This week they talked about gestures. The lecture was a long and informative one. I learned a lot and I can't wait to try some of it out on my next shot. Once again we were told to stay away from cliche when it comes to gestures. Also, its really important to not overuse gestures and to make sure they fit the personality/mood of the character.

Anywho, here is my refined version of my shot. Please ignore the knees and elbows. Maya is doing some strange inbetweening so I'll probably need to key them on most of the frames. I wanted to make sure that my ideas read first before I start putting in a ton of keys that I won't be able to move around. There are a few more problem areas that I will fix once overall shot gets the go ahead.

Posted by Danny Southard at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Wow what a busy week! I had some unexpected things pop up that kept me busy for a while (I'll explain in a week or two)). I really didn't have much time for blocking out my shot unfortunately. I had to turn it in unfinished which really sucked. Actually I thought it was finished and then I got some good advice for some of the other students and my mentor. I had to rework a large part of the shot, so that took up much of my time. I'm definitely going to have to play catch up next week. Anyway, here is the latest version. Sorry I don't have time to write much else. Things will hopefully be back to normal after next week.

Oh and they talked about phrasing this week. It definitely was an interesting lecture that I think will come in handy when I revise this shot again. I wish I had seen this lecture before starting this shot because I would have done some things differently. Oh well.

Posted by Danny Southard at 8:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Well, the break is over and AM is back in full swing. It was a nice relaxing break and I enjoyed every minute of it, but I was dying to get back to animating. I found myself visiting the AM thread at CGtalk several times daily to find out all the latest info. It felt like it was my first term and I couldn't wait to get started. Anyway, now I'm in and starting my third term: Intro to Acting. This is what a lot of us have been waiting for. Now we have a chance to showoff or discover our acting skills. I'm a little nervous because I'm not sure if can act. I really wish I had taken an acting class at some point during high school or college, but I was just plain chicken. Ya know, thats what they say.....animators are just actors who are too chicken to get on stage.

My mentor this time around is Keith Sintay. He's been in the business since The Lion King! Wow! Its going to be a blast learning from him.

The lecture this week covered various topics in acting for animation. It's an epic lecture so it took me a while to get through it. Overall it was really informative. If it's any indications of the types of lectures this term, I'm going to learn a ton in these next 12 weeks. I'm really excited.

We started this term running as we got our first assignment on day one. The object of this assignment is to create a scene with one character with two beats. This essentially means that the character must go through one emotion change. We have 120-250 frames to do so and on this assignment they are stressing the importance of staying within the time limit. Previously they were a bit lenient and some of the assignments ballooned to twice the frame limit. This sort of thing wouldn't be allowed in a studio because they aren't going to change the film just to accommodate your epic shot.

For my shot, I chose to keep it simple. I wanted to try to animate a more serious shot with this assignment as well. I chose to animate a down-and-out character begging for money. While it may turn out to be funny anyway, I chose to exaggerate some of the movements to try and lighten the mood. Anyway, we'll see how is comes out. Here is my video reference and thumbnail pages. Next week, blocking.

Posted by Danny Southard at 2:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)