11 Second Club.

I did an animation for the last month competition. I'm not totally happy with it but I really wanted to do something. My excuse is I was very rushed, but I think my planning should have been better. And perhaps I should have explored more actiong options. Any feedback is welcome. You can visit the site by clicking on the banner if you'd like to vote. Hint hint.

Flip Animation Festival

I'll part of the showreel review panel this week Friday at the Flip animation festival. The festival runs from the 4th-6th of November. Click on the banner for more info! Great place to network and chat about animation. Andy Gent who on the The Fantastic Mr. Fox, Corspe Bride to name a few, will be there as well.

I'm back!!

Hello!

I can't believe I haven't posted anything since May. I am ashamed.

Well I'm going to be posting a lot more this month! I will be attending a few animation related events this month. I'll even be speaking at one of them! AND I'll be making a new animation reel! So stay tuned!

Week8_Blocking and Revision

Oh what a week! Busy Busy Busy.
Well I've finished my blocking for the third and final assignment. My choice, the sword exercises. Initially I had a two character idea but I ditched it. It would have been at total nightmare time wise. My peers tried to gently coax me from doing the two character assignment and my mentor literally said "Don't do it! Bring me something else!" So I scrapped it. Luckily I have a little library of video reference that I was able to dip into. I've been wanting to do this one for awhile anyway. I just love the twists in his body and the force behind the swings of the sword. I think since we have an extra week for the pantomine I might do the two character idea for that as it was more acting based anyway.




Here are my planning sketches


























































And here's my blocking. I tried to put in as much overlap and twist now than wait for the refining pass. I've started to avoid off setting keys for this and instead just build those elements into the pose. Ha you can see Stewie in his Kill Bill outfit! I also have a little dojo for the setting. Hmm going to have to dust of those rendering tutorials too.




I also managed to hit some revisions for assignment 2. I got rid of the breath out, as it was not working and just did some overall polish.

Week7_Polishing

Well here is my latest version of the gymnast. Still have loads of polishing to on the arms, hands and fingers which I have not even touched yet. Gosh animation is hard! I got some great notes from my peer buddy and I'll see what notes I get from my mentor later today. I could work on this for ages but I have to leave it soon and start my next assignment. Yikes! If you have any crits, send them my way.

How to avoid twinning....in animation

I've always struggled with the dreaded twinning of arms in my animation. For my latest AM assignment my character does a lot of gymnastic poses which involves symmetrical arms. So I asked my mentor Jay Davis, who animated on Meet The Robinson's, if there was a way to solve this. His advice was that for certain poses, twinning is unavoidable. He also had a great tip. To avoid twinning in the arms he hides one arm, for instance the left, then he will work only the right arm and vice versa. He said this method can yield some pretty good results and help avoid twinning.

Week6_Refining

So I've gone into refining my shot a bit more from last week's blocking. I ran into some mechanical problems with the cartwheel that I thought I'd ironed out in the blocking. Damn! Note to self, it's all about planning! Soon as I posted it up I got some awesome crits from my classmates and peer buddies. I have loads of polishing to do on pops and sticking, the arms are basically untouched and the graph curves are all messy. So I'm waiting for my mentor's notes, then I will compile that with my peers notes, address those and onto polishing! I love polishing! :), no really I do.