alexiss dawn

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.

Just a heads up — a new version of tradigiTOOLS has been released. The update is free for everyone that has already bought a license. Go check it out over on their forums. This new version has several updates including:

• Added support for Blend nodes
• Added support for Character Sets
• Parenting to the Camera is now supported for the shotmask
• WINDOWS ONLY: 64-bit support for Maya64 on XP64 & Vista64
• MAC ONLY: Maya 8.5 and Maya 2008 plug-ins are now Universal Binaries (UB)

I’ve been helping beta test these new versions and things are working very smoothly. And for all you guys that like character sets, well it works with those now. I know a lot of AMers were excited for this. It has some great features so get your update. And if you haven’t checked it out yet, well, what are you waiting for?

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.

This last week we had to block out the first third of our films. With the way I’ve divided it that meant the first 622 frames. Crazy.

Yes, yes, the snowflake will be smooth and twirling, but there’s no sense in tweaking that just right until I for sure have the character’s movement set. I’m having a lot of fun working on this. This go around I’m pushing to work with the little things more — spending time doing work on the shoulders, more work on the brows, little finger movements, and all that jazz. This is only the first pass on this section for the term so it’ll definitely get sweetened up. More to come as usual.

Class 6 is going great so far — had my first Q&A with my new class and Justin. The group is excellent — so full of life and excitement. It’s going to be a great term.

The two lectures we’ve had so far this term have been great. It’s all been about process. Carlos Puertolas talked about the process of his short film Bath Time and how he ended up getting a job at Dreamworks, and then Victor Navone talked about his process of making Alien Song which lead to his current job at Pixar. It’s really cool to hear about the process they went through and see how it relates to just what we’re doing. This week our lecture is with Pete Doctor and I’ll just leave it at: another amazing lecture.

Yes, I think I’ve just officially lost it… my video journal from Animation Mentor as of yesterday:

Focus is gone tonight…been dying of laughter for the past couple of hours with so many different things going on with AMers. Killin’ me man!

And make sure you check out THIS link. It’s part of tonight’s craziness.

Gosh I love animators.

Wow oh wow — it’s time for my final term at Animation Mentor! Crazy to think I’m already at this point!! Well the ballots are in and my mentor this term is Justin Barrett! Sound familiar? Almost this exact time last year I was posting this same thing! Yep, Justin was my mentor in class 2 and he was freaking amazing to have. I learned a great deal from him and so much of my workflow I have now has came from things he taught me back then. So it’s great to be back in his class as I’m positive he’ll help me end my time as a student at AM with a bang, pushing me way beyond my current skill level and really helping me make my film shine! And looky there, he’s still got the sombrero going for him.

Man I love this stuff - animating, the AM community, the people, the work being done, the whole shabang! First weeks of the term are always so amazing. Let’s get rollin! This week is pushing the blocking on 1/3 of the film. The goal this term: push for those subtleties, that final 10% that makes things really come to life! Here we go!