A Kick in the Ball and Rushing Waterfalls

I've been delving into the works at 11secondclub.com as a means of self-study and came across someone's reel with a guy kicking a soccer ball. I've always thought this was a great exercise and after picking his piece apart I thought I'd try my own.

This is blocking for the body and feet:



I've yet to finish the end but I'm still deciding what I want him to do before I go any further. I was going to just animate the torso / legs but maybe I'll go all out and add the rest of the body parts. I was also thinking about trying locators and constraints to have him hold the ball and drop it in place for the kick.

In the meantime I think I needa cool off for a day or two. It's great fun though.

On a completely different note, I recently went to Yosemite with some of the family including niece and sister of my sister in law. It was my first time there and I was expecting a long walk basically. We were going on one of the shortest trails there so I figured a 5-ish mile hike would be cake.



Calm and cool on the bridge. That's my sister and niece.



Brother and his wife.

So on we go until we notice that the path is wet. My niece gets scared and wants to turn back. So sister in law walks back down with her while the rest of us press onward.



At this point I'm thinking, "WOW this is awesome!" We're getting sprinkled by the mist of the waterfall and it's like we're in an action movie. The winds were picking up and it was just the right amount of dangerous to get your heart pumpin'. As I snapped this picture a Russian man tapped me on my shoulder, pointed to my camera and said, "IT VEEL DIE, TURAAHST ME". The camera is weatherproof so I wasn't worried, I didn't want to argue against a cliff so I just said okay. I'm never going to forget this very short conversation though haha. About 10 minutes later, under the cover of a small overhead cliff, I took this picture:



Completely drenched! At this point we went back to get my sister in law and the niece. Next time we'll be more prepared. In all honesty that climb up those steps was RIDICULOUSLY dangerous and scary. Especially going down the puddled steps, yikes. But it was still fun.

Speaking of which, since I wasn't prepared I was wet until we got home about 4 hours later. It was the most comfortable car drive ever!!! :( On top of that I thought that inside the camera bag was still dry... turns out it was completely soaked and the camera had been sitting in there moisting it up. I was worried so I dried it out a bit and took a test picture. I now use this as my desktop wallpaper.



I had a blast and I hope to continue the trend of actually going out and living life a bit more.