AM: Basic Foundations

Finished up the first session of Animation Mentor with Greg - who was awesome! I'm surprised at how much I learned in the past 12 weeks. Its been really crazy with the Mortal Kombat crunch - which is why its been awhile since my last post... but here are all the assignments we had combined in one video.

and the music is for Denny.



(the compression is terrible - I'll look into some other options later to get a better quality video up)

AM Week 7: One Legged Jump

This week's assignment we had the choice of animating a ball with a tail or a one legged jump. I ended up doing both assignments, but found the jump to be more of a challenge - and I felt like my animation just wasn't working right - so this is the one I turned in for critique. If my goal was to get a good grade, I probably would have turned in the tail.

And this coming week, we move on to walk cycles!

The Flip and the Crab Digger

The past few weeks I was looking at getting a cam corder to record reference footage, and a friend of mine recommended The Flip. So far I really love it - is small and easy to use, and with the built in USB, easy to transfer movies to my PC, and saves in avi format at 640*480 resolution. Not much bigger than an IPod and holds about an hour of video. I don't think I'd use this as a primary camera for shooting video or home movies, but for animation reference - its great... plus I can carry it in my pocket wherever I go - never know when I might happen across a cool walk cycle when I'm out and about.

I took it to the beach with me this morning when I took Gally out for her walk. Even though we've lived by the lake for almost two years - she still digs for crabs like when we were in CA. If there are any crabs in Lake Michigan - she'll be the one to find them.

AM Week 6: Aren't you glad I didn't say bouncy ball

This week we had to animate a pendulum swing to practice overlapping action and follow through. I started out with just the plain vanilla pendulum - start and stop with some follow through - but after a recent (re)viewing of Raiders, I got this idea.

Once again this is pre-crit work - there are a couple spots that bother me that I'm plannin on cleaning up when I have a bit of time.

and now back to crunch crunch crunch crunch....

AM Week 5: and Even More Bouncy Balls

So for this weeks assignment we had to send a bouncy ball through an obstacle course. The ball starts still and under its own motivation, takes the initial jump. This was an exercise to show the principles of squash and stretch, as well as anticipation. Its been tough the past few weeks to get the assignments where I want with some crazy hours at work crunchin' on the new Mortal Kombat vs. DC game at Midway.

AM Week 4: More Bouncy Balls

I forgot to add last weeks assignment of another Stu pose. This time we had to sketch an excited pose and recreate it using the Stu character.


So for week 4, the assignment was to animate 2 different balls. - one heavy and one light. Here's my pre-critique work:

I doubt I'll post every assignment with the post-crit changes until the very end of this session - then I'll make a composite video of all the stuff I learned.

AM Week 3 - Bouncy Ball

This has been a really busy week, so I didn't have time to get this posted last weekend. Last weekend my family was here and we spent most of our time doing the whirlwind tour of Chicago. Had a great time, and needed a little breather from work and school and just sitting in front of the computer for hours on end.

The assignment for this week was to animate a simple ball bounce - like a basketball or soccerball. No squash and stretch this time - just work on the basic timing and spacing.

Sketch n' Pose: AM Week 2

Our first assignment for AM was to get outside and draw. I spent the afternoon at the beach near my apartment and attempted to sketch out some guys playing volleyball. I quickly found that I was super rusty when it came to gesture drawing. After a few pages of sketches, we had to pick a favorite pose and try to recreate it using the "Stu" character. Here's the result!


I'm really excited to get a critique on these to see how I can push these to make the pose even stronger. Will be interesting to see what kind of suggestions I get and make the before and after crit comparison.

On a side note - there was an AVP pro volleyball event at the beach this weekend - and I noticed a huge difference in how those guys serve compared to the average guys in a pickup game I sketched.

Animation Mentor Week 1

I can't believe my last blog update was over two years ago, but hopefully things are going to change. Last week I started Animation Mentor, and my intentions are to keep my blog updated with stuff I'm learning. My mentor this session is Greg Rizzi - an animator at Blue Sky, and an AM grad.

The first assignment is to do some gesture sketches, pick a favorite - and then pose the Stu character. Once this is done I'll be posting it here too.

I'm really excited to finally start - I feel like I've been treading water since the DNA days.