Class 4 Progress Reel

So its finally here! :) A whole year's worth of work at Animation Mentor. Even I'm surprised at how far I've come since the beginning.

Class 4 Week 11

So this is a little late, but last week was definitely busy. It was our final week to make any changes and polish our dialogue shot. We still haven't touched the facial animation. When I start next term, I'll basically pick this shot back up where I left off and work on the lip sync. Then I'm on to my 2 person dialogue! :)

So here is the final that I turned in this past week.

Next I'll have my progress reel for Class 4 up! 

Class 4 Week 10

So this week has been full of splines.... and more splines. I honestly underestimated how much work it would be to polish all the parts of Bishop. It was tough, and took a couple overnighters, but I got my shot back to where I kinda had in mind from the beginning. It's like a little light at the end of the tunnel that I was in last week. :) But now next week I get to polish this shot even more for the final. I'm not actually going to lip sync for this shot until next term. But that's a whole other concept.

Also this week we had another hand pose to show "Surprise"

Class 4 Week 9

So a little late this week. lol But this past week has been pretty rough with Turkey Day and Black Friday in the mix. Also this week I had to push my shot into spline. So if I have anything to blame my work on it would be that. ;) Its just the first spline pass so it's still got a lot of work still.

But on the plus side! My wonderful fiance, Jess, got me an early Christmas and birthday gift during Black Friday in the form of a Canon EOS Rebel T3. :) It's very fun to use and is my breakthrough at a hobby in photography, more to come later on that.

Oh but here's my shot so far. Also below is another hand pose I had to do this week. We had to convey the emotion "Relaxed" in our pose.

Relaxed 

Class 4 Week 8

So this past week has been great!! I spent the last few days in Burbank, CA for CTN Animation Expo 2011. I was able to spend time with some of the greatest people I know and meet some amazing new people as well! Most all of the animation studios in the industry were there with a booth. Being my very first time to CTN, I was very pleased with it all. I was able to talk to a lot of the recruiters for various studios and get some insight on some big projects coming up in the next couple of years! :) 

Below is a pic of me getting some feedback on my current shot from Bobby Pontillas from Disney.

Now on the the work without play! My shot has been coming along great. I tried to get as much work done early in the week to compensate for CTN. I also had to work while at CTN as well, but was able to get some great feedback including feedback from Bobby. I still need to address his notes and will make those changes for next week. But so far this is how my shot is coming.

Also this week we had to do a hand pose that would convey "Anger." Here is the final version of that as well!

Class 4 Week 7

I'm finally here! Working with Bishop (lite) and working on dialogue shots! So this week I've worked on one of the shots that my mentor chose from last week. He felt that clip 2, or the interrupting piece, was the best choice. So I researched the clip and figured out what the backstory of my character would be. Since I'm animating more than just the dialogue, I had to think of everything about this character, age, occupation, education, sense of humor, etc. Also for this shot I had to develop the story telling elements as well. This shot in a nutshell is an awkward uncle comes in to give his sister in the delivery room a little too early. So his main action is coming into the delivery room with a flower. His objective is obviously to give his sister the flower but the conflict is that the baby isn't born yet. :)

So here's my blocking so far for the shot. I've got quite a few weeks to work on this so it may change a bit between now and the end of the shot. :)

Class 4 Week 6

Holy Tomatoes! It's already Week 6 and halfway through the 4th class! :D This is going by crazy fast, seriously. But this week in class, we are starting into the meat of acting. We had to search all over the internet to find dialogue clips from either movies or television shows that we can animate one person acting to. Then after I get graded for this week I'll know which one of these 3 shots that I'll actually block out and do for next week.

So, here are the 3 clips I found:

After finding the clips, I had to listen to them hundreds of times to get a feel of what was really going on in the shot. I especially had to listen for the "subtext" of each one. Then I went and tried to act these shots out to get some video reference. These are the best takes of each three.

Then I made VERY rough sketches of the ideas that I want to get across. I kept these extremely simple because I didn't want to a lot of extra work planning every little detail when I'm only going to pick one of these in the end.

But wait! There's more! 

The real highlight of my week was this past Saturday. I had to privilege to spend the day with Ed Hooks, author of Acting for Animators, and take his masterclass. This was an event that I had been waiting months for, and thanks to the help of Brian Phillips, MG Collective, and Heartland Truly Moving Pictures, we were able to make the event a huge success! I was so humbled and grateful to spend the day with and learn from such an inspiring person.

And I apologize for the "acting errors" in my planning and video reference. :) I finished my assignment before I went through his class, but trust me I'll fix it before I got into blocking!

Happy Animating!

Class 4 Week 5

Sooooo this week has been fun. I've had to take out some parts that were just too busy and then polish polish polish. Basically put little dots all over my character and track those points to make sure they are smooth pretty arcs. :) After all that fun, I now have something that I could call final. Also this week is Halloween! So me and Jess carved pumpkins. I decided to carve Lightning Mcqueen into my pumpkin. Those are also below! Enjoy

Frame by Frame

My pumpkin!

Jess and I with our pumpkins! She carved a picture of her and her recently lost dog named Toby.

Class 4 Week 4

So this week has been pretty fun. I've added a lot of little things to my shot and my mentor wants everyone to be in spline as well. So I tried to take control of everything I possibly could so when I switched to splines, there would be no surprises. :)

So far things are working well but I'm still noodling around to try to get it just right. The final version is due next week and will be up then.

Frame by Frame

By the way, check out some of the parts in frame by frame. :) I had fun with squash and stretch in parts. 

Class 4 Week 3

So this week I got some great critique once again from Malcon Pierce from Animation Home School. We worked out some issues I had with my shot and made some changes. Also after making those changes I went back and checked with my mentor if I was on the right track. Overall I think the shot is starting to turn out nicely! Now I just need to start noodling things around and working out all the "little" things. :)

Enjoy!

 

Frame by Frame

Class 4 Week 2

So this week I've got my blocking done. My mentor so far has really been great. He liked my idea and my planning from last week with just a couple changes. So I took those and set all of my poses. I also have a tutoring session with Malcon Peirce this week to go over this shot. Next week I'll have my blocking plus done and more of this shot finished! :)

Class 4 Week 1

Its finally the start of acting! This past week started Class 4 - Introduction to Acting. I'm really stoked about getting into the performance side of animation now. My mentor is a guy named Ray Chase who is a Senior Animator at Reel FX. For those who might not know, Reel FX is a studio down near Dallas, TX that does a lot of commercial and even feature work. Recently, they have been responsible for the new Looney Tunes shorts and as well as Open Season 3.

Ray is an awesome guy, I met him also this past week in our Q&A. I'm really looking forward to this term and being able to pump out some great animation!

Now onto my shot.

This assignment is my pantomime shot. I have to create a shot within 250 frames that uses acting WITHOUT dialogue. I also have to have 2 contrasting emotions in the shot as well, for example happy to sad or patience to anger.

For my shot I have a very confident barber that messes up a haircut. So my contrasting emotions will be confidence to devastation.

Here is the set up and characters for my shot. :) And before you ask, yes I'll put pants on the guy in the chair. 

Here are sketches for the basic plan of the shot. Sorry for the bad quality of my sketches, I had some issues with my scanner and I had to improvise with my webcam.

And finally, here is my video reference I'm using for the shot as well.

Next week I'll have my blocking posted! :)

Class 3 Progress Reel

I have officially made it through Class 3! This also marks the halfway point for a very short 18 month journey through Animation Mentor. I've got coming up only 3 more shots to work on from here to the end. Next term is Intro to Acting and I personally think it's where the real animators are separated from the  rest.

A quick recap of the past 9 months:

This has honestly been one of the hardest things I've ever had to go through. I've completed the Eagle Scout Award with the Boy Scouts of America, which is a task that not many people can say they have done. It took a lot of time and effort, spending many hours over the course of 5 years. Until now, that was the hardest thing I had ever had to stick with and complete. Animation Mentor has topped that by far! AM is definitely getting intense and is a day in, day out, kind of affair. Everyday I have to work at it to constantly get better. But this is a thing that will never end. AM teaches people to get into the "lifestyle" of being an Animator. I've said since the beginning of this, that "Animator's are born." It was a quote I heard from the wonderful Victoria Tripp at AM. I definitely believe this and can see it unfolding as I go through the program. But, I've learned a ton over the past 9 months, and have the sketchbooks full notes to show it! :) I'm very blessed to have the opportunity to be here at Animation Mentor and have my family to thank for making it possible. Animation Mentor is not only a school, but a whole community of some of the greatest people on the earth. They are a family that looks out for each other. I've heard time and time again that the Animation industry is really small. After talking and connecting with people in the industry I can see that's true. I haven't talked to a professional yet that didn't know another professional I know or a Mentor at AM. Overall, I am super excited to use what I've learned so far at Animation Mentor to be the best Animator I can be and work my way into the industry. Just one more step closer to my dreams.

Now for Class 3, here is my progress reel all nice and rendered. It has all of my work starting with Class 3 and working back to the very beginning.

Class 3 Week 11

Its the end of the term! :) My last assignment is turned in and now I'm just waiting to start into acting! This week I had to completely finish my mechanical bull shot. This next week I have to render up my progress reel and turn that in. Then I'm off to Class 4 - Introduction to Acting. Also, after this next week I'll be on a break for a week. Here's my final shot for Class 3:

Frame by Frame

Class 3 Week 10

Hey so its another week down! Its crazy to think that in about 2 more weeks I'll be HALFWAY done with Animation Mentor. :/ Its sad too. But this week I continued to flesh out my new bull shot. We had a sub this week because Pete was caught up in Hurricane Irene. Greg Kyle was our substitute this week for both our critiques and our Q&A. He's currently an animation supervisor at Laika Studios who is responsible for the movie Caroline. Greg personally has graduated from Sheridan and worked at ILM for a while on a few movies before going to Laika. In our Q&A we got to talk to some of the interns there at Laika, who were also all Animation Mentor graduates!

Well this isn't the final version of my assignment. We have an extra week for polish this time. So next week you'll see my final shot, but this is how its coming along so far. ;)

Frame by Frame

Class 3 Week 9

It's finally my favorite week of the term! :D IT'S WEEK NEIN! lol (go here to get the joke)

Anyway back to work, this week I had notes from my mentor to change the ending of my shot to have Stewie get his big head stuck in the bull horns and then have the bull fling him out of the shot. Well I fleshed this idea out and then on Thursday night had an awesome Tutoring session with Malcon Pierce, an Animator at Disney. After seeing my shot and getting notes from Malcon, I decided to start new and go with a fresh idea. From the beginning, I wanted this shot to have a mechanical bull that started out slow and boring and then got wacky. My old idea did that, but not in a very entertaining way.. Anyway this past weekend I took about 24 hours, almost straight through, and reblocked out my shot. Now I've got it to the point where I can turn it in as blocking plus.

Overall I'm really happy with the way that this new idea is going and starting to flesh out. Some of my favorite parts of this is between frames 170 and 180. :) Also I really wanted to play with pushing the poses past where I have before, and also stretch things farther than before.

Also some of you wanted a version that you could "frame by frame," I'll post a version on my dropbox for you all as well from now on. 

Frame by Frame

Class 3 Week 8

So its week 8! :) I've got a pretty good start on my next shot and things are looking pretty good. This past week, I had the pleasure to find out that I was one of two winners of the Visual Effects Society's Douglas Trumbull Scholarship! VES is very well known in the film industry and I'm still in shock that they decided that I fit their criteria for the scholarship. This really means a lot to me and will help me focus on school more and be able to reach my goal of animating for feature films.

You can read up a little more about the Visual Effects Society and the scholarship here.

I just want to thank again the Visual Effects Society, just in case they might see this blog post. ;) 

But now for animation, here is my blocked out shot for this week:

Class 3 Week 7

Ok so now I'm back from vacation, had some really good times and would recommend any family to go to Gatlinburg, TN at least once!

But this week I had to recover from the bad previous week and also plan out my next shot. So I was able to take what time I had after vacation to polish up my Spy shot into the final version. Below you'll find out how it turned out.

Now I'm alright with how it turned out, but I was ready to take the lessons learned from this shot and put them towards my 3rd and final shot for Class 3! :)

My next shot will have a fat character riding a mechanical bull. Over vacation I was able to spend a lot of time drawing and thinking about this shot and getting a good plan! 

The look and style of the character. (colors will be changed in the final version, the brown leather runs into his red pants :/ )

And also is my video reference for the shot as well. 

Class 3 Week 6

Week 6 and it's halfway! This post is reallly late but I needed to post it up anyway to keep the trend going. :) This week was a busy week because I was getting ready to go on vacation with my fiance's family down to Gatlinburg, TN. So a lot of my time was taken up and it reflected in my grade. But this week was to work on my blocking plus version of my shot. Below you will find that. :)

Class 3 Week 5

Ok so this week has been pretty fun. I started off blocking my shot like I had planned in my planning. But then I wanted to change up the camera angle to make it less cliche. So after many tries, I finally have what is below. This may looked like spline, but it actually is my blocking. This week we had a lecture where a guy from Pixar showed us his workflow. He starts his shots with "clamped" tangents. So I decided to try this in his footsteps.

Enjoy!

Class 3 Week 4

This week was pretty busy with getting home from San Francisco and trying to catch up on everything. I had to finish up and polish my T-ball animation and also plan out my next shot. So low and behold... here is the final version of my T-ball animation.

And now, my next shot. What I want to do is have a Spy/Burglar in a museum trying to get some kind of award. But he has to dodge security and fight some lasers in order to get it. :o) 

My sketches for the shot. Mainly some key poses I want to come across. (Sorry for the bad quality, my scanner wasn't working this week)

Here is my video reference for the shot. 

Class 3 Week 3

Ok so this post is about a week late, but here is the reason why. :) My fiance (Jessica) and I went out for the Animation Mentor BBQ this past weekend!

While there we got to meet a bunch of awesome people and have tons of fun. We also were able to go to not only the AM office, but also to Dreamworks, Pixar, and ILM. It was a very amazing and humbling experience. I just cannot wait to be in the industry and work out there in San Francisco. Really assuring that the AM community is made up of some of the best people alive! I love all of them and I love Animation Mentor.

Here are some pics to recap just a portion of the trip. If you have me on Facebook, then you can see the rest.

Walt Disney Museum

Pixar

Bobby "Boom" Beck!

Now for the make up... Here is my assignment from a couple weeks back. This is my blocking plus version of the animation.

Class 3 Week 2

Already done with week 2! It's been a rough week filled with lots of stuff. But after a couple nights of no sleep I finally got my blocking done for my T-ball animation. :o)

I hope you enjoy!

Class 3 Week 1!

So I'm already done with the first week of the new term! I'm now in Class 3 - Advanced Body Mechanics and my new mentor is Pete Paquette from Blue Sky (creators of Ice Age, Rio, etc). Pete is a really cool guy and tells it how it is. I like that and really like that he will grade my work hard and make me work harder. You can find his website here.

So this term starts out by giving us a choice. We can either do what's called an "Animjam" or Anim Exercises. The Animjam is basically a series of 3 cut shots that will flow together to either make one big shot or a little short story. The Anim Exercises are basically the same 3 shots but each have a different theme, character, and point. I'm actually going to do the Anim Exercise. It took me a while to decide, but I want to have the ability to do different types of shots to change up the characters I can work with. 

My first exercise is going to feature a little kid playing T-ball. Here is the character design and description of the shot. 

Also below is my planning sketches for the shot and my video reference also for the shot. A couple things that I think can really sell this shot is making sure to show the weight of the bat and the looseness of his helmet on his head. 

That's all for my planning. My blocking for this shot is due by the end of this week and I'll be sure to post it up here. Also remember I'm on twitter if you want to follow. 

Class 2 Week 12 - Progress Reel

WHOO! Its the end of the term! It's a happy time and a sad time at the same time. I'm glad that I've finished Class 2 and am ready for the next term, but I'm also sad to leave Kevin as my mentor. He was definitely a great guy and great teacher. I've learned even double what I learned in Class 1. There were a lot of "Ah Ha" moments in this class and there wasn't an assignment that I didn't learn from. I'm definitely starting to become more confident with body mechanics and definitely can't wait to see what I can come up with for Class 3! So after some hard work and rendering, I've got my Class 2 Progress Reel up. Enjoy!

Just a recap, this is a compilation of all of my animation from Class 1 & 2. 

Also if your a fan of Twitter, you can follow me at http://www.twitter.com/chaseanimation

I will be continuing to post up all of my assignments week by week up here on my blog! :o)

Class 2 Week 11

So I'm a little late posting this, but I've been working hard on my progress reel that you'll see in my next post. But here is the finished version of my Dance assignment after 4 weeks. :o)

Class 2 Week 10

We're already in week 10! Whoo! I've polished out a lot of my shot this week. On the other hand, I've also learned a ton of stuff that I wish I knew before this assignment. This week's lecture had Rick O'Conner speaking who is the lead animator for ILM (creators of Rango, Star Wars, Spiderman, etc.). He really gave me a new way of analyzing video reference and exactly how to block out a shot. This realization along with my attempt to actually learn how to dance like in my animation, helped me see that part of my animation was wrong and didn't feel right. So next week, I'll be "reblocking" some of the beginning and the end so that, mechanically, it works and feels better.

That being said, here's my assignment so far this week :o)

Class 2 Week 9

Ok so last week was a good week for my blocking. I did really well in the grading portion and made this week a little easier. But this week I moved my shot from blocking into blocking plus.

Here is my assignment this week:

Also a classmate this week opened my eyes to a new theme song for the 9th week of every term. So this is officially the end of Week NEIN! 

Happy Animating!

Class 2 Week 8

So here we are on the home stretch, of class 2. This week I had to block out my dance assignment. I've got to say this is probably the most "blocked" any of my assignments have ever been. But the sad thing is, this will be my last animation until next term.

Still, I'm pretty happy with the way that this animation is starting to turn out. Lets just hope it stays like that when I go into splines.

Here's my blocking:

Class 2 Week 7

So this week I had a lot to do. I had to polish and finish up my gum assignment and as well start to plan my next animation. So below you'll see my final stepped in gum animation.

My next animation is going to finally use a full character with arms and legs, Stu. I've decided to do a dance for my assignment. It's going to be a mix of a couple different dances that you'll see in my reference video. Also below I've got my sketchbook pages with some of my key poses I want in my animation.

Class 2 week 6

Wow, its already half way through the second term... It really goes by fast! But first off I just want to say how wonderful Animation Mentor really is. Many people think its just a really awesome animation school that can get you places, but it's really much more. Animation Mentor is a community of some of the best and brightest people in the world. I want to personally thank the staff back in the offices at AM for their heartfelt card they sent me this past week. I appreciate it very much and if you are reading this, you'll be happy to know that my father is doing much better! This kinda thing just reaffirms to me that I am in the right place and Animation is the path for me to go.

So this past week I had to take my shot with Stu stepping in gum out of blocking and into blocking plus. So, here it is!

Next week I'll have the finished version of this and my planning for my next assignment :)

Class 2 Week 5

Ok here we are at week 5 already... wow. Well this past week has probably been one of the hardest weeks I've ever had at Animation Mentor. Not just because of the animation, but last weekend my father went into the hospital and laid in ICU in critical condition almost all week. My family and I were preparing for the worst, but later in the week he finally pulled out of it and got off life support. He's now awake and doing a lot better but still recovering some. I just want to thank everyone who helped me through this and was just there for me when I needed it.

This past week we had to take our plan for our next shot and "block" it out. So here is my blocked form of my stepping in gum assignment. My mentor has already made notes on it and I will be toning back some of the posing in this shot. I wanted to push the posing as much as I could so my animation would feel more dynamic. I figured he would want me to push it back in the long run anyway. :)

Class 2 Week 4

Alright this week was the last and the first. My last week to work on the heel click assignment and the start of the next pick list assignment. So below will be my final heel click assignment posted up. My mentor didn't care for the environment on the heel click so I left that out, but will probably throw it back in there for my progress reel. Also for my next assignment I will be doing a character getting his foot (really) stuck in gum!

So for the gum thing, I want to have a guy that is walking along the side walk and get stuck in the stickiest gum ever! So much that he he pulls his leg clean off! I've got both my planning sketches and a pencil test for the animation. I had other things come up this week, so I didn't have enough time to make my own video reference but will still record some things for my own use when I go into blocking.

Here's the final heel click:

Here's my planning for the stepped in gum assignment:

Here's the pencil test:

Also I found some old 3D artwork from the past. 

You can find that here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/57387804@N05/

Here's just for you Despicable Me fans! :)

Class 2 Week 3

Ok this week we had to take our blocked version of our assignment and take it further into to "blocking plus." There are however quite a few differences between my shot now and what it was last week. It's still a heel click, but I've added the environment, change the foot he leads off of out of the landing, and completely changed the ending settle. Also I've reworked all of the arcs so it looks cleaner and prettier.
Hope you like it.

Here's my re-block:



Next week I have to polish this assignment and also plan my next one... which just a teaser... will be a guy without arms stepping in gum. :)


Enjoy!

Class 2 Week 2

So this week I had to take my plan and start to animate it. This week has been pretty simple and I'm feeling good about my blocking.

I was basically going for something like this. Ballie is so excited that he cant contain his energy and jumps and clicks his heels.

Here's my blocking for the heel click assignment:

Enjoy!

Class 2 Week 1

Ok so its a new term! :) YAH! To kick it off right, my question was answered on the weekly Video news for the whole school! So everyone got to see my picture and here what Bobby Beck, the founder of the school, had to say about my question. Very cool stuff!

But anyways, for our assignment this week we had to pick an animation from a list to do for the next 4 weeks. So this week was to "plan" out the entire assignment by shooting video reference and drawing thumbnails. The next few weeks will be "blocking" out my assignment, re-The one that I chose to do was the "heel click" animation. My original choice was to do a riverdance but decided against that...

Here is my video reference for the shot that I'm doing.

And here are my thumbnails.

Class 1 Week 11

Ok so its finally at the end of the first term! :) It been a crazy ride and awesome at the same time. This last week was probably the toughest and this assignment was the toughest as well. I still am unsure about the final version, but I only have so much time on it. I could spend another week or 2 just fixing things and making it look, and even more importantly, "feel" right. But, I am happy to be done with the first terms assignments and am ready to move on to body mechanics!!

So this past week we were supposed to finish up our personality walk and add a 3/4 perspective on it. So here is what my final assignment turned out to be:

Also, this week, we had to create another pose that showed "balance" on one foot.

And here are my sketches for that pose.

Class 1 Week 10

So this week, we finally get some free reign of creativity in our assignment. We have 50-100 frames to make another walk cycle but with some personality. So of course, I try to make it as hard on myself as possible and find some crazy reference video to pull a walk out of.

Here's the reference that I used:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/15602810/Personality%20Walk%20Ref.mp4

Now this is a 2 week assignment and this week we just had to "block" the walk out. Here is my blocked version for this week.

We also had to create another pose for this week. In this pose, we had to show "exhaustion." Here's my pose for this week.

And here were the sketches for this pose.

Class 1 Week 9

Ok so after two hard working weeks, I've finished the walk assignment. This obviously is part 2 of the assignment we were given last week. A lot of animators say that the vanilla walk cycle is the hardest thing to do. Reason being, it is very subjective and different people have different opinions on what is really "basic." Well this is my interpretation of the vanilla (basic) walk. Also this week we had to make another pose that had to convey "concern."

My finished walk:

My pose:

Class 1 Week 8

Its already the end of Week 8.... wow. The first term is starting to wind down and we're finally getting into walks. So far this experience has been amazing! Animation Mentor is really where I need to be and I feel like the whole community has taken me in like family, because that is what they are, a big animation family. I believe animator's are born, and there are a very select group of people at Animation Mentor and everyone of them are special in their own way. Its awesome, and really a unique learning experience.

So this week is the start of our walks. We learned what really goes into walking and what takes place. We had to first submit this week a "blocked" version of a basic walk. Ok first, when I say blocked, it just has the most important poses in the animation--if you count there is 1 pose for ever 3 frames. And a "basic" or vanilla walk is a walk that is as plain as you can make it, with absolutely no personality. Then next week, we have to take this assignment and finish the rest of the frames and submit it once again.

Also for this week we had to make another pose to show "Physical Strength."

Here is my walk:



Here is the planning for the walk:

Here is my Pose for this week, Physical Strength:

Here is the plan for my pose:

Class 1 Week 7

So here we are, already done with Week 7 and on to 8. This past week probably has been my biggest challenge so far. This is one week I am glad I got an early start on as usual--I needed it. The assignment was to animate Tailor (the ball and tail rig) with 120 frames and at least 3 bounces. My spinoff was to have tailor jumping on a branch and run down the tree into a hole. Later in the week that turned into a love story where a girl version of tailor would be in the hole already trying to coax Tailor into the hole.

The first part I had to take care of was the "driving force," or the bouncing ball. Once that motion was polished and the way I wanted it to be, I could then start working on the tail. It took me a full day just to get a full pass on the whole tail done. It was a very frustrating day of trying to figure out how the overlap of the tail would look like--many times I had to get up and walk away from my computer for a bit to recompose myself. But once I finished the first pass it was down hill from there. I was able to clean the first Tailor up and add in the second girl Tailor. And even, I had a last minute pass through the entire animation thanks to the help of a friend in Class 2 to clean up the entire thing before it was submitted. Now I am very happy with the final results.

Finally, here is my assignment for this week:


Here was my initial plan from the beginning of the week:

Class 1 Week 6

Oh wow! It's already the end of week 6! That means I'm already over half way done with the first term! This week has been a real trip. Our assignment this week is to make an overlapping action animation with the pendulum rig that they gave us. It was interesting because this is the first week where we have more than one moving part to a character. But I tackled it one step at a time. I'm really happy with the way it turned out in the end, and was able to help out some of my classmates in the last couple days. :)

Here is my assignment for this week!

Here is my plan for the assignment.

Enjoy!

Class 1 Week 5

So it's week 5! :D This past week kinda seemed slow. I had a large chunk of my assignment done by Monday morning this week. But nonetheless, it was fun! This week's assignment was to create another ball bounce animation with one ball going through an obstacle course. Again we had a limit of 120 frames and it had to start at a stopped position and end at a stop (naturally). Also we had another pose to do this week. We had to convey, "devastation."

Here is my animation assignment this week:



The planning for the animation:

Here are my sketches for the devastation pose.

Here is my pose for this week.

Class 1 Week 4

Ok so this week our lecture was based around Timing and Spacing. These are probably some of the most important concepts I will learn all term. They said that even feature film animator's today still are learning all there is to know about timing and spacing. In the words of Grim Natwick (animator of Disney's "Snow White"),

"A-a-a-animation.....it's..a-a-all...in the timing...a-a-and in... the spacing......(long pause).....stay-y-y-n-nge...that the americans....were the ones to work this out..."

So that's it for ya. My assignment was to create two bouncing balls. One heavy and one light ball. For this, I made a bowling ball and a ping pong ball. Plus a little lever action. ;)

Here is my planning for the animation

Enjoy!

Class 1 Week 3

Ok so another week down! :) It seems like this is really starting to pick up and go by fast. So this week we had our first actual animation assignment to do. Also we had another pose to do this week. This pose was to show Excitement. Also go to see my first eCritique from my Mentor, Jon Collins (Pixar). All good words and remarks! :)

Here is my animation for this week and the planning for it.

This is the planning for my animation.

Here is my pose for this week to show excitement.

Here are the sketches for that pose.

Enjoy! :)