Week 12 - Current AM-Reel

I didn't update the stuff from the first classes ;)

 

Things to remember:
- Frame by frame through great animation to learn how to push ideas and add texture to animation
- When shooting Reference Vids prefeel emotions before pressing record on vid cam
- Never forget the power of Breakdowns :)

Week 11 - Prefinal Assignments

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Mentor notes: 

Dancing Stan:

- f141-151 - leg straightens and then bends again (causes knee pop)

- f64 - foot pops up too quick, drag foot more

- f69 - something weird with this frame, have foot not so much up

- f34 head popping, have it more to the left (draws over near frames to find out what position fits best)

- f139-f152 - SR shoulder is funky, when coming up to f136 have the shoulder where it is on f150

Just hold pose up there without this weird drift

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Catching Bus:

- f42 - head is drifting around, just hold still after she hit the floor

- f54 - pop in back arm (cheat it over cut)

- f55 - pop in the front arm (let it come up slower)

- f113 - leave hand in this pose, weird stuff is going on with her thumb (hit it on f56 and leave it til 113)

- add a blink somewhere around frame 99

Week 10 - Neverending Dance

Mentor Notes:
- Add smearframes now, scale up hand on f15, f16,
- (Draws over hands and arms to avoid pops and make smoother arcs)
 - "You need polish at the end (...) Feels a bit herky jerky"

Week 9 - Snappy Timing

  

- If Rig has different proportions than your Reference, look that it's workign with your Model Don't stick to Ref.

Like Mr. Incredible:

 

00:58: The animator used his ref just for the upper body of Mr. Incredible. After that, he figured out what to do with the legs.

Week 8 - Spline the Dance

Mentors comments:
- Not ready to show / give comments, in the middle of splining
- Try not to get fluid movements through the shot
- Snappy timing from pose to pose
- Dances are a lot of work and a lot of headaches but it will be fun :)

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Things to remember:
- Don't forget to exaggerate


Demo-time :)

- Jasons (our Mentors) CTRL+R hotkey resets the actual control to 0 (have try it)
- Jason normally uses GUI-Pickers but for us he worked with the Curves. -> He used additional Layers for curves he didn't use that's clever, so he don't accidently selects or keys the wrong controls

Week 7 - Blocking

 

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Mentor Comments:

- Stans proportions are different. His hands are much bigger. Having them rest on the knees doesn't work. Put them on the ground instead.

- Then drag hands across the ground

- 2nd option: Hands on belly

- Watch out the knees of stan. They always should be slightly bent.

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What I should remember:

- Animation is about communicating ideas and performance to the audience

- Make poses strong (character pose have to work in silhouette - like Charlie Chaplin)

- Keep it simple

- Don't fiddle around with details before dealing with the essence of your shot. 

- Main idea has to be clear for the audience. What do you want to show? How are you going to show it?

- Blocking has to be timed right, before you go to spline

Week 6 - Planning Dancing Stan

New Shot :)
I was inspired by Yanis' Marshalls great choreographies

Here's my planning for the "Cream" by Prince choreo Part. Just 150f of it:





















First few Keys

 

(After this, i started from scratch but it was good to mess around with the new Rig a bit)

Mentor notes:
- Tone down shoulders, they move a lot
- Use FK because hands are never locked
- Get it working from camera angle -> Front view like reference
- Get inbetweens where they're hnessecary. Push those offsets

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What makes a great animator aren't his keyposes. It's how he get there.

Watch the cartoony animation of Mushu (Mulan)

 

Aaaand Presto (smallest anticipation before action to lead eyes of the audience there)

Week 5 - Between Things

 

Comments from Mentor: 

- When she comes up, let her settle down nicer. Now it's like she hits a wall

- (He draws over the head to improve the falling curve)

- Hold f91 a bit, then go back with the hand and on pose on f112 stop the action

- Her left hand goes through her face before getting up

Not finished yet but our mentor said we could have a break from our first shot for now.

Things to remember: 

- Get clear Key poses

- How to get from Pose A to B is important. Chose the most interesting breakdown

- Check out Chuck Jones sometimes (Road Runner)

Ed Hooks says: Watch People. Licence to stare. Everyone is a hero in their own life. Every character should have a power center.

Week 4 - More Splining

What I learned this week: 

Cam Rules:

- Try to find the "best seat in the house" when searching for the perfect camera angle

- Cut on a period, as soon as the sentence ends

- Cut at the comma (to the other persons reaction)

-  Cut o a pause

- Do not cut from a medium shot to another medium shot

Animation

- Accentuate loudest word with gesture, move or mimic

- Choose the most interesting breakdown, linear is boring

Week 3 - First pass Splining

Things to remember:
- Have a moment of celebration when turning a shit in ^^  enjoy that it is alive now
- Straight inbetweens completely kill the essence of an action
- Webcams run with 15fps, that's great for finding smear frames (- tip by dana boadway)
- Break stuff when it smooths the arc out
- Don't offset keys! Make another Keyframe (in Blocking)
- When you grab something, grab first with small finger

 

Mentor notes: 

- things to improve the bus and cam movement

- after  bus leaves, she can slump down

- she moves both arms at the same time, put screenleft hand where it is in the end-pose

- f1-3 make sure she's moving forward

- tZ should be a bit smoother

- trip has too much frames (it slows down too much)

- kick forward on f18 doesn't work

- (draws over poses)

- watch head spacing on fall and add more frames for rebound

- add more time around f34, give body and legs more time

Week 2 - Hotkeys and Blocking

Jason, our Mentor shared his Maya hotkey configuration with us! It's so great, now i don't have to do all the clicking and shifting anymore when dealing with my timing in Mayas Timeline, i can simply press "k" for deleting an inbetween, "l" for inserting one and "m" for deleting a key.

Also I decided to make hotkeys for the Outliner (8), Graph Editor (0) <-- like in XSI
and for the Playblast (9)

I NEVER WORKED SO FAST, IT'S A DREAM :D

Happy, happy, happy, happy...


Here my blocking pass for this week:
 

 

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Mentor comments:

- He likes it :)

- Camera should trackout faster and come then back a bit for a nice snap

- I may add cubes indicating buildings

- The stretched pose holds for 5f, that's too long (2f is enough)

- Then he asked me to add a few breakdowns, here and there and drew over different poses...

- At the last pose she comes up, just moving the elbows, she has to move her shoulders first and her arms after

- After she's coming up, she has to settle down a little bit with a nice arc in it

Week 1 - Staging, Composition and Planning

Yay, i'm back to AM and in Class 3 already...

Goal of the first Week was to plan a new shot or a series of 3 shots for the whole term and i decided to do three different shots :)

These were the themes we could choose of:

1. Obstacle course

2. Super hero school

3. Olympian training

4. Soccer Star

5. Weight loss gym

6. Espionage service

7. Construction site

8. On the playground

9. Pick your own theme I chose "Pick your own theme" and thought of an overcomplicated shot with 200f where my character should run, fall down, do a few painful bounces on the head and body and finally coming to a rest. Then coming back up and seeing the bus, she was supposed to reach driving away, and her sad reaction to it. Yeah. It was too much. I'm now doing: running, falling down, coming up, being devastated. Planning pages: Reference vid:   ---- Mentor Comments: -Place something in the Blocking scene Stella (the Rig) can trip over -You can even slump down her head more on the last pose -Don't go over 120f -Key frames on 1, 7, 10, 14, 18, 22, 27, 31, 35, 42, 53, 66, 78, 104, 120