Class 6 Week 5: Vampire Polish

Snail cycles at work were demanding my attention - so no time for Po this week I'm afraid.  However, that meant I was able to take one more polishing pass on my Vampire shot.  Literally went back to my original vidref and redid the core body movements.  Then started loosening up the animation and keeping it alive.  I had lots of joints that I had animated on just one axis, most noticeably on the head.  Still a few things I want to iron out on this, but I feel it was a good step forward this week

Class 6 Week 4: Po LipSync

My next (and possibly last) shot here at AM is going to be unique.  My mentor, being a supervising animator at DreamWorks, encouraged me to try using one of the DW rigs this time round.  So, this week I started building the lipsync for Po.

It's a method our mentor suggested, to lay in the lipsync prior to animating all the big body/acting movements.  So far I'm a fan.  Unfortunately, I ran into some pipeline tech issues over the weekend and will have to iron those out before I take my 2nd pass on this shot.

Also thought I'd share the video clip I'm pulling this line from.  It's "Year One" - not a great movie, but great for Jack Black lines.  I needed something that had him overacting a decent bit (while not overdoing it Tenacious-D style).  I actually had about 8 great clips from this movie to choose from, and some that got throne out for being R-rated, but would have been hilarious.

Class 6 Week 3: Vampires and Reference

So, went back and started working on another project, needed some time off from the 2 char shot.  My wife had a great idea on how to spin this shot and give it some personality.  So he's now a vampire.  It was really fun to give this guy some specifics to his character/personality.  I also like that it's a little inside joke on the line, since a vampire puppet is a story point in the movie the line is from - Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Did spend a little time on the 2 char shot.  What you'll see is a new char design for the businessman.  Also some tighter camera work and framing.  Also starting to play around with a new idea for the last shot - something that feels a little less over-animated.

We also had to come up with dialog and reference for our next project this week.  Below are the audio clips and video reference for my ideas.  I'm going to be animating these to Po at work, so I'm really excited about that chance to play with a really really fun character.

Class 6 Week 2: Redo's

I felt like my approach on the big project last class just wasn't working.  A lot was trying to cram it it to fit the 3-shot/360-frames requirement.  With the sky the limit, I took a new pass on this with a new establishing shot and basically re-cutting and re-framing the entire piece.

I even went back and redid vid-ref for this project.  Hard to imagine I was putting on that coat to film about 2 months ago...I used this as a test to see how it would play breaking up my shots.

Class 6 Week 1: Polishing & Portfolio - Last Class!

So, this is it.  The final class at AM.  Should be a great time - I have a great mentor from DreamWorks, Sean Sexton, who looks like he's not going to pull any punches.  After having a week or two off, I'm excited to get back to my old shots and polish them up.

We now have to also complete at least one new project during this class.  Sean had some ideas on how we can take a unique pass at that...should be exciting :)