(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