This last week's lecture was jam-packed, to put it lightly. The topic was locomotion. It covered vertical motion, horizontal motion, fulcrums, center lines, weight shift and much much more! It was a real eye opener. The idea that everything pivots on fulcrums and the location of the fulcrum can change throughout a movement, was an oh-snap-thats-it moment! Then he went on to explain that there is a center line that runs vertically from top to bottom of your character and in order to stay in balance, the mass of the character must be equal on both sides. The center-line-mass idea really blew my mind. What a really informative lecture!

Now that I have finished my 180 turn shot, we are moving on to our next shot. This time we had another list of possible shots to do of which I chose to animate a character walking/jumping across the tops of four posts. The posts are a lot like telephone poles of differing diameters. This week, I had to shoot my reference and come up with some thumbnails. This assignment should be fun and challenging because we have a new character this time. His name is Stewie and he is essentially the same charcter I used in my first term still poses but without arms. Its the first time we have had the chance to animat a character with an upper body. In our last assignment of the term, starting in week 7, we get to use the same character but that time he will have arms. That will be the most challenging yet. Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Anyway, enjoy my planning stuff.