Last week, I submitted my demo reel for Blizzards visit to SCAD. I'm applying for their internship since I'm still in school. I'm not sure if I'm actually eligible for it anymore since I wont be returning to SCAD next year. We'll see what happens.
Hey guys,
Sorry for the lack of Piglet updates. I'm reworking the entire scene to incorporate what I've learned last Wed. It's taken me all weekend but I finally think I've got a solid handle on how to (hopefully) use squash and stretch on the face successfully. I understand the principle and the concept behind it and I can see how it's used . I'm just having trouble applying it to my scene. I think it's because I'm not used to doing so much at one time. In 3d, squash and stretch is something that I add towards the very end, but now I have to think of how I can use it (along with everything else that's going on) as I draw each frame.
Another thing I'm working on improving is drawing really rough. My prof. told me when he was pressed for time, Glen Keane had a scene of the Beast approved which was little more than dotted eyes and a squiggly line for the mouth. I've also seen how rough some of the animators at Disney work from looking at their scenes from Princess and the Frog. The thing I'm struggling with is drawing that rough while still maintaining volume. I imagine that's something that will improve with time and practice.
I wanted to have my Piglet scene finished enough to put on my demo reel for Blizzard, but the deadline for those is Friday and I know I wont be able to have Piglet 100% finished, completely on model, and somewhat cleaned up by then. I'm wary of putting a rough scene on my reel since all of the 2d reels that I've seen have had the characters fully on model and cleaned up. I wish I could put my Bolt work on my reel, but I have to wait until the film comes out first.
Man, animating a character doing nothing is very hard! Everything I did today messed up my piglet scene. I was so afraid of my scene looking "posey" that I kept trying to over complicate/add small things that weren't in my original performance. I told my prof. I felt like I had to add small recoils and more opposite action in an effort to keep him alive. I told him I didn't have this problem with my Moley soup scene since the character was always doing something, whereas in my current scene Piglet is just relaxing on some bleachers.
My prof. laughed and said "animating a character doing nothing is hard isn't it?". He told me I was on the right track and that it should just be a series of simple arcs rather than a bunch of elaborite action. After class I had a long chat with my prof. and after an awesome demonstration, I feel like I should be back on track. My prof. liked my version from the other day, so I'm going to return to it and continue from there.
I'm going to try to loosen up Piglet's face throughout the scene as I go along. During my prof.'s demo I realised he goes about animating a bit more straight ahead than I do. I think this is why I was having so much difficulty creating a nice organic feel to the face. I'm going to try out his working method tomorow and see how things go.
Here's an update on my piglet scene. I still have quite a bit of work to do before I turn it in on Wed...
I just realized I posted my golden poses pass on my Piglet scene on the wrong blog. As the result the golden pose pass and yesterday's pass will be uploaded at the same time.
Golden Poses
Yesteday's Pass
Alrighty, here's what I turned in to class last week. I finally finished redrawing everything with the (hopefully) correct volumes. I'm going to make sure the first frame of my piglet scene will be 100% on model so I wont have the same problem. I could have inbetweened a lot of this if I hadn't spent the final week redrawing everything to match the first frame. There a lot of things that need to be broken down more and I have pages of things to tweak/fix.
Hey guys,
I've started preparing for our new assignment in 2d character II class. We'll be animating a dialogue scene with Piglet. Thankfully the clip is short and is about 125 frames long, which is much better than my 400+ frame soup scene. Anyway, here are the thumbnails that I've done for the piglet scene and a few drawings from the model sheet that my prof. gave out.
I'll save the most recent version of my Moley soup scene after class and will upload it once I get back.
Hey guys,
I was preparing to burn my work from each year at SCAD onto separate DVDs when I came across my folder of work from my 2d character class. I don't remember posting it before and I think it was because it's really unfinished and doesn't flow together very well. In my usual fashion, I over complicated all of my assignments from that class to the point of not being able to finish. I would say I've gotte better at that, but my Mole assignment is 28 feet long when the assignment said it should be at least 7 feet, lol.
Anyway, I've decided to post my old 2d character work anyway, since there are tiny bits of the piece that I like.
I've added a few more breakdowns to the scene to see how everything is working. I have a long list of things to adjust and I'm going to rework the timing on some of the arm movements to offset them from the main action a bit more. I wanted to make the swallow more subtle but I was having trouble drawing a convincing squash pose without reversing the spine. I'll talk to my prof. about that on Monday.
Hey guys,
Here's an update on my soup test. It's over 100 frames longer than the previous version but the acting is much better. My prof. and I really like it and I was told to just get as far as I can by Wed. I wish I had known how rough I could have drawn everything though. On Monday my prof. showed us some Andreas Deja examples from Hercules and told us to draw loose like that. I knew the varying degrees of rough that the guys at Disney work, but my mentor wanted me to work on keeping the main volumes in my roughs. Since I was used to working that way that's what I had been doing throughout this project. Now that I know how rough my prof. wants us to work, things will go much faster.
I'm just worried about when it's time to start tyingdown my drawings. I know I have volume issues gallore and am expecting to have to spend quite a bit of time fixing them. My prof. wants me to tiedown my main keys and some breakdowns to make sure the acting is clear. He said the inbetweens can get rough as long as they maintain the proper volume.
I'm really enjoying this assignment and I'm learning a lot. Now I know a better workflow for me may be to blast through the scene working super rough and getting all of the action in there working and reading. Then I ca spend the rest of the time working on volume issues and tyingdown the character.
