(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.