Animation Mentor - Week 7 / 8 / 9

Hi guys,

Sorry it's taken a while since my last post, but I didn't really had much time to update this bad boy.
But now I do ! So here is a little recap of my previous weeks at AM !

WEEK 7

In this week we got a pretty in-depth lecture by Victor Navone about the graph editor and how you can use it to your advantage, how to keep your curves clean and what you should tackle first when you're going from blocking to spline.

In terms of assignments it was a pretty relaxing week for me because we only had to do our revision for the Tailor assignment, and since my mentor didn't really give me that much stuff to change, I didn't really had that much to do...so I only tweaked a little bit on my animation, but only on things that I still wanted to change myself. So without further ado here's the revision of my Tailor assignment (that probably looks kinda the same ^^)

WEEK 8

Oh man, this week it was all about WALKS, and to be more specific, about the VANILLA WALK.
What's that you say, vanilla ? Why not chocolate or strawberry ? Uh uh yeah offcourse, whatever floats your boat dude ! But with vanilla they mean just a plain old simple 'generic' walkcycle.

So we had to do a first blocking pass for our generic walkcycle, and this is what I turned in.

Then we also had to do a pose that would encapture 'physical strength'.

 WEEK 9

So here we continued the lesson on walks, and we took a more detailed look at the hips !
Basically, hips are very important, and everything derives from them, so make sure you have a good performance on the hips, and then the rest is easy peasy (actually it's still pretty hard, but it get's you half the way ^^)

For our assignment we had to continue to work on the walkcycle, this time going to spline and really try to nail it down !

Since I had a lot of trouble with the AM site not recognizing my previous assignments etc I couldn't get a critique on my blocking, so I just went with what I had the week before and just kept on animating. I'm not superhappy with it, there seems to be something off but I can't really tell what, so if you have some comments please do give them !

And again there was a pose to be done, this time it was 'concerned'.

Thanks for reading and cheerios !
I'll try to update more often from now ;)

Animation Mentor - Week 5 & 6

Hi y'alllll ! 

Since I didn't have that much time last week I decided to combine week 5 and 6 into one post.

So, for WEEK 5 we had a lecture on OVERLAPPING ACTION and what the different ways are to approach it and to incorporate this kind of action into your work.

In order to grasp this concept we had to go and animate a pendulum, with several 'apendages'.
I decided to put in a bouncing ball in there as well to get a more entertaining performance.

When I see it again, there's a lot of stuff that still has to be tweaked and can be better, but since the assignments are getting bigger and bigger I don't really have a lot of time now to go back to these shots. But I will do so eventually...so without further ado, the pendulum (already revisioned)!

 

Also we had to do a Stu pose for 'devastation' , and make sketches beforehand.

 

Then onwards to WEEK 6 !!!

Here we had a lecture about ANTICIPATION & SQUASH UND STRETCH

We learned why it's so important to set up (anticipate) your animation the right way so that your audience understands and follows what's happening on screen.

And to make sure we understand all the principles we've been learning about these past few weeks, we had to animate TAILOR. This is basically a bouncing ball with a tail that resembles a squirrely kinda creature...

I decided to go with some kind of 'obstacle course' where Tailor had to move through. I had a lot of fun on this assignment because I could try out something more fluid and it was just an awesome character to animate. 

And needless to say, there are still a lot of areas which can be improved, but I will wait for my critique before going back into this shot and applying them.

Cheers !!!
Feedback is highly appreciated ;)

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 !!!