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