(Class 2) Week 8 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hey There Fellow Animators!

So its week 8, and I thought I would really go all out on this one, I want to really improve on my last shot and really get it down this time for this assignment with the dance, the crazy thing is after getting a pretty harsh critique from my mentor last time, I feel even more motivated to try harder! I don't know why, so I really went for it this week and got my blocking reasonable quick, things are looking pretty good and I think I got all the key poses I need for the dance routine.

However when I look at how others are doing their blocking, I get the feeling that maybe I should have down more breakdowns to really tighten the animation up to the point where I can control it. Hopefully it turns out right this time around :), so here is the blocking, cheers again for dropping by on my log.

Cheers,
Meng

(Class 2) Week 7 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hello Animators of all Kind!

Welcome to week 7 of class two, OK so I manage to finish my drunken stumble but it needed a lot more work, and I think the critique really showed where I did wrong, as a personal goal I think I did OK on it, it was definitely something a lot better then what I did 5 years ago in Media Design :).

So just to point out the flaws in the animation, I didn't have enough overlap in the spine, I guess I am having difficulty putting it down in the poses, it something I have a understanding of on paper but once I start putting it in Maya and seeing the playblast something wasn't clicking so I am hoping to do much better on the next assignment, I am sure you will pick it out in the animation :).

To finish off this week we had one last animation to do, and I chose out of the pick list to do a little dance move, I wanted to move away from doing any break dance, hip hop, so I chose to do something semi-traditional I guess, I chose to do this Malaysian dance I found on you tube, its pretty neat, and I think its at the right difficulty level. My mentor says this one is gonna be a little challenging because the body movement is not so obvious and I will need to push the poses, I think I am up for that :(, if anything I know I love to push things and maybe too much at times.

So please take a look at the reference and final drunken stumble animation, and I will see you guys on the next post :).

Cheers,
Mengster.

(Class 2) Week 6 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hello Fellow Animators,

Ok so into week six we go! This week for me, was all about adding in more break down and turning things into spline. However I think I hit a snag this week, as I was having trouble figuring out the movement of the head, which you will see in the video :). So I tried doing something unique but it turns out it wasn't quite selling it with Dana. Basically when I have Stewie turn around to walk the other direction I have his head swing around, and because his head is so Big! It didn't look convincing or possible, and in many cases it looked like he would fall over easy.

The Second Dana mentioned was the head movement, they rotating up and down way too much, to the point where its not humanly possible, and I cam definitely see that once she mentioned it, man I wish I had eyes like that :). She mentions that the head yes should has no focus because he is drunk, but the problem was I made him too unfocused, and there should still be a hint of focus throughout the animation. So she showed us that there is actually a control switch you can turn on and off on the Stewie rig, that stops the head from rotating accordingly to the shoulder movements, kinda wish I knew about this earlier, but with mistakes we learn a lot :).

The third thing that Dana, mentioned was the way he got up from the bench, it was again not humanly possible to get up like that, it very strange when I first did it I thought it was fine, but now that Dana has mentioned it, it was so obvious! Again man I guess to see these things takes experience and understanding, again another lessons learnt, "If you can do it in the real world" chances are its not going to look convincing in the animated world no matter how cartoony.

So this week was pretty hardcore, I had a little too many mistakes that I will have to clean up for the next week. I have to say animation is not easy, and the joy of animating can be extremes! One minute the director will love where you are going, and you feel like you are on top of the world, the next minute you find out that is not there at all and you feel like your heart has been ripped out of your chest, I guess its part of it, and I think this course gets their student into that frame of mind before getting into the industry.

Cheers and see you next week,
Meng.

(Class 2) Week 5 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hello Animators and Bloggers,

So week 5 is the beginning of a new animation, again we had to pick out from a list of things to animate, but this time around we have a new rig called Stewie, which is essentially Ballie with a body and head, no arms yet.

What I chose to do is a little bit of a challenge, and that is the drunkard stumble, according to Dana this is tricky because the character has no real control over the movement of the body, there is no real sense of direction or control, I guess that's pretty much what trying to walk while you are drunk is pretty much like :).

So I made a video reference of my self, and did some rough thumbnails out to animate what I want. This time I am taking bits and pieces from different takes, I really want to try doing that instead of directly taking it off on take, I think this is something I will be doing in the future if I was to be animating something I know I can't do in real life ( which is leaping over buildings and levitating, but I still try every now and the ;) ). Also I am trying to keep my thumbnails to story telling poses, I have a feeling thats what thumbnails are meant to be, and they should be done quickly, I personally think that adding breaks down only really make sense when you are blocking in Maya, but drawing them out first may make sense too.

So have a look and see me do silly things yet once again, I think someone at the park thought I was crazy, as if I am not already :).

Cheers,
Meng

(Class 2) Week 4 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hello Animators of all kinds :),

So this is the last week for my first animation of Class 2, I think I got it smoothed out pretty well, but definitely learnt some important things along the way. I think the biggest thing was getting that timing down at the start, I had to re-adjust some of the timing, especially in the run phase, and I think my end results still had some timing flaws :(, my mentor felt the end part is like ballie jumped into water. But you learn from mistakes as everyone says, and for my next assignment, really going to try and nail the timing, I can see now why animators always say timing is the hardest thing to conquer, and its funny how things always need be faster then they are slower.

Here is my final finish work of the first assignment for Class 2. I have to admit I am definitely learning a lot about body mechanics in this class, I am still tyring to get my head around some things, however I get the feeling this is something that we learn more through experience and just doing a lot of animation with a lot of mistakes :P.

Cheers,
Meng

(Class 2) Week 3 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hello again my fellow Animators and Animation fans :),

This week, we moved on to splining our animation from week 2's blocking phase, I got some awesome notes from my fellow AM students and some great notes from Dana. I think the biggest thing that I learnt from Dana, was understanding how energy works in the body and the things people do to disperse it or exhaust it in their animation. Since I am making Ballie (The character I am using to animate with), leap off the wall and land at such a high height, and I didn't compensate for all the downward force, energy when he landed, so the weight of the landing didn't feel right. At first I thought it felt OK in my blocking, but after Dana pointing it out, I could understand where she was coming from. She advised me to make the landing recovery a little bit more longer, because the body is trying to catch all that downward force and energy, and you can't do that in an instant.

So I made those changes and made ballie land with both feet eventually landing, instead of what I had before which was having ballie land on one feet and then leaping on that same feet. There was also other things mentioned in Dana's notes which was to avoid "molding" the feet together, so you have a clear silhouette every time, and audiences would not get confused with which feet is in front, this was something again I didn't take heed of in the past, and lesson well learnt.

The final thing I changed also, was the camera angle, at first I wanted a few more from behind ballie, but it turns out you can't get a good view of the push off, and Dana believes that was one of the key components in the animation, and is something you can't obscure from the audience.

So in the end this week I learnt quite a lot, its amazing how these small subtle things and do so much in just 10 seconds of animation, I will keep posting as much as I can, I know sometimes I tend to forget :P.

Cheers,
Meng

(Class 2) Week 2 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

Hello Fellow Animators!

Ok so week two we started with our blocking, this time I was trying some new work flows that was introduced in the lectures, its definitely very interesting to see how a variety of people animate, and the most interesting was directly using splines when blocking, I can see how that can save time, and you will probably get a better sense of timing then say starting out in stepped, but I think in the mean time, because I am still learning I will keep with using the stepped method until I get a good solid hold on things.

I really understand now how 80% of the work in animation is pretty much in the blocking phase, getting the timing right and getting those key poses locked down, however I am finding that doing the breakdowns seems to be a little bit tricky, our Mentor Dana, suggested that we favour the previous key pose as a general rule of thumb, but if you wanted a ease in effect you would favour the next key pose, it all depended on what style you are going for.

Well I hope you like my blocking stage, and I think I got the timing right :), we'll see what happens once we go into spline!

Cheers,
Meng

(Class 2) Week 1 Animation Mentor - Psychology of Body Mechanics

My Fellow Bloggers!

Wow can't believe Class 2 has started :), I am really excited to start but at the same time a little scared and intimidated by the exercises, especially when looking at what some students from before did! They were the most amazing thing, and I wonder if I will be able to do them myself, but I must try.

So Class 2 began with the usual introduction, this time my mentor is Dana Boadway. Wow! She is amazing! A lot of experience around all the areas of animation, from commercial to full featured films, as well as performance experience too, I hope I get her again in the acting classes :).

But back to the task at hand, so for this week we had to plan the shots that we are going to do, I chose to do the "Jump 180 turn" animation, and thought I would do that by having my character push off a wall to turn himself around 180, you will see that in the video reference :), so this week you will find images of my planning and a video reference of myself doing the wall jump. I understand now why its important to take these references and do them yourself, just to get the feel of the movement, and going through the little sub conscience thought that comes to your mind when doing so.

Again I hope everyone enjoys the video reference if not you can at least laugh at my craziness :). It was a lot of fun doing the references, and boy! Do you get a lot of people staring at you when you are doing it :P.

Thanks again for popping by,
Meng

Week 12 Animation Mentor - Basic Foundation

Hello Fellow Bloggers!

So just to sum up the last week of Class 1 "Basic Foundation" of Animation mentor we had to put all the work we did for this class into one little short :). I thought this week was particularly good, because we get a little summary from our mentor of our weakness and strengths, and from the looks of things I need more work on my overlapping, yeah that was little tricky for me, but we learn from our mistakes I always say :).

Class was really awesome and I learnt so much, I think I have a really good solid foundation and looking forward to Class 2, and probably a little scared but will the best I can :). I hope you guys enjoy the composition of all the animation I did for class 2.

Cheers,
Meng

Week 10 - 11 Animation Mentor - Basic Foundation

Hello Fellow Bloggers!

I apologise for the late post :(, I was in a hurry to get things done for week 10 -11, and normal work has been busy as ever, so I forgot to make posts, noooooo! But I will keep it up and try to post weekly.

So Week 10-11 was our last animation assignment where we had to create a personality walk, the first thing our mentor told us, was "Decide on what kind of character or feeling you want in the walk, before animating", so basically we should come up with a personality before even finding references. I wanted to do a walk that involves heavy feet that showed different timming in the extreme downs and ups, so me and my co-worker who is also doing animation mentor went to the parking lot and shot some references of ourselves :), which was a lot of fun!

I thought this last assignment was a really good exercise in bringing all that we have learnt all together, from the planning to blocking and to finally polishing our shots. I felt I have already learnt so much in this first term, and I feel a little bit more confident in doing animation work if I was to be given any, I just have a better strategy and a understanding of where to start off now then before.

We also had to do some STU poses that involves exhaustion and balance, I really wanted to try something different with the exhausted pose, and boy it very hard to try and move away from the cliche poses. Hope you like the personality walk and will be posting again for the last week of "Class 1" of Animation Mentor.

Cheers,
Meng

Week 8 - 9 Animation Mentor - Basic Foundation

Hello Fellow Animators and Bloggers!

OK so with this post I thought I would combine the two weeks together, as the first week we just blocked out our walk cycle, and then on the second week we polished it up. The biggest lesson I took from this exercise was the importance of blocking and getting that right, before doing anything else. I learnt that if you have your blocking solid, and perfect (as much as you can), the polishing is pretty much straight forward, and all the inbetweens are just things you play around with and clean up around the blocked key poses, I have definitely found in some poses I could improve on it, but realised that's its too late at the refining stage of the animation.

The second thing I learnt, was the use of tangent curves, this was some that wasn't really taught to me when I did my 3D generalist Diploma, and I think its a must! What I was taught was to animation with splines all the time and to block animations, was to key things into place. Now I know that's not the best approach, as you end up with keys in places you don't know, and result in confusion.

So moral of the story is Block! Block! Block! Get the blocking to near perfect and then the rest of the ride is smooth. So our next exercise is personality walks! I think this one is going to be interesting.

Week 7 Animation Mentor - Basic Foundation

Hello Blog watchers!

Again welcome to my small little blog about my journey as a Animation student in Animation Mentor! This week we got down to animating a character who is a little bit more complex, well more like a ball with a tail attached to it :). However it was not easy, I think I may have tried to do a little too much in this particular animation, but learnt so much! Especially understanding the flow of arcs and the way the tail trails along the body, in the end I think I did ok, still many things to learn :).

Hope you guys like it, and I will keep everyone posted on the next week, which I believe is the walk cycle!

Cheers,
Meng

Week 6 Animation Mentor - Basic Foundation

Hello Blogger of all Kind!

Again its another week of Animation Mentor! This week we had to work on the pendulum, which was basically practising the idea of overlapping, it definitely makes animation looks so much more alive and real! I tried to come up with a interesting idea, but in the end kept it kinda simple, I figured if I challenged myself and see where my animation can go, I can really start picking some interesting things, then say if I kept it safe and simple, but sometime simplicity is good :).

We ended up having a substitute mentor, but that's all good, it funny, I think our class has already been through four mentors, but its so interesting to see the work habits each mentor have. Anyways hope here the work I done this week, and it had some revision work done on it.

Cya next time!

Week 5 Animation Mentor - Basic Foundations

Hello Blog readers!

Ok so its week five, and things are really starting to pick up, it seems this week everyone had a little more to do then usual, as we had to pose a character with "Devastation", and at the same time animate a bouncing ball through an obstacle course, with squash and stretch which was the topic of this week :).

I found how much squash and stretch can add to an animation, its such a cartoony and small thing, but gives the ball so much life! Its awesome! But in saying that, even though you are not trying to make the ball feel alive, a little squash and stretch here and there goes a long way it seems.

Our mentor this week was really hitting us hard on the idea of planning everything, I understand why he emphasised on it, because I actually accidentally not realising the "actual" frame limit, I ended up doing more frames then what was required. So I had to cut some things out, and boy! It took me longer to cut things out, and polish it, then planning the whole thing before hand and animating combined!

So moral of the story in this week is, always double check your frame limit when planning! And planning saves time! A lot of time! :)

Again, thank you for taking the time in reading my blog, and here are the stuff I did this week.

Cheers,
Meng

Week 4 Animation Mentor - Basic Foundation

Hello Blog readers!

So this particular week was quite interesting, we had to animate another bouncing ball, but this time we are doing two! Where one has to look heavier then the other. So as a challenge for myself I thought I would add a collision, and made it so that the heavier ball will collide with the lighter ball, you will see this in the animation. It was definitely tricky for sure, and I was having a hard time getting the timing of the beach ball (Which is my lighter ball). You see the tricky thing I was going for, was that the lighter ball is going to be larger then the heavier ball, so I had to really make sure that is portrayed well in the animation.

Also this week we got a different mentor, a substitute, but he was just as good :). I learnt lots from him in terms of planning, where he felt they were more like guidelines to be fixed when you are actually animating, I am still having a hard time figuring out frames in the sense of time in seconds, but I think I will pick it up as I do more animation :).

Anyways thank you again for visiting, and will be posting again next week.

Week 3 Animation Mentor - Basic foundations

Hi there,

Ok so again last week was really week 3 :), I keep forgetting to post on the correct week, but anyways this particular week was our first animation assignment! Wohooo! Of course its nothing fancy but just a normal bouncing ball, but its definitely not easy getting it right, but it was lots of fun, and learned lots about timing.

I think the biggest lesson I learnt from week 3, was not to depend too much on the computer to work out the timing for you, I think in the past I dependanted too much on the computer to work out my breakdowns and inbetweens, and I think that's what made my animation very robotic in areas. Another important lesson was "Planning", I think this was something I never did in the past, and is something I am definitely going to adopt, it just seems to have outlined my animation a lot better, and I feel I can animate faster once I have everything put down on paper, and roughing out the timings.

We also had to do some "excitement" poses, I really tried my best to avoid doing the cliche jumping for joy kind of pose, and didn't quite hit the mark, so the mentor told me to do a revision, which I did and I also did some extra poses just to put some practise in :). Please have look at the pictures and my bouncing ball.

Cheers and see ya next time,
Meng.

Week Two of Animation Mentor

So it was really week two of Animation Mentor last week, but it was a interesting start! I went out and looked at some people, and studied their movements, it was really interesting how people move and the types of habits that people get into it seems. The most fascinating thing I noticed was how people twist and torque their bodies in very irregular ways to stand in a comfortable position when they are standing in line waiting for something or simply just idling, but to them this was just a normal stance that people took.

So I have attached the drawings I did of people, I am still not good at it as some of the drawings are very plain, and the last pose that I chose to hand in for my assignment, demonstrates this crazy twist that people do.

Animation Mentor Begins!

Wohooo!

First day of Animation Mentor, man I am so pumped, I feel I could animate all day :), but I think I have to ease my way in, or I start doing things waaaay over my head. Looks like the first day is pretty much introduction to things, meeting your class mates, and testing out webcams and such, but I am enjoying the introductory videos, Animation Mentor does a very good job in inspiring students, just watching the video and hearing these amazing animators talk about the things they went through, and how its similart to how alot of students started is really inspiring, and leaves a very warm welcome, can't wait to start animating!

Hang in there as the course progresses I will be adding more posts :).

Siggraph 2009 Animation features DVD

Hi fellow bloggers,

Sorry for not posting recently :(. I am really going to have to get into the habit of posting more on the blog :), but I am guessing once I start Animation Mentor, I will be posting things once a week, actually as many things as possible, as I will have more interesting things to post up.

I just recently watched the Siggraph 2009 animation feature DVD that people get when they go to Siggraph every year, it was very cool! I enjoy watching these animation features, it gives me a lot of motivation and its good to see how small groups of people can also do work just as amazing as any majour animation studios out there, and I think Siggraph is a great way to show off there efforts. There was two particular ones I liked that was on this DVD (there is actually more then one DVD, I have yet to watch the other two) and they were called "French Roast" and "Alma", both very well animated with a great plot.

Someday I would love to visit Siggraph, just to see how its like, but I bet you anything you probably can't just waltz in :).

Click on the images below and it should take you to the videos, definately have a look at them, because they are just awsome!

Life Drawing classes

Hello fellow blog viewers,

I have recently taken life drawing classes again :). I never actually did life drawings classes in my life until I took my 3D animation diploma at Media Design school. I loved ever minute of it, and learned so many things from it. I started drawing since I was little and found I had a talent in it (As you do when are around six years old ;) ), I thought I knew everything there could be about drawing, and of course I was terribly mistaken on the first day of life drawing, I still remember what my life drawing teacher said "We are not drawing robots here!", and he was definitely right.
He was a awesome mentor and I learnt so much, before life drawing I always thought my drawings lacked something, which I could never figure out, and life drawing classes gave me that answer. I finally understood that everything had a flow, even when you are drawing a person sitting down, they aren't sitting down dead straight, their bodies curve into positions, and lay down their weight on certain parts of the chair, and that is what makes the drawing very life-like and alive.

Of course I still got lots to learn, and there are still some areas I need to work on :). So here are sample of my work, I am still having trouble drawing faces when they are small, I find I can draw faces much better if I draw them big, its so I have more room to add details.

Now you are probably wondering why I would mention life drawing in an animation blog, well I believe that life drawing is very important for animation, because not only does it teach you to draw, but it develops the ability to notice little details in things that people normally would not take heed, and its these understanding of little details that I believe helps make a good animation, in understanding the movement of things in this world, whether it be animate or inanimate objects.

Again thank you for taking time into reading my post, and will update again soon, stay tuned :).

My First Blog

Hello fellow Blog readers!

This is my first Blog ever! Never made one before, and it was recommended by Animation Mentor that I started one. A little excited and hope to update the blog as often as possible :).

I handed all the necessary things to Animation Mentor, really excited and yet nervous and to be honest a little scared, I guess its something I thought I would never end up taking, but thanks to my co-worker, I am now in and ready to animate!

I have a little bit of 3D animation skill, but I don't think anything that amazing, lets just say that I still need "lots" of work. I took year after University and studied in Media Design School, I received my 3D animation diploma, however the course wasn't really a pure animation course, but it was really good in that it gave a good general skill level for 3D, so moving around in Maya is not something new for me :).