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.