(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