Assignment #2

Our next assignment consisted of the following two items:

Create a pose with Stu that displays "Excitement"

Create an animation between 50-100 frames of a ball (either basketball or soccer ball) bouncing.

So once again I pulled out the sketchbook and started cruising the web for excited looking people. I wanted to do something that wasn't cliche`. I had no idea how difficult this would be. I looked at everything! My favorites being:

Freeze frames of people dancing
Game show contestants
Sports celebrations (mostly touchdown endzone dances)

As it turns out, almost all of these options produced cliche` poses, OR poses that no longer made sense once there was no face or context involved. IE: A touchdown dance in a white void makes no sense, Stu just looked like he was having a seizure.

In the end, I had to go with a cliche` pose and try to do it the best that I could.

Ryan critiqued this pose thoroughly. I was concerned that the feet were similar to my last pose, and I did not want to fall into any bad habits, or just create the same thing over and over. He assured me that it was fine, and that a lot of animators have a 'tell', and sometimes they can tell each other's work apart by picking out these 'tells'. I thought that was really neat! The biggest issue with my pose was with the arms. They suffer from what is known as "twinning". As in, both arms are doing the same thing. Whereas if one was a fist, or slightly bent perhaps, the pose would be a lot more interesting and pleasing to the eye. Noted!

Next came the ball bounce. Not much to say about this other than it involved watching a LOT of youtube videos of basketballs bouncing! It even required me to blow the dust off of an old physics book! Ryan's critique of my ball bounce was great. He went through the animation frame by frame and identified an issue I would have never noticed. ESPECIALLY after staring at the thing for hours on end.

My ball bounce looked alright, but something didn't feel right and I couldn't place it. Ryan pointed out that on the frame right before impact, my ball was actually lower than it was on the frame directly AFTER impact. Which is backwards...the ball should be losing energy, not gaining it off the bounce. The apex of each bounce degraded as it should, but the spacing at the points of contact was whacked. I haven't fixed this yet, but will be soon for Assignment #3.

Speaking which, assignment #3 includes:

Revising the ball bounce from #2

Creating a new animation containing two balls. One light and one heavy. They both should bounce and come to a rest.

This will be an exciting exercise in weight, timing and spacing. I'm looking forward to giving it a go!

Just today I came across the website Animation Physics. I'll be referencing this for my ball revision and my new ball animation for sure!

As was discussed in the facebook group, animators try to exaggerate reality, but in order to break the rules, you need to know what they are. Animation Physics here I come!

Our first real assignment

Since I am writing this after the fact, you will be spared from most of my "The first class is almost here and I am so excited I cannot stand it!"

My mentor for Class 1 is Ryan Bradley. It appears as though he did some work on the latest Twilight movies...I am torn between being extremely impressed and also not wanting my friends to know. I've already had to disappoint my girlfriend by letting her know Ryan probably can't get her Twilight autographs. This all being said, Ryan is a vastly talented animator, as well as an incredibly down-to-earth nice guy. Very real, and very interested in our education!

So, the first assignment! We were given our first AM rig....Stu! Stu is a faceless humanoid creature with exaggerated extremities. We are learning about what does and what does not make a strong pose. Animation is nothing but moving from one pose to another right? Crappy poses = crappy animation. We were tasked with going out to a public place and sketching people that we saw. Trying to capture their weight/balance/etc. We then translated those sketches into poses on Stu. I found this intimidating at first. The sketching that is. I am a doodler, nothing more. So it has been a learning process, but I am getting better with every sketch and it gets easier and easier. Without further ado, Stu! (along with the sketches)

I ended up choosing the top pose, #11. I submitted this pose and received an informative e-critique from Ryan. Revisions were not required, but I learn best by doing, so I updated my pose, and boy, what a difference!

And here we go...

Hello and welcome to my blog, Animating Animation! This blog was born out of necessity. I began my education with Animation Mentor in the beginning of January and have since then been spamming facebook with everything from resources, to diatribes, to posting my classwork and general gushing about animation. It seemed prudent to avoid becoming "That guy" on facebook and organize it all here in a blog.

I find myself wishing I had started this before classes actually began, but no worries. You will notice a flurry of posts right off the bat as I play 'catch up' to get my blog current with my activities to date. This blog will be a place for me to track my own progress, but also, I hope it will become a resource and inspiration for my classmates, as well as any interested lurkers! I'll be posting my classwork,. my thoughts, as well as any pertinent animation related material I may come across.

To any of you AM students who began with me in the Winter '13 session, please be aware that we also have a very active and hugely supportive facebook group that has become a great place to ask questions, post work for critique, discuss lectures and Q&A's, etc. Do yourself a favor and come join us!

AM Winter 2013 on Facebook