Away for the Summer

Alright... Alright !!!
I'm currently on Leave of Absence (LOA) from Animation Mentor,
I have decided to take a break for a bunch of reasons, mainly to go over what I've learned so far marking half way through this great journey, practicing animation polish more, enjoy the summer & charge my batteries for next term, which might be a retake of class 3, I'm not sure yet...


Anyways here's my progress real at the end of class 3

AM 311: Sincerity: A Conversation with Mark Henn

here's the last assignment for this term, there's still some parts that need to be polished
lots of pops, timing & spacing issues, arcs not that smooth, lack of overlap,ease ins & outs & counting!!! specially in the parts where I had gimbal, each time I want to slide move the keys to edit timing & things like that twists appear again,but it looks better than last week.

AM 310: Hands

This week I had my eCritique done early on sunday night, which gave me the chance to spend my only night off work that week on this assignment... one of the main issues I had was the hands were the gimbal happened looked weird plus some pops in the head & spine that I had to refine, so I refined the hands & showed the progress to my mentor on the q&a, turned out that spent too much time with refining the hands, while it should be the last, so I had to go back and start with the character root, then spline, neck, head, then if I had a chance shoulders,elbows & hands...
but not necessary for this week, so I kept bumping back & forth between the root,spine,neck & head until I reached what I got here, didnt touch the arms yet...
so here the pre final refining pass & the surprised hand poses

AM 309: An Introduction to Entertainment

Unfortunately I'm posting this update late on week 11 instead of 9... Its was a crazy super insane 2 weeks for me, going out of blocking into splines and for the first time ever to face the GIMBAL LOCK monster ;) if I may call it...

I just discovered how painful fixing gimbal issues specially when the euler filter fails you, & having to go frame by frame tweaking this crazy wrist twists that I had when I moved out to splines,
of course I've learned now how not to get in the gimbal trap again, two important tips :
rotate each axis by itself & check every once n a while with switching the curves from stepped mode to linear early in the blocking stage, that will save you from such a disaster.

here's my first look at the gimbal, then my final assignment submission plus the relaxed hand poses.


































you can notice the gimbal in the wrist crazy twists



final first refining pass

AM 308: Eyes & Blinks

Here's last week's assignment submission,
After the feedback from my mentor, alumni q&a, peer buddies...
I had to take out & simplify a lot of unnecessary poses & gestures, cropped the scene a bit to get rid of some negative space & here's the shot & the angry hand pose which is the second part of the assignment

AM 307: Assignment Submission

This is it, first pass of dialogue blocking
The feedback from AM's community helped me a lot
comments & critique are most welcome.



for a higher resolution here's youtube link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVJy-nlBRSg

Reference footage & planning process

Here's a great article about reference footage & planning process from Spline Doctors

http://splinedoctors.com/2008/07/reference-footage-and-the-planning-process/

and an awesome example for a scene similar to my scene, thanks for Edward Villegas one of my peer buddies, but this one is the final shot with facial expressions & lip sync, great stuff

AM 307: Intro Dialogue Walk Thru Part II

Here's some work in progress for this week assignment.
I added some extra video reference I took yesterday, & worked on staging the scene so that the situation is more clear. & started with the first pass of blocking.

the situation:
Art dealer behind his desk, mad at the person he's talking to, could be someone who works for him, someone in the cleaning crew, or the delivery boy...whom accidentally spelled something on the paintings, and now the art dealer has to apologize to the artist or the art collector, and that's what he HATES DOING...

Video Reference II



& first blocking pass

AM 306: Assignment Submission

Half way through class 3 ... It's almost half way through AM's journey !!!
here's this week's submission...
In the video reference I'm acting out a different scenario from the original scenes the lines were taken from, I'm sure I didn't give the lines the acting they deserve ,I just suck in acting , anyways
here's the thumbnails for the 3 situations & the video reference.
Now I'm waiting for my mentor's critique in order to start the first pass of blocking.

AM 306: Intro Dialogue Walk Thru Part I

It's half way through class 3 & finally the assignment I have been excited for since I started at Animation Mentor, Animating Dialogue ... wooo hoooo

Introducing a more complex character rig "Bishop"
For this week our assignment is to pick up 3 lines from a movie or a series, & shoot some video reference acting out a different take from the original scene, then planning out the shot that I will be working on for the next 6 weeks, no facial expressions or lip syncing yet, that's for class 4 first assignment.

Here's the 3 lines I have picked, I personally like them all but I think line 3 is my favorite.

AM 305: Phrasig

Here' week 5 assignment handout, final polishing pass for the first assignment this term

AM 304: Secondary Action

Here's my work progress so far, I have 4 more hours of refining tomorrow
one more week on this assignment then we start with the Dialogue assignment...

AM 303: Gestures & Body Language

My favorite subject, behavior & body language, awesome lecture as usual...
two books highly recommended for this subject, the first one is out of print but I found one at amazon, huge & rich in context ,the other one is handy perfect for lunch breaks, on train...etc




I just submitted this week's assignment...& now waiting for my mentor's critique to move to the polishing part....after my last assignment mentor critique & notes,
I worked the build up of the shot rather than the jump, bumped into several walls with the choices I had for the simplify my animation & work on the build up just before the YES victory jump

here's my blocking plus pass... two more weeks for this assignment then DIALOGUE woooot

AM 302: Assignment Submission

AM 302: Assignment WIP III

Today's update, still looking a bit funky specially the part in the middle, but I think It's better than what I had yesterday...

AM 302: Assignment WIP II

This playblast is what I've worked on today, I think the timing is OK
but the poses can be pushed more, I can say it's still rough & poppy blocking
I still have two days to work on before the deadline.

AM 302: Assignment WIP I

I think I got off track here,
so instead of building into the excitement, growing from that leaning forward pose,
I had him react to a missed scoring opportunity get disappointed then excited again
now I have 3 beats instead of two...
so I'll go back to the nervous/excited idea & build up the excitement... sheeeeeeeeeesh

AM 302: Pantomime

This week's lecture was about pantomime, the hardest thing to animate.
It's all about expressing a character's emotions or thoughts without dialogue. You can find a great & rich examples on that just looking at Chaplin's work. In different AM lectures they bring up a lot of good scenes from Chaplin, It's full of clear poses, good acting choices, fun & entertaining, so many things we as animators look to have in our shots.

As for this week's assignment,I need to pick one Idea from last week's exploring phase & start with blocking the shot out, main keys & breakdowns...
After the feedback I got from my mentor's critique & feedback from other students. my main concern was to simplify my acting choices so that it can fit in the frame range given.

So far I have blocked this initial shot, I need to add more in the middle part anticipating the change of gears from nervous to relaxed,excited ...
here's the blocking that I have so far




A helpful reference to look at pointed by my mentor was this scene from Seinfeld

AM 301: Assignment Submission

Just submitted this week's assignment,now sleeping time wooooot

Video Reference Analysis



Selected Cut Video Reference



Original Video Reference

AM 301: Assignment WIP III

So I've been going through my video reference, & I have decided to tackle my first take
Lost vs. Victory (Nervous,Angry/Excited,Happy)
In the first two shots I've tried to cut the original takes to something closer to the frame limit for this assignment, & the second two is just a mix of both takes, Now I'm not sure which one to pick! so any suggestions would be helpful

now back to sketching more poses & studying the timing