Class 2 Week 2: Blocking Stairs

You've seen the reference, now see the blocking animation!
Try humming the theme to The Dick Van Dyke show while watching it :)

Class 2 Week 1: New Class!

Class 2: Pyschology of Body Mechanics

No break this week!  But it was a glorious two days without homework.  Mostly involved recovery sleep.
Really excited about this next class - it's going to consist of only 3 assignments, spending four weeks on each one.  We're given a list of about fifteen actions to choose from, and my idea incorporates a few of them: walking down stairs, a side step, and for the hell of it, a bit of a walk at the end.  I've been waiting for a chance to use Dick Van Dyke for reference, and here's my perfect chance.  We're also encouraged to film ourselves acting out the movements, so here's my best go at being Van Dyke.

According to my previous mentor, I tended to be "subtle" in my animation and poses, and he encouraged me to really push my animation more.  Hopefully this is a good project to push things.  My new mentor Jeremy Cantor, comes from the live-action visual effects world of animation, so I'll be excited to add his perspective on things.

Class 1 Week 12: Revisions and Final Progress Reel

So this should have been an easy week.  The homework was simply, put together all your clips from the term and upload it to the website.  However, as my teacher says "change = pain" - so this week wasn't so easy.  I went back and read all the critiques from my Mentor, and went and revised every single assignment with the feedback i got.  Some are big changes, some are pretty small, but you can feel them all helping make the animation better.  And it was really interesting to revisit some of these first projects, and to feel so much more comfortable and confident now in tackling the animation.

Class 1 Week 11: Refined Walk and Finding Balance

Balance

A finished polished pass on my personality walk.  Also some poses on Balance.  This was a great chance to use some of the lunchtime figure drawings I've been doing at work over the past few months.

Class 1 Week 10: Personality Walk 1st Pass

Exhausted

The beginning of the end.  Another two week pass at this animation.  This is the blocking for a pretty open ended assignment - walk with personality.  I decided to do a guy sneaking around a corner.  There's a version of this where he also jumps over the opening and keeps walking off screen.  Luckily the school gives strict frame lenght limits, so I cut it down to just this.  I say luckily, because sleep is a rare commodity these days...

...see this weeks pose - Exhausted.

Class 1 Week 9: Walkcycle Refined

Concerned

The polishing pass.  Big trick on this one was getting it to work from both the front and the side.  A bit of side to side movement changes everything.  Really happy with how it turned out though.

The pose is to show Concern.  This is basically what I look like in the middle of the night on Saturdays doing homework at 3am.