alexiss dawn

I can say it over and over, but man, time is flying by fast! Here’s the second third of my film with a first pass of polish/spline/all that jazz.

Word to the wise: make sure to take a moment to think if you should use arm align when blocking a shot. It’ll save you a lot of time down the road from having to change keys.

Things over at AM are going GREAT. So much is happening and I’m enjoying it all. There is some amazing work being done over there. Our lectures have taken a turn the last couple of weeks — they’ve recorded lectures with some of the recruiters from Pixar, Dreamworks, etc., talking about reels, connections, interviews, all that jazz. It’s really nice to get yet another insider view. Still have a lot of work to do before I even think about getting ready to apply, but talking about it is exciting. Seriously guys, AM preps you well. It’s great.

Three more weeks to finish this baby up! I’m still having so much fun with it and learning a ton from doing it. And man! It’s a blast! Seeing those little glimpses of that character spark are amazing. But as I said, a lot of work so back to work! Happy Memorial Day!

Things are speeding up and it’s getting busy! This last week we started polish on our films. That meant for me taking everything to spline. I blocked pretty tightly so it wasn’t too bad of a transition. Still rough patches but those will be cleaned up for the next, and final go around.

Last week was a great week. So much going on, I just can’t have any complaints. We had a Horton Hears a Who Q&A on Monday with some animators who worked on the film. And to my surprise, who were the two animators? None other than David Gallagher and Jason Martinsen, two of my past mentors from Blue Sky! It was awesome to see them in a Q&A again. I’ve had such great mentors throughout AM, it was just great to see them again.

A lot of cool things are happening in the animation world. It’s just one of those times when things are great and I’m enjoying it all.

Oh, and I woke up today to several awesome greetings from AMers for turning a year older today. Drawings, cakes, songs — I love AM.

It’s week 8!

Coming in a bit late on the blogging here but technically it’s still Monday for another 24 minutes. Things are getting busy. Between my film, all the stuff at AM, and just life in general, it’s busy. Having a blast, just busy. So this last week I made some final tweaks and did some reblocking to the final third of my film. Woot!

I also took some time to refine the first and second thirds…all in prep to get splining. So here’s the entire film in it’s blocking plus stage:

So this week I start to spline this baby. It’s been a while since I’ve been at the splining stage so it’s time to jump in. I had a few of those key moments in animation this last week — those instances when you see the character come to life. They were quick, but it was great to see. So I can’t wait to get this baby all splined out and polished and pretty and all that jazz. Gotta see the life in my character. Lots of work to do.

I cannot believe it’s week 7 already.

Just wanted to holler out a couple of huge congrats to some friends — to Jeff Weidner for getting a job as an animator at Technicolor Interactive! Started there this week — a huuuuuge accomplishment man and very well deserved. And another huge congrats to John Vielee for recently getting an animation internship at Framestore!! (See! I can spell your last name right!) I absolutely love hearing this stuff happen for you guys. It makes my life great! Congrats!

As if you couldn’t guess what this week’s Monday post would bring…here comes the 2/3 of my film in blocking plus. Woot.

Isn’t it funny how you see stuff to fix after the deadline? Sheesh. This week I’ll work on the 3/3 and then do all of the fixes I need on the 1/3 and 2/3 so that next week I’m ready to get splining. Well, that’s the goal. We had an absolutely amazing lecture this last week on polishing and that final 10% by Michal Makarewicz from Pixar. So much to push towards still. Awesome stuff.

Blog posts are lacking this term. I’m sorry about that. I have a lot to share other than my own work but lately it just doesn’t rank in the top priorities list. Give me another 6 weeks and we’ll get going. I’ve collected so many amazing documents and whatnot over the last 16 months that I’ve gotta share sometime.

Happy cinco de mayo everyone.

Busy, busy, busy. For the 1/3 of my film, the acting choices were pretty much set so the goal was to add in a few more breakdowns, and work on those little details and the little subtleties. Over the first three weeks of this term I pushed to exaggerate the character more — breaking the rig and getting back to those animation principles. So I’ve been having a lot of fun going back and layering in some exaggeration.

That snowflake in the beginning has been quite interesting to animate. Animating imperfections — wind gusts and rotations — has been a challenge. I hadn’t thought to use a motion path so that part is all done by moving keys around and whatnot.

Things are definitely busy around here but I’m having a blast with my film. I’m learning so, so much by working on it. The lectures this term have been great. Those along with crits, feedback, and all this animating is helping me grow a ton. Lots to do and plenty of room to grow, but that’s what makes animation great. I think as long as we keep pushing to learn more each week we’re on the right track.

Final third is blocked! Woo! I had a BLAST working with this section. My goal this term as I’ve said is to push my timing and posing. This has meant some crazy posing and smashing of his head and body. I’ve broken the rig…but most of the time it works out. There have been some crazy instances though with the eyes popping out through the heads and eyelids all askew! It still needs work, but I still have 9 weeks.

How he ends up on the ground in the first shot I’m not sold on yet so that’ll be seeing a reblock. I’m really having a blast with this film — and man alive am I learning a ton. Now I start grinding into getting those details all set in and getting that blocking plussed!

Here’s the whole film in it’s first pass of blocking. I left all of the set on wireframe to focus on posing. It’ll magically reappear at the end of this term.

Just a heads up that the replay of the webinar with Shawn Kelly (Animation Mentor co-founder, ILM animator, fried chicken enthusiast) is up. I love that they’re allowing it to be replayed — even all of us current AM students are loving seeing it. It’s basically like a lecture that we get at AM each week. Shawn is an amazing person and absolutely hilarious. So go check it out here — it’s only up till April 29th!

Time is definitely speeding by. Last week we had to block out the 2/3 of our film. It still has some rough patches but it’s getting closer.

A good portion of my time last week was spent away from the computer — sketching, planning, and trying to visualize exactly what I wanted and how each motion was going to work. That last shot of the four took the most time. I took a whole different approach of how he flies back to the pole with some suggestions from my mentor. It’s been fun though to work on something that pushes those poses since I’ve always stayed more contained. I’ve worked to break the rig a bit to really smash his face and just throw him around. But like I said in my last post, it’s been so much quicker for me to spend most of my time away from the computer for this first blocking pass, really getting to a point that I can visualize exactly what I want. Then it’s pretty quick to get it into Maya.

This last week finally brought some specific video reference. There had been a lot of chatter among some AMer friends and they even started voting in our forums if I should do it or not. So, I finally did it — I stuck my tongue to a frozen pole. Oy vey. More than anything it was for a few laughs. Would I jump off a building for reference? Well, probably not. But no hurt in this…or at least not too much.

I’ve been taking a bit of a new approach in work flow as I’ve been animating my film. I’m spending a lot more time outside of Maya right now as things get fleshed out. I started doing it when we were getting into layout during class 5 and am keeping at it now that we’re into blocking. What? Why?! In the ramp up tutorials Jason Ryan has been doing I’ve been seeing his approach of sketching it out before getting into Maya. I tried for a bit on my tiny wacom but man alive, it just doesn’t translate well to my big monitor. The day I get a Cintiq will be beautiful. But for now, I’ve been doing it all the old school paper way. Yes, my tool of choice is a Sharpie. It’s been great so far for figuring out what I want from the poses and how the motion is going to flow between them. Seriously! I feel a lot more prepared when I get into Maya and I get through it faster than I have before because I go in knowing just what I want.

Back in class 1 we had to do several poses almost every week with Stu. Now more than ever I see the reason for it all. The more you practice posing and just loose sketch, not worrying about how it looks and just going for the motion, the more you start to understand about movement and the body and appeal. Not saying I know a ton, but I’ve come a long way since class 1. The sketches from a year ago…oh man. I’m no 2D artist, but I can totally see how important it is to sketch and explore posing and motion. And it certainly prepares you more to jump in and get those poses in Maya.

Sharpies…available at your local, well, pretty much any store.