Sunday, December 19, 2010

Stewfasaaa

Blocking 2:




Changes:

His leg poses were reading too human-like so now he lands hands first; more of a tigery fashion.

Changed the other poses accordingly to accommodate the arc he creates in the air. Added a breakdown before and after the land. Kind of does a gallop to settle.

Added anticipation before the jump.

More neutral starting position for more reaction in the spine when he spots the bird (still pondering about this).

Still lots to clean up. But I've already learned so much about workflow and the importance of showing your work at it's blueprint stages. I showed a friend of mine 9 poses and I had to go back and drastically change 6/9 which totally changed my entire shot. So on that front... woohoo!

Friday, December 17, 2010

Time has wings.

Continuing the adventures at Animation Mentor, these past 3 months just flew by in an instant. Overall the difficulty is rising, in part because I'm choosing to do harder assignments. My mentor even ended up stating in my overall assessment that I overextended myself :) But he quickly followed up with "... but I don't hold it against you."

One thing I've noticed that I've been lacking is follow-through. Whenever I hit an obstacle my motivation meter depletes exponentially. This is something I've been working on all term and I'm glad to report that there is progress. At the end of the day, here is what my Class 2 ended with :



It turned out okay but I'm not 100% satisfied with my performance this term. And since we have a good amount of days off on this break, I've decided to buck up and go for another test. This time with some goals in mind:

1. "One shot, one thought" (thanks Brian!)
2. Do first pass blocking with a minimal amount of poses.
3. Try IK Spine (and in this case IK hands).
4. Experiment with creature-like behavior.
5. Cartoony - break the rig like crazy. Defy physics (just a little)
6. 100 Frame limit.

Plan: Stewfasa is stalking a bird as it's flying around the area. He notices it turning around, springs from atop his ledge and swipes him out of the air - landing on the ground in nothing less than an awesome fashion.

Here goes pass 1: