Class 5 Week 10: Refinements and Other Niceities

 Lots and lots of work into this week's assignment.  The goal is to have it final and ready to go - that way the next week (yikes! only one week left) can be just the final little polishing touches.

Made some decently big changes in the timing, giving the Sign Guy's first take to have another beat to breath.  Also kept motions, such as turns or looks, moving across the cuts.  Cutting on the action really helped it feel like one continuous action again.  

Other touches are adding in weight to the props, overlap/drifting on holds, refining the mouth shapes, and not for nothing - the Briefcase Guy was always missing ears previously :)

Still not sold on the Briefcase Guy's final pose/action.  I feel that I've done the "timid jump" too many times to repeat it again...planning to experiment with him holding more still.  I'll try to sell that pose with his expression, or possibly have him drop the suitcase....

Class 5 Week 9: 3rd Shot Redux

Due to the rig breaking, had to start from scratch on the 3rd shot.  Decent start :)

DreamWorks Animation Day!

A month back or so we had an Animation Day at DreamWorks.  It was the first time all the animators from both campuses were in one place at one time.  It was a fascinating day - we grouped up and made short films in the morning, then had Jeffery Tambor lead an acting master class, which was then followed (of course) with drinks.  Crazy day!  They just released the "Animation Class" photo :)

Class 5 Week 8: Two Steps Forward One Step Back

Made some great progress with my first two shots in this sequence.  Having some fun starting to bring these characters to life.  Unfortunately, my last shot ran into some technical issues that I'll have to suss out over next week. 

Class 5 Week 7: ReBlocking and Simplifying

Took several passes on each of these shots...each time going back and trying to get the shots down to their essence.  Also a lot of effort on trading the focus back and forth between the characters.  Started to think of it like a tennis match, each line lobbing the ball back to the other side of the net.

I still have a pool of actor "portraits" to keep pulling from for the expression assignments.

Class 5 Week 6: 3 Shots + 2 Chars Each = No Sleep

Really liking some of the moments starting to come out of this.  Especially adding the expressions in helps punch up those moments.  Also - this is officially the halfway point of the class!

Another expression this week...gotta love character actors for having great personality.