "sloppy" about face for two reasons:
1. The guy in the ref video was doing a "sloppy" about face
2. Ballie doesn't have a control that allows him to pivot on his toes.
As a result, Ballie will be rotating on his heels until the rig is up-dated.

Anyway, I showed my blocking to a friend last night and he really liked it. He pointed out some places where the arcs needed work and reminded me to watch the weight on the turn. He told me that I'm going to be an amazing animator and that I'm improving rather quickly. Reading that made my day! I was very unsure about my blocking and it was wonderful to hear that it wasn't as bad as I thought it was. So without further ado, I give you my blocking:

About Face Blocking

It is Done!

Hey everyone! I've finally finished my bouncing ball for animation 1. I'm pretty happy with it for now. My teacher said it was excellent, so I'm really happy about that, LOL (he's a hard grader). I don't have time to make a long post right now, cause I have to plan out my next project and then spend the rest of the day on my AM blocking. I have less time for my next assignment, so I can't afford to be lax with my schedule.


Bouncing Ball Final

Oh, I've deleted all of the previous wip versions of the bouncing ball from my webspace. I found out the other day that I had used up all of the memory. From now on, when I post a new version of something, it will simply up-date the older version, rather than having multiple files.

An Animation Up-date

Okay, I'm kinda annoyed since I had a nice long post and my browser froze, causing me to loose everything. Because of that, I'm just going to post some animation let that be it. I have work to do anyway and it's getting late.

Bouncing Ball

Some Drawings

I've decided to up-load some drawings that I did during the week. Why? Because I don't really feel like opening Maya and doing work, LOL. Rest assured that I will do some work after posting these pictures though. I may be lazy, but work is important and must be done!

Anyway, both pictures were drawn in but not for my animation layout/character design class. I'm trying to get away from my boring, default drawing style. I don't think I'm getting very far, LOL.

Even More Animation!

I have another up-date on my project for animation 1. I like how everything is going so far, except for the last bit. I don't really like how I animated his face when he jumps up at the end. It doesn't seem as clear as I had planned for it to be. I'm going to work on it some more tomorrow, so hopefully it'll be better then.

Bouncing Ball up-date

Sorry for the short post today. My stepfather is being a jerk about AnimationMentor, so I'm not in the mood to type right now.

More Animation!

I've worked on my bouncing ball some more and have some new animation to show. It's going very well, and I'm quite pleased with it so far. It's so great to be able to watch it and know that everything that happens was intentional. I remember when my animation would look ok by pure luck and chance. But now, I feel like I know what I'm doing and can consciously create nice quality work.

Bouncing Ball WIP

Some Animation

I have some animation to show today. Plotting out the eyes gave me a bit of trouble, but they look ok I guess. The tail presented even more problems since I realized that the ball would have to rotate back in the air to prevent him from landing on his face. I studied the whip principle to determine how the tail would move. Tomorrow I will plot the tail and animate it if I have time.

I don't know how long I'll have at Monty, as I'm going on location in my Animation Layout class. I might go after class if I reach my goal for my layout assignment. If not, I'll animate the tail over the weekend.

Here are some more thumbnails:



Here's a link to my WIP animation: Bouncing Ball

Lets Get This Party Started!

Alrighty, its time to post some work, yay!

AM Stuff

Here are some thumbnails for my first assignment. We had a choice of animating Ballie kicking a ball, making a big sidestep or turning around. I chose to do the turn around. My roommate helped me out by demonstrating an about face that she learned in ROTC. I taped it and used Rick's guidelines from the lecture to pick out my key poses.



Animation I

For animation I, we are starting off with a bouncing ball (of course). I've decided to spice mine up by doing it in perspective and by giving the ball eyes and a tail. Today I picked out some reference of a squirrel running and used that as a basis for my timing. I've added a few extra frames with the brown pencil in case my original ones aren't enough. It'll change the timing, but I think it will probably look better with more hang time. Sadly, I was unable to start animating today, because I had to leave Monty earlier than I expected to. It's no problem though, you can expect to see some animation tomorrow.

Original Thumbs


Thumbs with Squirrel Ref

Class 2 Session 1

Hey everyone! It's official, class two has begun! I've watched my video assignment and lecture and am ready to work. This week's lecture showed us how a shot is done from start to finish. It was GREAT to see the way a professional animator uses his reference and picks out the key poses. I finally feel like I can use video reference correctly and I have a much better idea on what to look for when picking key poses.

This time we are able to pick our own assignments to a certain extent. We've been presented with a list of three possible exercises and they've been given a technical difficulty rating. Of course, I want to do the most difficult assignment, LOL. This weeks hardest exercise is a 180 degree turn with Ballie. Already I'm feeling challenged by it and I haven't even started yet. I'm trying to think of an interesting way for Ballie to turn around and I'm not coming up with anything. I'll have to get in front of my digital camera and make a bunch of test videos. I'll also ask my roommate to help me by doing some 180's herself to use as ref.

Speaking of which, she just got off the phone, so I'm off to shoot some ref. I'll make another post later!

My New Mentor!

I just found out who my mentor is for the winter term. It's Pixar animator Doug Dooley!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited to have a Pixar mentor!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :D I can't wait for class to start!

The Winter Quarter

I have returned to SCAD. Class starts tomorrow. I've downloaded my syllabi. I'm going to be busy as I don't know what. I'm SO glad I started AM in the fall. Without my animation knowledge that I gained from AM, there would be no way for me to take animation 1 AND character design/animation layout at the same time! At one point I have to draw 36 thumbnails at River Street...36!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Granted, they are just thumbnails and they could have been 36 actually drawings. But still! That'll take FOREVER! I wish I didn't draw so slowly. Plus it's winter time (obviously) so it'll be cold on River Street. >_<

Now, you could say "Jocelyn, you didn't have to take the layout class in the winter quarter..." and be making a true statement. But, this is the best time for me to take it. The recommended schedule that SCAD created says to take it along with Animation 2. Some seniors have warned against taking the class with animation 1, but I'm pretty sure it would be even worse to take with animation 2 or any other future (and more advanced) class.

Anyhow, thanks to AM, I dont feel worried about animation 1. Sure, I'll continue to work as hard as I can and push myself as far as possible. But I'm not dreading it (thats what the layout class is for!) and worrying about how I'll have time to get the assignments done. I am pretty confidant that my work will be among (if not) the top in the class, simply because I have knowledge that my peers haven't learned yet (Thank you self training, various animation books, and now AnimationMentor) and because the professor knows how serious I am about this and will help push me to a higher level. I hope I didn't sound arrogant just then, and if I did, I appologise for that was not my intent. I am simply striving to be one of the best. Afterall, it's my goal to be one of the exceptional students who get hired at a major studio right after, or maybe even before graduation!

That seems like a nice place to stop for now. As I said, class starts tomorow and I know that from then till March I wont have any time to play my new xbox 360, so I'd like to get my fill of it today. I want to join xbox live, since it has a whole bunch of cool features and I would be able to play with my friend from home. Sadly, it would be a waste of money because, as I said, I won't have time to play. Plus the dorm won't let me connect anyway. The MTU (or something like that) isn't high enough for xbox live to work. I'm going to take that as a sign rather than going out and buying a router, per the suggestions of people on The Hive. I wish for all of my fellow xbox players at SCAD to have fun playing online with a bunch of friends. And would like for them to know that while they're sitting around playing games I'll be doing work, work, and even more work. Yay for insane, work-a-holic, animation majors who are hell-bent on being at the top! Lol. Bye for now.

P.s. AnimationMentor resumes on Monday.

Some Thumbnails

I'm going to try to get some animation done on this project that I agreed to work on last summer. The "director" wants me to do a test animation to get a feel for the character. Never mind the fact that there aren't any model sheets or anything. I'm starting to wish I hadn't agreed to help. Anyway, here are some thumbnails for what I'll be animating.

I haven't thumbnailed everything out yet. I wanted to scan and show them to the girl, but she doesn't seem to be answering my instant messages. This is proving to be more difficult than I thought it would be. I don't have any ref aside from large cats "climbing" trees, so I had to use my already existing knowledge about cats and what I recently learned about hips to come up with the poses. I should probably add more breakdowns before I start animating...

The End of Class One

Alright, this is the last week of Basic Foundations! I'm super excited about next quarter as well as the free time I'll have over the break. Before I get started on anything else, here are links to my final assignment as well as the video I put together of all of my assignments in the class.

Week 11 Final

Basic Foundations Overview

I think I've improved quite a bit from the time I first started animationmentor. I've learned a ton of stuff and am still trying to absorb it all. I'm very happy that I decided to take this route rather than waiting to do AM after SCAD. Sure, it's alot of work doing them both at the same time, but I'm learned so many things that its unbelieveable! I can't wait until next class! I feel like I'm closer to my goal of getting a summer internship at Dreamworks! :D

Alright, on to other things. I saw the Chronicles of Narnia this weekend and thought it was great! I love the fox, beavers, griffons, Aslan, and the queen! The lady who played the queen was excellent! She radiated evil! Her whole look and demanor during the final battle was truely intimidating! The cg was very well done, minus a few green or blue screen issues. I send a huge congradulations to my mentor, Steve Cady on a job well done with Aslan, the beavers and the griffon(s)! :D

Before Narnia came on, I saw trailers for some wonderful movies (minus Lady in the Water, some baseball and basketball movies). Pirates of the Carribean 2 looks great! I can't wait for it to come out. I'm not a Johnny Depp(sp?) fangirl, but I think he's an amazing actor! It's hard to believe Charlie from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Jack Sparrow are played by the same person.

Another movie that I am very eagerly awaiting is Open Season! I love the style of the entire film! The bear's fur is very well done and original. The animation looks amazing! My favorate part of the trailer is when the deer is throwing the rabbits against the window. The timing on that is fantastic! There were a few parts where I actally laughed, which is amazing since the Emperor's New Groove was the only 100% funny animated movie to me. I think this movie is going to rock, congrats to everyone at Sony Imageworks who worked on Open Season! If they continue to make completely animated films like that then Sony Imageworks will definatly be on my list of top places to work at.

Over the Hedge looks like it might be good as well. The story seems ok, but the characters are cute. I love films about animals! I hope to work on a few some day! Anyway, my favorite character right now is the squirrel. He's cute and rather amusing. I'm not surprised that Dreamworks went out to get well known stars for voice actors again. Although I'm quite disappointed at the fact that they picked Avril Lavigne to be one of the characters. I'm sure they could have (and should have) picked someone better. Oh well, she might surprise me and do a good job...I doubt it though, lol.

I want to see Ice Age 2, but I'm not that excited about it. I'm not sure I like what I saw of the characters. I dont know what they did to Cid, but he's especially ugly now. Manny seems like a softie, now that there's a female mammoth around. I didn't see much of Diego. I hope they didn't change him, he's my favorite character. I still love the stylistic look of the movie, though. I can watch Ice Age a million times and not get tired of its style.

I don't have much to say about Cars. I don't know what the story people were thinking about, I blame Eisner completely! They would have been much better off by doing a different movie. The story and the whole talking cars thing seems quite boring. I'll see it simply because it's Pixar, but I hope it's much better than it looks. I can't wait until they split from Disney.

Moving on, the next film I want to see is Curious George. Story wise, it seems very simple and childish, but hey, it's a kids film. I'm excited about it simply because its 2d!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so happy that someone has the courage to do a 2d movie. It's very refreshing from the constant stream of 3d films and shows there's still some hope for 2d feature animation. Congrats to everyone at Universal for pulling it off! I'll be sure to support 2d animation by going to see it.

Alright, it's 10:17pm and I think I've typed enough for today. Especially since no one reads my blog anyway, lol. Until next time! :D

A Quick Entry

I'm rather tired right now, so this entry will be short. I wish I hadn't played Neopets all day Monday. Now I feel like I'm on break and don't have anymore work to do. Technically, I am on break since I've been done with SCAD for over a week now, but I must pull through with AM. This is the last week we'll have an assignment, so I must resist the urge to be lazy and play games all day.

This week we're supposed to animate either our vanilla or personality walk from the 3/4 perspective view. Our sketchbook assignment is to make a pose that communicates balance. I wanted to stay away from the cliche gymnastics poses, but I seem to have failed. I'm still trying to think of a different pose and if I come up with one I'll replace my current one.


As far as my walk goes, I'm still having trouble. I've revised the side view from week 10, but am having problems with the trans x of the hips and feet in the front view.

Revised Side View

I'm also a bit uncertain about my current rot z on the hips. The Animator's Survival Kit says to dip the hip down with the back leg on the contact poses. I'm uncertain because, it seems like you would have your weight on the back leg rather than the front. I e-mailed Steve before coming here to make this entry. Hopefully I'll have a response by mid-day tomorrow. Anyway, I'm not worrying about the 3/4 view until I'm happy with the front view. Besides, if I get it to look right in the front and side views then it should look good in the 3/4 view.

I'm finally done!

I've finally finished my assignment for this week!

Week 10 Final

This supposed to be a cartoony strut. As far as strutting is concerned, I think I've failed. It doesn't look like the strut I wanted. I filmed some video reference, but it was awful and useless since I did it with my web cam. Who'd like to buy me a camcorder for x-mas? :D

As far as a personality walk in general, I think I succeeded. It's MUCH different from the vanilla walk and I was able to achieve some great squash and stretch as well as timing and spacing. I found out that it's ok to use the break tangents button on all of the curves and have been free ever since. I'm finally able to control the GE and to understand why things aren't working. I'm able to successfully adjust the spacing between each key and achieve some nice, varied timing.

On Wed. I showed my mentor the first step in the walk and he liked it. I told him it wasn't what I wanted and he said I'm being too hard on myself and that he thinks I should continue with what I have. I followed his advice and this is what I ended up with. I like it to a certain extent, although I'd like it even more if it was exactly what I had in mind at the beginning.

Now I can finally play my new Prince of Persia video game!!!!!!!!!!! :D

Busy!

Aaaarrrggggg! I want to play my new game, but I don't have time! I'm working very hard on my personality walk and have barely had a chance to play. I bought that new Neopets game on Monday. It looked nice from the trailers that my roommate had shown me. It reminds me of the good old adventure/platform games like Zelda, Banjo Kazooie, Vexx, the original Jak and Daxter etc. I miss adventure games that don't try to be third person shooters and instead have you fight with swords, magic, claws, or small animals. So far Neopets has been surprisingly alright. There are a few camera issues, no lock on/focus/aim camera so you can always see the opponent during combat feature, but other than that it's ok. The characters and environments are insanely cute. The little morality stuff they put in there is amusing, lol. One part involves you asking for your parent's permission as part of the requirements for becoming a squire.

As far as my work is concerned, I hope to have it finished by Saturday.

Home for the Holidays

Alright, sorry for the lag in up-dates. It's now session 10 and I believe I owe you guys a final version of week 9's assignment. Well, here ya go:

Week 9 Final

I REALLY hate my final for week 9. I accidentally saved over my "ok" walk with this garbage walk.

Speaking of which, I've been having a hard time deciding what kind of walk to do. I'd planned on doing a lost walk, but Vincent pointed out that Ballie wouldn't take very many steps with that. My next idea was to do a drunk walk. I was listening to the Samurai Champloo soundtrack and came across a song with a really cool beat. It was random, but not so random that it doesn't make sense. A drunk walk would have gone well with it, as I would have the feet hit the ground to the beat. Sadly, the drunk walk turned out to be too much of a challenge to do in the time I have left for this project (today, some of Friday, and some of Saturday). I couldn't find any reference and I don't have any experience to draw from. Plus, Vincent made the same point for this idea as the last one. Perhaps I can do the drunk walk during the AM break... After giving up that idea, I went on a search for different kinds of walks. I'd gathered a few reference videos before coming across a video of two soldiers marching in a rather amusing fashion. I decided to use their march as a guide for my walk. I've thumbnailed it out and made a few notes about the desired spacing.


In other news, the AM server is down. So far it's been down all day and won't be back up until late tonight. Although, they have set up a page for us to go to for our Q&A sessions. Thankfully, my Q&A was rescheduled for Monday. Anyway, the new page looks really cool. It's supposed to be a sneak peak of the AM website's new layout. I can't wait until it's ready, it's looking great! :D

Tired

I've been working hard on my vanilla walk. Yesterday Steve told us we should fix everything in the graph editor and to use as few keys as possible. I'm glad he told us that. Even though it took a while, I feel like I've learned quite a bit about editing the curves. I've always been afraid of pushing them too far and as a result would do as little tweaking in the graph editor as possible. Here's an up-date of my walk so far:

Vanilla Walk WIP

Nancy K., one of the mentors suggested swinging the feet out to add to the x translations. I tried it and think it looks nice. It adds too much character for a vanilla walk in my opinion. I've e-mailed Steve about it and am waiting for his response. The walk isn't as good as the one above since I stoped working on it in case I wouldn't be able to use it.

"Fancy" Vanilla Walk Front

"Fancy" Vanilla Walk Side

On a side note, I'm seeing Harry Potter tomorow and I can't wait! :D

What's New This Week?

This week we are smoothing out our vanilla walk as well as making a concerned pose for Stu. I've done my gestures and Stu pose already:



I'm in the process of cleaning up the walk animation. There are quite a few things to straighten out...toe rolls, feet going through the floor, squash and stretch, the Z translation, etc. The joys of 3d animation, lol. Anyway, I'll upload some animation as soon as I have some worth showing.

Finished!

It's very late/early, so this post will be short. I've finished my assignment for this week and it can be found here:

Week 8 Final

Please note the disclaimer at the end...frame dropping is a very evil occurrence. I want to send a HUGE thank you to Vincent! My animation would still look boring if he hadn't given me such wonderful critiques. ^-^

Alright, that's it for tonight. It's 5:20 AM and my bed is calling me. Goodnight/morning!

Week 8 Continued

Lol, so much for posting some animation on Wed. I worked on the walk, but forgot to post it here before going to bed. Thats ok though, I've got some wip animation to show today.

W.I.P Walk

I'm not very fond of the walk as a whole. It seems like it goes kinda fast even though I used the timing that Bobby said we should. I am also unsure of the placement of the squash and stretch. I placed it in the same positions that I would on a bouncing ball, but for some reason it doesn't seem quite right. I asked for help on the forum, so hopefully I'll have a solution soon.

Week 8 at a Glance

I've started on my week 8 assignment. We have to do a "vanilla walk" and pose Stu to convey strength. A friend told me that we are supposed to show emotional strength but my mentor said we can do either one. I have a physical strength pose already and will use that if I can't think of an emotional one.





I have started working on my walk as well. Here are my thumbnails, dont mind the character at the bottom, lol:


I am aiming to have some post worthy animation before I go to bed tonight, so look out for that. I also want to revise my one leg animation. I hope I'll be able to get it done before Steve checks the revision section tomorow.

The Eye of the Storm

Phew, sorry about the last post. I just pulled an all-nighter trying to get my motion studies project finished. I didn't finish before I was kicked out of Monty so I had to get up early this morning to work before class. I believe I got a grand total of three hours sleep. Strangly, I dont feel tired. o.O I guess it'll hit me this evening. Anyway here's my final for last week's assignment:

One Leg Final

This week we have to do a vanilla walk. That should be simple enough since I've done them before. I'm sure I'll find a way to complicate it though.

I literally just uploaded my motion studies project. It can be found at the link below if anyone would like to see...

Film Festival Countdown

The assignment was to make a 15 second short that has something to do with this year's film festval. My original idea was WAY too long and complicated. It involved my character dressing up as various Don Bluth characters to sneak into the events. My teacher said I could do something involving someone trying to get tickets. I decided to animate how I felt about my film festival experience this year. I wanted to go to the closing event because Don Bluth would be there. I got my tickets in the second week of October (the festival is Oct 29-Nov 2) and the Don Bluth even was sold out already. I was very upset. Anyway, we had to use Aftereffects so animated the camera movements, show tickets, and the ticket man with the program. Everything else was animated traditionally. If I had my way, the entire short would be traditionally animated but I ran out of time. :( After animating, inking, and coloring everything I put the shots together and compressed them in Premiere. Obviously something went wrong in that process since the colors mess up at various points of the short. That really bothers me, and the fact that I dont know how to fix it makes it worse.

Today's Trip to Walmart

I bought Shadow of the Colossus, Starwars III, and the Emperor's New Groove. I highly recommend Shadow of the Colossus! It's amazing! It's so cool to be able to climb giants rather than simply walk on their backs. Plus, the game doesn't tell you how to get to the weak points so it's more of a puzzle than a fighting game. It's great!

So far...

Ok, I'm at Monty and I've uploaded my work onto my studentspace. Here are the links to the videos:

Week 7 Blocking

Week 7 Animation

Thumbnails:

A Head Start

Today I worked on my assignment for this week. I got a lot done and am tempted to say I'm finished. I'm at the point where I have to push myself to get the animation to the next level, rather than taking the easy route by claiming to be finished. I would like to post a link to it, but my SCAD studentpages are still acting up. I'll bring my thumbnails, blocking, and smooth animation to Monty tomorrow and upload it there.

In the mean time, I've been very active on the forums today. I found the student critique section and am angry for not finding it sooner. I got a crit less than a minute after asking! It's wonderful! I've never had so many people looking at my work at once! During the first critique I realized that I went about the animation the wrong way. I used the layering method that I've been using on the bouncing ball assignments. As the result, my animation looked like the ball was causing the thrust and the leg was just along for the ride. During my speech class I redid my thumbnails and used my strict pose to pose method for animating it. Everything was 100% better as the result. I don't know why I didn't do it that way the first time. :P

Anyway, it's late and I should probably go to bed. I'll post my assignment tomorrow.