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!