Well this week was all about animating animals and creatures. As always, Rick O'Conner put together an interesting lecture. For those of you non-AMers, Rick O'Conner likes making his lectures look like movies. He puts in camera angles, cuts, and special effects. They are usually cheesy, but definitely fun to watch. This week's lecture was a short one and the first 1/3 of it had nothing to do with the topic at hand, but I definitely got some good info out of it. The animal stuff was mostly a review for me because I had taken an animal drawing for animation class at DeAnza. There still was some new stuff and the info on insects and creatures was really interesting.

The first 1/3 of the lecture, while having nothing to do with animals or creatures, was enlightening. It basically was an animator taking about how you "establish yourself" at a studio or on a show (studio-speak for "film"). He said at first you will get a bunch of small, not so interesting parts of shots to work on. No matter how boring they may be, you should work your butt off to get those finished as fast and thoroughly as possible. After a while of doing this you will have demonstrated that you can get things done in a timely fashion. At that point if you feel comfortable enough you might ask for an interesting shot. Usually it would be one that you've had your sights on for a while and you know exactly what you want to do with it. If you get lucky and they agree, then you have to hit that shot out of the ballpark. You have to nail it or its back to square one. If you indeed nail it, then the director or supervising animator will be more likely to give you more interesting shots because they can trust you to do a good job. It makes sense. Very cool stuff.

Anyway, here is the new and improved version of my shot. I re-blocked some of the actions and shuffled some stuff around to make it more clear and interesting. I have only 2 more week to finish this shot......yikes!

Posted by Danny Southard at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Oops! I just realized that I summed up Session 208's lecture in my Session 207 entry. Guess that means that I should talk about what happened in Session 207.

The lecture was all about staging. This is basically how you compose your shot. Much like a painting, how you arrange the elements in your shot can greatly effect how your shot is perceived. There was some really interesting info on camera angles and how they effect the mood of the piece. Essentially, there are psychological methods that filmmakers use that can subconsciously effect how the viewer feels during the shot. Its pure mind control.....I love it!

Here is my first blocking pass. Its kind of rough in spots. Some of the actions don't read very well, especially the first two. I imagine this will be changing considerable in the next iteration because I'm not really happy the shot as a whole. It's a bit boring. Anyway, here it is:

Enjoy...

Posted by Danny Southard at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

This week we learned about advanced timing. Much of it had to do with contrast in timing. Having all of the actions in your scene occur at the same speed can really make for a boring piece. Mixing it up by having fast, normal and slow actions can really make your animation more appealing. Victor had already mentioned this in my critiques and previous lectures had briefly mentioned this as well. They use words like phrasing and texture to describe different aspects of timing. Phrasing describes the timing as a whole. Texture is a way of describing the variation in timing throughout the scene. Much like bumps or variations on the surface of a material which is also known as texture. Ideally you would like your animation to have excellent phrasing. You do this by adding variation in the timing, thus adding texture, but in a way that works well as a whole. Just randomly changing the timing on certain objects will usually not work. You really need to plan the variation wisely.

Anyway, this week we planned out our new shots. I chose to animate a character pushing a heavy object. The heavy object was provided to us and it's basically an odd shaped box with a handle. It looks like a misshapen shopping cart with no wheels. You'll get to see what it looks like next week, when I finish with the blocking phase. So for now I leave you with my reference footage and thumbnails.

Posted by Danny Southard at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The latest. I incorporated Victor's comments and I think they helped tremendously. There are still some issues with the render, but I'm fairly happy with the animation. Now on to my next shot: A character pushing a heavy object. This will be the last shot of the term.

Enjoy...

Posted by Danny Southard at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, this week we covered the topic of force. Its another very important topic that I need to make sure to put in my animation. I didn't get a whole lot out of the lecture, but I don't know if I was fully paying attention when I watched it. I definitely will watch it again if I have time. What I did get out of it was that there is force behind every movement and most movements are complex. For instance, if you lift your arm, you have to think about what the rest of the body is doing and how it is effected by the arm's movement. The force to move that arm must originate from somewhere in the body.

Another cool thing I learned was that it is possible to show force in something as simple as thumbnails. When drawing, darken the leading edge of whatever is moving. This will give the impression of movement and the force behind it. Also if one object is in contact with another, darken the edges that are touching. For example, if you're pushing on a wall with your hands, darken the edge of your hands that are touching the wall. Again this will give the impression that you're applying force to the wall.

As for the assigment, this week we were supposed to continue with our shots. If our blocking needed major revision, than all that was neccessary was to turned in a revised blocking version. If our shots required very little revision, we were allowed to come out of blocking and get as far as we could in refining or polishing. I hope I didn't get to ahead of myself with this one. I already put in a ton of keys, making it hard to make significant changes. So if major revisions are neccessary, I may be in trouble. I'll cross my fingers.

Here it is......

Posted by Danny Southard at 10:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)