Animation Mentor - Week 4

Already a month ! This stuff is going way too fast , but damn do I like it ^^

So ok, week 4, this week the main thing was timing and spacing and how to apply these principles to your work.

Therefore our big assignment this week was the 'Heavy/Light Ball bounce' where we had to animate 2 different balls with different weights, and see how timing and spacing affect these different balls.

So without further ado, my animation for this week, I decided to animate a bowling ball and a ping pong ball :

 

 

And then I also had a couple of notes on my previous ball bounce. I had to give it some extra frames to make the settle work better at the end, and I had to do some minor tweaks in the middle as well (especially the distance the ball travels in the first bounce after he hits the wall).

Jack et la Mécanique du Coeur - Trailer

The first official trailer for 'Jack et la Mécanique du Coeur', the upcoming feature that I worked on.

Although it's a long trailer, there's only 1 shot of mine that you can see, and that's the one at 1:46, where Joe is stepping out of his ride...

Movie madness !

EXCITING NEWS !

Today they released a first poster for 'Jack et la Mécanique du Coeur', an upcoming feature film where I worked on for over half a year at Walking The Dog.

I was happy when I saw the design of the poster, and I must say it turned out pretty cool ^^
The release date is the 5th of february 2014 ! So put that in your agenda and go see it !

ALSO

The release date for the current movie I'm working on ('Astérix : Le Domaine des Dieux') has been announced in this article from AlloCine. So put that in your agenda as well and you be damned if you don't check that one out as well ! :D

Ok that's it for now, just wanted to share this exciting news !
Cheerios !!!

Animation Mentor - Week 3

This week it was all about planning, and how to approach a shot.
Also we had a lecture about different ways of blocking (layered, pose to pose and straight ahead), and what the pros and cons are for every method.

We also got a special lecture from Bobby Beck himself, where he talked about how you can animate believable characters and how you can 'become your character' and therefore get better performances. Very interesting stuff !

As far as assignments go, we had to do our sketches again, this time for a pose that expressed 'excitement', and make a pose with Stu.

And then as another assignment we had to plan out and animate a BOUNCING BALL !!!

I already animated a lott of bawlls (yes I did type that) a couple of years ago but I really enjoyed doing it again and it was fun to go back to the basics. And although our mentor asked us to keep it to a simple A to B bouncing ball, I couldn't resist do to "something more" with it, so I put a wall in there and made it bounce against it. So without further ado here's my planning and bouncing ball ;)

 

Thanks for reading and cheerios !

Animation Mentor - Week 2

So the second week was a blast as well !

We had our very first assignment ! Drawing, drawing, drawing ^^
We had to sketch some poses from people whe saw on the streets, or at a park, or somewhere public, and recreate a pose in maya with Stu (character used mainly for posing)...

Because I didn't have a lot of time to work on my assignment during the week (only a little bit of sketching), I decided to join some of my friends at the SketchCrawl in Ghent this saturday to come together, hang out with them and sketch a bunch of people along the way. So this was a good opportunity for me to do my drawings and a part of my assignment. (These drawings were very quick and because I'm not a great drawer, look like cr*p, but they still give a good base for your pose ^^)

After that I came home and finished the second part, posing Stu as one of the sketches.
So I picked out one that I liked and played around with Stu and this is what I came up with.
It's someone doing yoga and stretching the body and muscles. If I'd taken more time I'd probably tried to do some other poses as well but the deadline was already pretty close so I took this as my final pose.

I'm happy with it but it could have been a better pose !

Also a note to myself, take more time and plan your work throughout the week so you don't have to stress at the end !!!

Besides the assignment, we also had a lecture this week about all of the principles of animation, and how you can apply these to your work. I've already heard a lot about them and knew them pretty wel, but still it's always good to hear them again and keep thinking about them/applying them to your work !


Next assignment: BOUNCING BALL !!!