Week 9...

So here we are, the end of week 9 and another busy week at AM.

This weeks assignment was to take last weeks blocking of the vanilla walk through to final. Sounds simple but couldn't be further from. I have probably spent more time on this weeks assignment than any other so far at AM, it seemed to be a never ending cycle of tweaking.

The main problem was keeping nice curves on all the body parts whilst preventing the knees from popping all over the place. Just when I thought it was all done I would recieve feedback and find that there was a problem in the foot rotation, this then meant I had to also alter the knees again, then I would find that the body needed a tiny bit more rotation which in turn would throw out the knees again, and so on....

The other part of our assignment was to sketch Stu to show concern and then pose our favourite out in Maya. This was probably the hardest so far for me as showing concern seems to be alot more subtle than previous assignments. I also took the advice from my mentor that I should bring my sketches 2 stages back and loosen them up making them less like illustrations.

I soon realised that for some reason I didnt allow myself to do this on paper so it was time to unleash the wacom tablet, I had no choice now to loosen things up because I had no experience and couldn't use one well enough to get the nice clean lines that I could on paper. Problem solved.

Apart from having no internet pretty much all day Sunday for the second time, everything went relatively well. The whole no internet Sunday is really annoying me now as it means I cant give any last minute feedback and I have to go well out of my way to upload my own work, my ISP needs to sort itself out!.

Thankfully despite my now usual Sunday internet drama and me being able put a stop to the tweaking I got there in the end, heres what I came up with this week, Thanks everyone! - Adam

 

Week 8...

The weeks are going so fast its crazy, I cannot believe we are 2 months in already!. Back in week 1 a student in class 6 told me the 18 months would fly by but I didn't quite understand how fast!.

For this weeks assignment we were issued with Ballie, a character who is basically a ball with legs. The idea behind it is to gradually introduce us into animating a basic character without having to worry about an upper torso/head/arms. The whole focus being on the legs/hips.

For the assignment itself we had to animate the blocking process of Ballie performing 2 cycles of a basic vanilla walk, no personality just your everyday walk. Along with this we had to do some sketches to convey strength and then pose out Stu in maya acting out our favourite pose. I really wanted to avoid cliche poses for my actual Stu pose but I sketched a few anyway for good measure :).

Thankfully the week went without any technical disasters and everything went well. As we only had to complete the blocking stage of our walk it gave me alot more time to cruise the campus and check out everyone elses work, leave comments and in turn recieve more comments, it really felt like I was making the most of the community for a change.

I think thats about all I have to say this week so heres what i came up with, Thanks everyone - Adam

Week 7 Tails off...

This weeks post title really is weak isn't it, just doesn't have the same effect as last weeks. I should really work on them, atleast now they can only get better.

If you hadn't guessed already, this weeks assignment was all about Tailor, the cutest of the AM bunch and the one that every AMer wants as a pet.

Ok, so it wasn't exactly all about an introduction for the little guy, it was slightly more focussed on overlapping action and spline editing. Victor Navones kick ass lecture really helped with this, Thanks Vic!

The week got off to a great start! We had a special guest Q&A on Monday with a couple of animators from Blue Sky Studios who worked on the recently released "Rio". I havnt seen the film yet myself so I can't pass comment but from what i've seen on the trailers the animation looks Amazing! I cannot wait to see it.

I pretty much got started on my assignment straight away as I had a clear idea in my mind of how the piece would play out. Before I knew it, Friday had come around and I had only animated Tailors body. Come Saturday when I actually started to animate the tail my time managemental mistake soon dawned on me.

Even though I spent all day Saturday animating I was still extremely pushed to get it finished on Sunday for the deadline. It really didn't help my nerves waking up Sunday morning to find that the whole internet/phone system was down in my area. To my relief it was fixed with 2 hours to spare.

Luckily I did get my assigment finished in time and heres what I came up with this week, Thanks everyone - Adam




P.S. Check out my friend Jeroths blog at http://jeroth.blogspot.com/, hes showing some awesome improvement.

Week 6 swings out...

See what i did there? swings out...... no?

Ok, this weeks assignment was focussed on overlapping action and the character we were issued was the mighty pendulum!. It was our first assignment with a pick list which meant we had two choices on what to do with our pendulum, they were basically keep it simple in 150 frames or get creative with 200 frames.

Now see what i did there?..... good.

Anyway I had some crazy ideas for this one, it was going to swoop, sweep and push around all sorts of obstacles, there was going to be brights lights, a fanfare, fireworks.... that was until I actually opened Maya and made a start anyway.

After roughly 10 hours animating spread over 2 days I realised my ideas were way out of reach from my actual animating skills and something was seriously seriously wrong. In all this time I hadn't even touched the pendulum part of the character, I had been fussing around with the base with disasterous results. I pretty much felt like I had failed and by Wednesday I was panicking and felt like the deadline was looming.

That night my savior came in the form of West Decker (http://blog.cleverpuppy.com/) he pretty much dragged me back to earth and reminded me of what I was actually at AM for, I came to learn and not kick ass like him from the start. He said I shouldn't be doing my animations to impress others, I should be doing them to learn animation!. I completely agreed with the guy and from that moment on I called shotgun on his wisdom.

I decided the best way to go from here was to keep it as simple as possible and then improve once I had the basics down. Things went pretty well from here on in, I decided to tackle the animation in a layered fashion. I started at the main base of the pendulum and then once that was done I moved onto the tail. To achieve the wave of the tail I used successive breaking of joints,  I could try to explain what this is but I wont as im not sure i've fully got my head around it myself yet.

Anyway heres what i came up with this week, thanks everyone - Adam

Week 5...

Ok I just realised my post titles are getting a little confusing, even im lost in the weeks and its my blog.

Seeing asthough I seem to be updating my blog every Sunday night just before the following AM week starts i'll start naming my posts by the previous week, so the past week has been week 5 at AM hense this posts title. Next week will be week 6.

This week was all about anticipation and squash and stretch! The lecture was headed up by ILM's Shawn Kelly who is known for working on a library of awesome films like "StarsWars", "Pirates of the Carribean", "War of the Worlds", the recently released "Rango" and upcoming blockbuster "Transformers: Dark of the moon" to name a few.

The assignment was to animate a ball travelling through an obstacle course using the principle of squash and stretch. We had a maximum of 120 frames at our disposal and were allowed to manipulate the obstacle course in any way we wished. Posing was also back on this week and we had to sketch and pose Stu to communicate devastation.

Luckily I didnt miss this weeks Q&A with Anthony and my graphics card turned up mid week so we're all back to normal!

We've been having a few bank holidays over here in the UK recently and an extra one on Friday for Prince William and Kate Middletons wedding so I took advantage and pretty much got the sketching and pose down by Tuesday as I knew this weeks animation portion of the assignment was going to be pretty tough!

Anyway heres what i came up with this week, Thanks guys - Adam