For the final assignment we were to fill out a survey and post all our finished animations into a "progress reel". Since you can see all of them in my past posts, I'm only including my title card.
Wahoo! Week 12 is done and Class 1 is finished. We get a week off for a break then hit Class 2 on June 29. I'm going to Maryland to visit my oldest sister and her family - good times!
Week 11: This week we were to capture the sense of balance in our Stu pose.
As for the animation, it was the final assignment. We were to get Ballie to walk with personality. You should be able to learn something about Ballie based on his walk.
This two part assignment was a tough lesson. I learned the KISS rule clearly. I bit off more than I could chew (too much going on). Should have kept it to a simpler walk. Because of the complexity and super busy time at work, I was not able to polish to the degree I hoped.
The walk part of the animation appears a bit fast. I liked its urgency, but it appears too choppy. I suppose I could have tried simplifying the number of poses in the cycle to appear simpler and clearer. Still figuring this one out . . .
Week 9: The pose this week was "Concerned". This one was tough. When I asked family and friends to vote, the votes were all over the place.
My final pose actually turned out to be a hybrid. I liked the nail-biting of #8 but wanted to down-play the emotion. It too easily can appear scared. I ended up taking the legs from #6 (#8's knees originally were knocking together) and upgraded them to an "interrupted" walk. I took his right hand down and used the arm pose from #7.
For animation, I was to take last week's animation and smooth it out. Wow, there's a lot to learn about a smooth walk. I really would like to rework it, but my workload (home and at work) is too much. I hope sometime I'll get to fix it.
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.
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 . . .
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.
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.
This is the second part to week 3's assignments. Here we were to animate a ball (provided by AM) bouncing like a basketball or soccer ball. I think the last part of the tiny bounces at the end was a little too much . . .
Week 3: This week we were to capture "excited". Problem is, it has all been done before so we can't do the typical "hands flung wide as the person is jumping in the air for joy" pose (as in sketches #6, 9 & 16). So, as I was sketching, I came across this photo of a woman with a contained excitement.
I sketched it, then tried to get the Animation Mentor "Stu" character in the same pose. It kinda worked . . . but not quite.
One thing they teach us is to exaggerate the gesture to get maximum impact. To get maximum impact, we have to keep all parts clear and distinct. You find this out by looking at the silhouette your pose creates. If the silhouette has any overlapping parts, it's hard to read. No matter how I turned the camera, I never was able to get all the parts clear. Thus the pose was tweaked . . . Enjoy!
Actually, this is week 2. The first week assignment was to get familiar with the online campus, set up our profile and photo.
Sooooooo, this week, our assignment was to go out and sketch people in motion. We were then to choose one, take the figure (provided by Animation Mentor) called "Stu" and pose him in the same gesture. As I worked on his pose, I tried to tighten him up a bit and make it a little more dynamic than in the sketch.
This was the final assignment for the workshop class. We were to take Animation Mentor's one-legged robot and make it hop. It appears quick because I kept the hop to a second in length at my mentor's request.
This includes assignments 9 & 10. Originally, this Animation Mentor provided scene had a can and a block, but keeping to my "little king" theme, I replaced the can with the king and the block with the horse.
Assignment 9 was for us to take the provided robot arm and animate it "picking up" a can and placing it on a block on the other side within 4 seconds. It appeared to go through the motion as if it had picked it up.
In assignment 10, we actually learned how to "pick up" the object. This is the final product of both assignments.
