Preparation for Polishing & Portfolio Class

Here's an update on what I've been working on in preparation for Animation Mentor's Polishing & Portfolio class. Other than experimenting with walk cycles, I'm going back to my old shots and slowly cleaning up all the mess, also been learning how to create textures and how to render out my shots, not that fancy but something nicer, instead of the default naked bishop rig.
All in preparation to polish it under the supervision of another amazing AM mentor.

here's a teaser for my dialogue shots "Zero" & "Valium"














And here's an almost done walk cycle, Happy Go lucky attitude walk



And finally a "Before-After" wip of the Sticky Door Assignment

Animation "LOCK DOWN" II

I'd like to pass something about art work flow that I have learned from a very inspiring & a very passionate animation mentor student I met this summer at Siggraph,
DANIEL ASHER HARMAN.
Work on different projects at the same time, each project in a different stage of production, one in an early planning/search stage, another in its early stages of production, another is almost done, and one that is done but you still can add to it or polish more.

This approach to will keep you motivated, will increase your productivity, and will give you a chance to bounce back & forth between different projects without getting bored from working on the same on & on.

For example in animation, jotting down ideas for future shots, gathering reference, planning for those shots, shooting extra video reference, drawing thumbnails, shot in blocking stage, Shot coming out of blocking & a shot in Polishing stage. Might sound too much but If you really want to jump to that next level, this is a very successful approach.

I'm currently working on 3 shots, polishing a walk cycle, and a Tennis serve shot and a cartoony run in blocking stage, along with planning for future shots.

Here's a teaser for what I'm working on

Cartoony Run Blocking (Jason Ryan tutorial)



Tennis serve Blocking (Haven't worked on the timing yet)


And still polishing the walk cycle

Animation "LOCK DOWN" I

Now that I have all the time in the world :)
I'm burying myself Home, digging into all the resources I can find to learn more about animation & Maya. I'm a bit late to go through a VERY IMPORTANT TUTORIAL about How Splines Work.

The Splinophilia Tutorials by the GREAT VICTOR NAVONE Helped me gain the Graph Editor as a friend. After I understood the difference between the types of tangents and how the curves in the Graph Editor works with Timing & Spacing, IT'S LIKE MAGIC!!!
It's like something clicked and I become in control, I'M SO HAPPY
THANK YOU VICTOR NAVONE...
Here's a walk cycle test I'm just about to send out to my AM peers for critiques,

Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures

here's some of the work I did for Classes 5&6 along with some bad news :(

The Animatic for my Short Film I did in class 5


The shots I ended up with end of class 6



I haven't posted in a while, and from the title of this post, something must've gone terribly wrong!!! well... not terribly wrong but definitely something's went in the wrong direction.

Transmitting this update for the first time overseas from JORDAN. Having to live the next 6 months here, back with my parents was the Desperate Measure I had to take about a month ago, when I got my final grade for my final class at Animation Mentor "Short Film Production"; Unfortunately NOT a passing grade.

Along the fact that I had to quit my job end of class 5, stayed unemployed for about 3 months only to dedicate all my time to finish my film. Failing the class was a MAJOR CRISIS I had to go through the five stages of DENIAL, ANGER, BARGAINING, DEPRESSION, and finally ACCEPTANCE. No need to illustrate more on each stage hehe but I went through a really hard time, until I realized what's the root of all the problems.

Trying to balance a full-time job & school is only slowing me down, Instead of advancing my skill set, I found myself learning by trial & error, only trying to make the deadlines, sometimes it worked but other times I was hitting the same barriers again and again, lost my passion at the end too, everything went wrong mainly when opening the Graph Editor, when moving out of blocking to splines.

I needed some time off to absorb the shock, I needed to go through my notes from previous classes, to go back to BASICS, the principles of animation, the bouncing ball exercise, a simple walk cycle, I needed to practice and experiment more, try out different work flows, different animation methods, reading the bunch of books I bought, Jason Ryan tutorials waiting for the play to click, mainly to apply what I have learned so far.

That's why I decided to take a break from Animation Mentor, go back to living with my parents in Jordan, then to retake class 6 on January Well prepared.