Blocked Walk and "Strength"

Week 8: This week's pose is called "Strength". It was tough, once again, not to do the typical arm bicep-flexing pose. I also tried to do a pose without props. I actually put the sketches (above) up to a vote and the above pose won. Since then, I learned in a couple of weeks, I'll be doing a "Balanced" pose, so now I'm wishing I did one of the other poses.

[Video has been removed - Final can be seen in Week 9]

This week we were to take the AM character called "Ballie" and make him walk for 2 seconds. This will actually be a 2 parter. This week we block in the key positions and Week 9 we'll smooth it out.

Jesus Saves . . . I didn't

So succinctly put by my friend, Pastor Lincoln.

Week 7: Make the Tailor character provided by AM, bounce 3 times like a squirrel.

Well, nightmare of nightmares happen. As I was finishing up my assignment around midnight Saturday night, Maya froze. I wasn't too worried because I thought I had saved. Much to my horror, apparently not. It appears the last save I had done was around 6pm.

Sooooooo my assignment did not turn out as I planned. I spent from midnight until 5:30 am creating just the hop across the screen (it's amazing how inefficient I can be in the early morning hours). There's a tiny pause between hops because originally I had Tailor come across hesitantly, see something scary off screen, then hop quickly back the way he had come. He was then going to be followed by a huge ball.

After the critique from my mentor, I can see all sorts of problems with it. His tail is supposed to flow like a whip. Man, does it look stiff now. Sometime I hope to fix it - time elusive time . . .

Pendulum

Week 6: The assignment was to make this pendulum (block, "chain" and ball) to move in a figure eight pattern and come to a stop with a realistic pendulum swing.

Obstacle course

Week 5: We were to animate a ball bouncing through an obstacle course. This is the second post, because the original has been revised.

Devastated

The above image is 16 sketches trying to capture the emotion: devastated.

The next image is the revision of my original AM Stu character pose. The "before" image was what I initially turned in for my assignment.

After the critique, I decided to revise it. In trying to figure out how to improve it, I found neither myself nor my friend's daughter (who is much more flexible than I am) couldn't physically get in the pose I created.

Also to try to push the pose a little further to get a better emotive response, I moved the left hand up to touch his face. I know it's obvious, but they encourage us not to do the expected gesture. I did an impromptu poll using a couple of different poses and it was amazing how everyone really resonated with the face touching images. Cliché is not the preferred route, but sometimes, if it works, it works.