(Class 3) Week 3 - Advance Body Mechanics

Hello Animators of the world! And visitors of course :),

This is week 3, and things are going really well, I think spending that time on blocking really paid off, as it seems moving to smoothing which I kinda like to call it blocking plus :), really easy, and I didn't really have to change much. My new mentor made some awesome critiques though, really getting us to push those poses into more dramatic and fun, he also went through with us the importance of curves and poses, going through some of Disney's best 2D animation and how each pose is pretty much like a painting on canvas, which really inspired me to make sure I make every key pose a pose that leads the user's eye towards the expected direction.

I definitely felt like I am heading towards a good work flow here, for me blocking plus is still keeping with the key frames, and inbetweens, but not offsetting anything, that way you can still adjust timing in places needed, or even adjust poses when the director changes his mind :). Another thing also since you have things in smooth (spline curves), you can really start seeing the timing of your animation, I know at this stage, every time I think something is fast and snappy enough, it turns out not to be even close.

Again have a look at my smoothing stage of the first shot of my AnimJam, hope its ok with my mentor :), but I know there will always be changes.

Cheers for popping over,
Meng

(Class 3) Week 2 - Advance Body Mechanics

Hey Hey Hey!

Its week 2 of class 3! So the planning is done and now its down to blocking out the first of three shots that will be connected together as a Anim Jam!

So I went ahead and started blocking and doing the things that I didn't in class 2, by putting in a lot of key frames, almost to the point of it so close to the video reference, I know its not the ideal thing to do, I with all the things I tired in last class that didn't work, and seeing how everyone was pretty much copying the video reference identically, I thought I would give it a try this time. Of course there are some parts of the animation where I will have to make it up on my own :).

My new mentor is very kewl, he is really getting us to push poses, really looking forward to his critiques. Have a look at my blocking and you will see that I put a lot more key frames that I did in the past.

Again cheers for dropping by,
Meng

(Class 3) Week 1 - Advance Body Mechanics

Hello Again my awesome Animators!

First week of advance body mechanic! New mentor and new class, I have a good feeling about this class, I know for one I really want to push my planning and blocking process, I feel that was something I lacked doing in class 2, and I really want to practise it and get it right.

Before coming to this class I spend some time on deciding what I want to do with the Anim Jam, I figured it would be fun to try it out :). I ended up coming up with an idea for a construction guy getting his hammer magnitized, I had some other ideas before hand involving various things like bouncing balls and giant metal rolling balls! Crazy!

Have a look at the planning, and you will get the idea for my Anim Jam :).

Cheers for dropping by as always,
Meng