103 - Bouncing ball and "Excitement"!

This week we had to sketch poses of "excitement" and pose Stu in one of them. I did my typical crappy sketches and then Saturday, my Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation came in. So, I read it cover to cover and took another stab at my sketches:



Then finished my pose of Stu:

This morning, it was pointed out to me that it was hard to see if both feet were on the ground, so I ended up biting the bullet and doing some lighting to show the ground. I told myself I would never bother with lighting or anything other then animation, but maybe it was needed this time. I submitted both and will see what Sean (my mentor) as to say about it. Might have been a mistake.

Last but not least, here is my animation of a bouncing ball. We were to animate a believable ball bounce with the weight of a basket ball or soccer ball:



Fun stuff!

102 - final, and a note to any new AM students

Here it is:
Could have worked on it for ever, especially since it is my first assignment. But I had to stop. I have uploaded at least 6 versions, all with tons of feedback. The AM community is indispensable in that way, I hope I can always find this level of feedback, even after AM.

In other news, I ordered the Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation. I wish I had known about it before. It seems to be more important to the first class then the other books (illusion, and 'the kit) but it wasn't listed on the public site. So, any one out there who is joining AM, GET THIS BOOK

ANYONE SIGNED UP FOR AM, GET Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation!

Before you do anything with the princeples of animation, or walk cycles, or anything, you will have to sketch and that is where Simplified is suggested.

12 hours till a new assignment!

102 - sketches and a pose

I had my second QA last night. It was supposed to be Tuesday night but since it was actually 12:00 AM Wednesday EST where the mentor was (Florida), he got confused and thought it was actually Wednesday evening. Oh well, I am in the EST as well and almost missed the first one because of that. See, your calendar shows a big gray block for Wednesday and that sorta sticks in your head. We all make mistakes. We all waited till 1:45 AM and then most left, and of course he showed right after that. He apologized and explained and said he would try to get it rescheduled for the next night, which is what he did.

Really nothing much was discussed, I asked about the sketches that are due this week, as I am having trouble capturing poses with my stick figures. Here is what I ended up submitting today:


And here is the render of that circled pose:

That was after a LOT of feedback in the chat room, and there is still more I need to do to get it right. I am trying to get the best silhouette, that is why the angle is a bit different then my sketch. There is still a tangent where the left elbow is too close to the body. I still have time to mess with it some more.

On a related note: I worked on this a bit today when I was in the computer lab at UC (on my laptop). I saw a guy I had taken some animation classes with there in the past. He was really interested in what I was doing and I was proud to explain how it worked. Too bad I didn't have any new animation to show him yet.

AM IS AWESOME!!!!

first QA

I had my first QA session with our mentor tuesday night at midnight (wednesday). Not much to report, mostly just introductions from my fellow classmates and trying to get everyone's cameras up and working. I got there at 11 pm, an hour before it was to start and no body was there. People starting coming in a few minutes later. We went right up till 2 am.

It was cool to hear my mentor, Sean McLaughlin, is from Columbus, OH, about 2 hours away from where I am now in Cincinnati. He talked about his work on Over the Hedge and his current work on Bee Movie.

I didn't realize that Jerry Seinfeld wrote Bee Movie. This should be very interesting, I can't wait to see it.

I wish there was more of an assignment this week, we really don't have much to do at all. Learn the site, watch the videos, post a bio, avatar, and a video journal, that's about it.

I want to make something move!!!

i wanna be like a grizzly bear

Just a quick note, I got the keys to the kingdom. Today, the rest of the members site on AM was unlocked. After tracking down some guys I had been in contact with to add them to my buddy list, the first thing I did was watch the lecture for the first class.

It was amazing. Shawn Kelly and all the rest of the folks that spoke were so energetic and passionate. It was really inspiring. Alex Nussbaum, a former animator turned comedian, compared great animators to grizzly bears and it was beautiful. I can't do him justice, but basically a good animator evokes an involuntary reaction in the viewer. Not many other things can do that, except, well, being face to face with a grizzly bear and having to then change your pants. I wanna be like a grizzly bear!

I'm afraid to talk to much more about the lecture, they have been really cracking down on people sharing too much info. AM is great, well worth the $$$ and I don't want to f'this up!

Oh yea, our first model we got was stu!