Animation Mentor Assignment - Class 1 - Week 10

Almost done with this term. Next week is our last week. Wow, this term has really flown by.

So I decided to do the first cartoon walk that I did for reference. But as I started working with it I realized that the motion in the reference really wasn't enough. I really had to push it to make it special, added a little exaggeration. So here is the walk with some changes. And I really would like to make a couple of other changes to it but I ran out of time. Well, hopefully Amber will like it. This time I was able to go in and smooth the knees and the walk in general so I am happy with the results.



We also had to work on a pose that demonstrated exhaustion, kind of how I feel today... I didn't get much sleep last night. Here is my pose, please tell me what you think.



Oh and on a happy note, last week Amber really liked my work. Both my pose and my walk cycle. She had minor corrections in each so I'm really pleased. And the funny thing is I was thinking I was way off since I hadn't finished polishing. ;-)

Possible Walks for this Week

This week we are working on a personality walk.

Please look at the following reference video clips and let me know what you think. I would like to know which ones you like most and if you think the timing works or I should act it out differently.

Cartoon Walk 1


Cartoon Walk 2


Drunk Walk


Injured Walk


Sad and Tired Walk


Feedback welcome...

My Buddies and Skype

The cool thing about this week is that me and some of my classmates started useing Skype to communicate. It works great because a group of us can have conversations (we have currently tested with up to 5 at a time) and give feedback and critiques as we work. Our sessions have been very productive and we are getting to know each other better and better every day. These are my buddies with their respective AM avatars.

Robert Barros Jamie Quist Nathan Jent Peer Lemmers

Animation Mentor Assignment - Class 1 - Week 9

This week we learned all about exaggeration in our lecture. We learned that we can take our animation to the next level by adding exaggeration. This makes our work look interesting and not booooring. We can always use exaggeration to punch up the scene and call attention to what is important for the viewer to focus on. But, it is important not to overuse exaggeration because it can confuse or turn off the audience.

We specifically learned about exaggerating Poses, exaggerating Timing and exaggerating Weight. We also touched up a little bit on the exaggeration of Ideas and Personality.

For our assignment we worked on smoothing out the Vanilla walk and I have to say, it was more work than I expected. Here are the 2 versions that I submitted. The second one has a more realistic passing of the foot and it also has a nicer up and down motion of the body. Unfortunately, I didn't finish polishing the second one, so there is still a little knee popping here and there.



We also had to work on a pose that demonstrated concern. Here is my pose, please tell me what you think.



And finally, my revision of last week's strong pose.



I really wish I had had more time to smooth out my walk. I had several comments during the week that made me change my idea and my key poses. Maybe for next week's revision I will have it all smoothed out.

So, next week is our personality walk!!! I can't wait! It's going to be so much fun!

Funny thing happened this week...

OMG, it's so funny what happened this week. I was seeing The Making of Finding Nemo DVD last weekend. Melissa got it for me for Valentines and I finally had time to check it out. So I'm looking at it and they start talking about them finally finishing the movie... so they show the animators starting to celebrate and all of a sudden I do a double take... there's BOOM in the middle of the bunch shaking a champagne bottle and spraying everybody!!! (For those of you not in AM, Bobby "BOOM" Beck is the founder of our school and worked at Pixar for a long time before quitting to start Animation Mentor.)

So, I took the opportunity to write Bobby a quick message and ask him it that was him in the DVD... I was just making sure since the footage wasn't that clear... and also express how much I was loving the AM experience. The next day I received a message from Bobby thanking me and asking me if he could use my quote. I said sure... but I had no idea what the quote would be used for... I thought maybe the website.

Then Wednesday I almost fell over when Brian and other friends started calling me and asking if I had seen the Animation Mentor Newsletter. I opened my mail and there I was at the very top, Quote of the Month! So here it is so you guys can check it out.

Animation Mentor Report, March 2006 Issue #10

My Mentor

Just realized that I hadn't told you guys about my mentor.

My mentor is Amber Martorelli and she is awesome. She has worked as a character animator for 7 years. Most recently, she animated for Blue Sky Studios on their feature films, Robots and Ice Age 2. Prior to Blue Sky, she worked at Big Idea Productions on the film Jonah, as well as, a few Veggietale specials. Amber got her start at a small house, Aston Entertainment, working on TV promos and videos during her last two years finishing her animation degree at Ringling School of Art and Design. This is copied almost verbatum from her profile on AM, hehe.

In any case, it is soooo cool to have a mentor that has actually worked in the industry. What is so amazing about AM is that all the mentors have at least 3 to 5 years of experience in the Animation industry. Most of them are actually working at one of the many studios around the country. And you get to meet a lot of them as a student so it is a great opportunity to learn from the best.

In addition, Amber's husband, Lucas, is currently working for Pixar as a lighter! So it was very interesting in one of the live Q&A sessions we had with her to ask her husband all about working at Pixar and how the Disney thing has affected everyone. It's also been really cool because in a few occations Amber has shown us some of the animation techniques with actuall clips from the movies that she worked on, which include Robots and Ice Age 2!

Animation Mentor Assignment - Class 1 - Week 8

OK, so the work this week went great. Our assignment was to block out Ballie in a simple vanilla walk. It was more work than I expected. In addition to the contact, breakdown and extreme poses that I alluded to in the previous post, we also had to work on the latteral side to side movement of the hips, as well as the dropping of the hip of the passing leg. In this animation test you can see the result of all my changes. I will be cleaning up the animation next week so that in week 9's post you will see a smoother animation.



Our other assignment was to pose Stu to communicate that he is strong. Here are my poses for this week. Also, click on the sketches link if you want to see the sketches that I drew to base these poses on. During the week we try to find inspiration for our poses from video, pictures or real life observation.

Strong Sketches



Finally, this week I also fixed all the feedback that my mentor Amber corrected on my bouncing Taylor animation. There were TONS of changes but it looks much better. I know to most of you the animation will look very similar to the original... but I have made several adjustments to anticipation, overlapping action, timing and squash and stretch. Check it out:

Animation Mentor - Class 1 - Week 8

Walking, walking, walking... This week we are doing a walking assignment with our new character, Ballie. We had a big lecture about how to block in a walk, starting with the contact poses (where the forward foot makes contact with the ground), on to the breakdowns (where one foot passes the other), and then adding the extremes, extreme down (as you catch your weight after the contact) and extreme up (the highest point of the walk before the contact). We were also explained how walking is a controlled fall. And that as bipeds what we are doing when we walk is loosing our ballance and falling... until catch ourselves with our forward foot... then doing it all over again. :-) Think about it, if you don't put your foot in front of you when you walk, you would fall flat on your face!

Here is my planning for the animation of the walk.


Here is my first blocking of a walk. As you can see I have only put in the contacts, breakdowns and extremes at frames 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21 and 24. The whole cycle takes 24 frames, or one second.



This week was also pretty tough because I had to go to Dallas for Verizon. But the cool think was that it gave me a chance to do a lot of stuff on the boat, like read the animator's handbook and work on the planning sketch.

I'll be updating later this week with a cleaned up walk cycle... it's going to look smooooooth!