Class 5 Week 11/12

So here we are! At the end of the term! :)

It's been a crazy busy class but really rewarding class. Brent Homman, from Disney, has been a huge help in my work. Definitely took advantage of his experience on Tangled with this last acting shot.

Here's my progress reel with the work from this class all the way to class 1. It also has the final for the two person dialogue shot I've been working on.

Class 5 Week 10

Another week closer to the end of the term! :) This is the first week of polishing for this shot. Basically going over and over trying to nit pick the crap out of this thing. Also get to get in there and add all the fun little details that most people will never even see.... but will "feel."

So this is the fun part! :) The final for this shot will be done next week.

Class 5 Week 9

So I'm finally in splines! Hooray. But I'm just polishing everything up now.

The lip sync is ROUGH! :) I know

The final version is due in a couple weeks so I've still got some time to polish this thing up.

Class 5 Week 8

So this week I'm still working out the main actions before I start polishing. It's still in stepped mode, so that explains the choppy-ness especially in the face. But most of the action is on 1s and 2s.

Next week I'll be going into spline and will start polishing! Also probably will have the start of the lip sync added as well. :)

Class 5 Week 7

So this week has been pretty fun with this shot. Just been setting more and more keys. So far the ideas are starting to come alive nicely. Just got more work to do on it. More things to try and refine.

Also this week we had yet another face pose to do.

Class 5 Week 6

It has been an awesome week for blocking! My mentor really liked the direction I was going in with my planning and had just a few notes on the direction for composition. I'm really excited to finally start seeing these characters come to life! :)

So here is my first blocking pass on this shot. There are still many weeks to come to refine this even more!

Also this week we had to do one more face pose :)

Class 5 Week 5

I'm soooo excited to get started on a new shot! My two person dialogue is finally here. So I chose to do the "Are you happy" clip from my three clips last week. Here's my planning for the shot.

Also for my video reference, my awesome fiance was able to help me out with the female portion of the acting. YAH! :) by the way, check out her cakes, they are sweet! http://www.jessicasamazingcakes.com

And finally, here's the layout animation for this shot! Thanks to Ben Delnat for modeling the inside of the Pixair airliner ;)

Class 5 Week 4

So I'm done with my one person dialogue shot and now have to start thinking about my two person shot. This week we had to go out and find some dialogue clips from movies or shows. For those looking at this that might have to do this in the future, I would recommend using www.movieclips.com :)

Here are the best three clips that I found to use for my animation.

Also this week we had to do one last face pose.

Enjoy!

Next week I'll have picked out one of the three clips and will have it all planned out. :)

Class 5 Week 3

So here it is! Finally I have my first dialogue shot finished. Now, mind you, it still needs to be touched up a bit, he needs different clothes and hair, etc. But the animation is about there! Now it's just on to another dialogue shot. This time with two characters.

Also this week we had to do two more face poses.

Class 5 Week 2

This week I had some great notes from my mentor on my shot. This was the first time he looked at both the body of the shot and the blocking that I did for last week. He gave some notes for me to change on the shot like how he enters and exits. Also some notes on the facial animation and the overall emotions in the shot. But here is how it all turned out! :)

Also this week we had to find 2 face poses from the internet and recreate that pose on Bishop. Here are how those poses turned out.

And here is my shot from this week.

Next week, my final for this shot is due and will be up! 

Class 5 Week 1

I'm back! :) Its been a great holiday break, but I'm so excited to be back in the swing of things!

Now I'm in Class 5 at AM. My mentor this term is an awesome guy named Brent Homman. He's an animator from Disney. He's worked on the movies Tangled and Bolt. Also he's worked on the new short, Prep and Landing. Some of you may remember a short film he worked on called A Gentleman's Duel.  But currently he's working on a new film by Disney called Wreck It Ralph.

We wasted no time getting started in Class 5. We had to do the planning and blocking for our facial animation of the shot we left off with. So here's the fruit of my labors this week and the newest version of my "Interrupting" shot!

Sketch books to show the planning for the facial. Both the phonetics of the dialogue and some key facial poses I wanted to try.

This is the dialogue from my shot written out. Above that is the dialogue written Phonetically, much like a road map for my animation. What's circled in red is the more important shapes I have to hit and the blue is second important.

Here's video reference for the facial as well. I explored different reactions I could use. But this is one that I probably took the most out of and will study even more in the next couple weeks.

And finally, here is how my shot looks now. Still have two more weeks to polish and fix the lip sync.

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.