Class 3 - DONE!!

Another semester at Animation Mentor has come and gone. It has been a quick and interesting summer term. I feel this is the class where I realized I want to be an animator. I put so much work into this semester, more than the previous ones. I must have logged about 20 hours a week for the last 3 to 4 weeks of this final scene. I was determined to get it just right. It's still not there, but I'm working on it.

This scene will not be COMPLETE complete until week 3 of Class 4. I still have a few weeks of E-crits to get it right. One thing my mentor Dana said to work on was the subtleties. In her final E-crit, she said I sort of went for some difficult choices because the character interacts with the table so much. I need to show weight when he leans on the table or makes a gesture on it with his finger. I did the best I could with the time I had before having to upload it to the final progress reel. I see what she was talking about and I got a few of them taken care of.

So on to Class 4: Advanced Acting. In Week 4, we do another dialogue scene but this time with TWO characters. This is going to get interesting.

But for now, I get a week long break from school.

2nd Assignment - *FINAL*

I am done with my scene...for now. Class 3 is coming to a close. It has been a HUGE learning experience. These past three months I have learned so much, not just in animation but with the Maya program. So here is my final scene for Class 3:

In Class 4 we will start to polish this even more and add in facial controls to give it more experssive...uh...expressions.

After next week, we get a week long break. I am not sure what to do during that week. Should I avoid animation all together so I can recharge my batteries? Or should I keep chugging along and working on other things like modeling, rigging, and lighting? I really want to give this scene some real ominous lighting. I have the books. We will see what happens.

A Bit of F-U-N!!

So I've been experimenting and trying to learn new things in Maya. I have been sculpting and modeling figures and stuff. I tried rigging a rough model of Leonard but it was getting too complicated. It didn't help that it was the middle of the night and I was really tired. So that didn't go so well. I am still working on "The Hindenburger" episode here and there. It's always lurking there on the back burners. Leonard and Merlin will be needing a plane of somesorts for this episode so I tried to make one. It's a bit much for what I had envisioned, but it may just work out. Here is a model rotation of what I did in a few hours.



So once I finished that up, I had another idea. I sort of got the idea from what I remember seeing in "Kung Fu Panda." When I first saw the trailer, one of the scenes that cracked me up was when Po landed on Tai Lung's head and they showed it in slow motion. In traditional 2D, that would have been very difficult because you have to draw all those extra frames moving the character at a fraction of an inch. I realized in computer animation, all you have to do is add more frames between the keys and you get the same effect.

So here's what I came up with...

Poor Bishop.

"Crazy" Week 10

The semester is almost up. I just finished week 10 and starting week 11. The bad news: I didn't put that much time into my scene this week. It's just been a weird week. The good news: I'm on vacation and now have plenty of time for my scene. I decided to take my last week of vacation for the year during the last week of this assignment. I really want to get this right so I need to focus. So it looks like long days and nights here in the studio.

So here's my shot for this week. I used my mentor's notes as best I could. I added more overlap in the body and really tried to lead with the hips. I still need to work on the hands at the end. But all in all, it is coming together.

Week 3 - First Spline

Here's my first pass at splining. I was working on this for quite some time when I realized it didn't have to be perfect. So I did my best. I still have two more weeks to get it just right.