AM307+: Zero "Blocking"

Here's the first blocking pass for my dialogue shot "Zero"
hope the the staging is simple & clear for the purpose of this shot.
I still need to add more breakdowns for different parts of the shot specially the hands swing for the part where he says "wax off"
and the zero threatening gesture which is only the extremes now...

I just noticed that I'm moving the hips at the beginning maybe too much!

Hope its looking good for a start...

Cloudy with Chances of Meatballs

I went to see this movie yesterday, too bad I missed it in 3D but good thing I was able to catch it at the theaters before Its no longer available, I really enjoyed the movie, the story is not that great though, you can see how's it going to end, good enough for children though... I love the character stylization, my favorite characters were his Dad, the monkey & the Cop...awesome characters
Plus the animation was so different than any other feature I have seen, reminds me of Chuck Jones cartoons, It was really cool.

And I also saw the trailer for a feature movie that will hit the theaters sometime in July 2010, DESPICABLE ME, this is a must see movie, make sure you click on the HD tab,

here's the trailer I saw yesterday
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpM7c0uGTes

and another one, pretty cool

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf9ngjUsThI

AM306+: Animating Dialogue "Zero"

Alright Alright,
so here I start with my second assignment, animating dialogue part1. with focus on the acting itself, while in next class we add facials & lipsync...

Here's the lines I gathered for this assignment,

7 audio lines, lines (4-7) were the first lines I picked & I was excited to animate, but I had a lot of negative feedback when I posted it on my public review page at AM, that these lines have no change in emotions, monotonous, & lacking contrast...
I guess I was afraid of having a strong line that my animation won't be strong enough to carry it, since the audio line I had for the previous class was really strong but my animation was poor comparing to it...
I was excited about line 6, I was thinking of a spooky villain character, 5 was my second choice the change of the voice & the gag is what I like...

now the first 3 lines are the ones I had to dig up later, and I think they are a stronger than 4-6, and for these 3 lines I shot my video reference also uploaded bellow.

Audio line 1: Greg Pikitis
A detective interrogates suspect named Greg Pikitis (off-screen), with his profile in one hand and an empty cup of coffee in the other, with an attempt to scare the suspect, with crazy swing with the empty coffee mug as he makes the impression of spelling the hot coffee on Greg's face, then breaking the mug into the floor...

Audio line 2: Who did this!
A teacher calmly tells his student that he graded the exam and decides not to tell them how they did, until he knows who did this, I couldn't think of anything but having a funny poster for the teacher, which is why he gets mad...

Audio line 3: Zero
MY FAVORITE ONE
The teacher again, threatens to fail his class, with a funny emphasis on the word Zero, then he calmly takes out his favorite student Toby out of the zero equation, which is funny in my opinion, contrasting the rage at the beginning...

After my last eCrit, my mentor also liked line 3, take 2, working on the staging right now and will post my first blocking pass this coming sunday.

AM305+: Architecture Student WIP

Since I'm retaking the class, I decided not to post a weekly update, instead I'll be posting the progress at the end of each assignment...this post should have been up 2 weeks ago, but I've been busy running back & forth between work & Animation Mentor.

I feel that retaking the class was a wise decision after all, I'm getting more in control over my work flow yet I still have problems that I need to work on fixing.

Here's the Architecture student progress, the final shot at the end still needs to be tweaked, the dance part is not reading that clear yet, lots of elbow pops, need to work on the arcs too, so many things to be fixed later...

anyways I'm hoping its a step up, maybe half a step! I'm not happy with the final result, but not giving up on this, my next assignment will turn out good.

Week2:



Week3:



Week4:



Week5: Final "I HATE IT" I like the fall at the end though ;D