Soooooooooo its been awhile

hello to anyone out there reading my blog, I am sorry that I have not been posting updates since week 11 of Class 1, reason for this is cause I picked up a Full time gig doing some Photoshop clean up work & doing Animationmentor at the same time, so time has become very valuable to me in these last months. honestly when Sunday comes around my mind is just mush.

Well for class 2 it has been a great challenge of pushing my animation to far and trying to tone it down to a point of happy medium of the two. Oh and i for got to mention my mentor for this term was Travis Tohill... he is freaking awesome. This guy worked on features that I can only dream of doing sequels of someday. He really pushed me to the limit and beyond with my animation, his feedback sometimes felt endless and made me wonder how did I miss all this, but then when I didn't get a long critic it felt odd. I am sure going to feel odd in class 3 if i get 7 min critic again, cause I kind of forgot what that was like.I also had awesome peer buddy both in class 1 and class 2 I think if it wasn't for these guys my stuff would have been looking like a nice mocap animation.

I hope in class 3  I will be able to post weekly for updates rather then end of term.

enjoy

Week 11.... the Final Walk Skip cycle animation

  Oh man what a week this last have been. I can assure you I had to redo my original skip cycle, and spent just a few hours under 24 on the computer cranking this thing right... Letting go of certain frames or even a whole set of Key frames got easier as my mind plunge deeper into how the animation should move.
  For the times when I felt the animation was off, thank goodness there is google+, and some awesome feedback from fellow animation students . Of course I had the AM site to give me great feedback too, the feedback was everywhere. Heck I would even jump out of my chair from time to time and attempt the same motion of Skip I was trying to do. All these things helped alot I am not going to lie.
  I was able to attend a QnA with 2 animators who worked on Cars 2, hearing there story of how they got into Pixar was very inspiring. I really enjoyed when they talked about there workflow and how they would approach the animation, I found it insane(in a good way) that one of them would do straight ahead animation for most of there shots during Cars 2. Its awesome to me cause honestly this is what I ended up doing on my Skip.  The best thing I took away from all of this is

Don't be afraid to delete keys and redo the whole animation, in the long run this will only help you

Enjoy the balance Pose and my walk skip cycle.

The Sketches

The Pose

The Animation

Forgot about week 10

So I just got finish with a awesome Q&A with Jim Brown and Brian Mendenhall, who was just sharing there experience in the animation world. Some inspiring stuff came out from them, like the biggest fear for them are the up and coming new animators aka the AM students (lol). That aside I realize, well I didn't post my week 10 turn in, so here it is.
A little description about the assignment: So we got to do a character walk of our choice and I decided to do a skip type walk. also our poses is a exhausted pose here are the final with the sketch

The Exhausted Pose

The Exhausted Sketches

The  Skip Planning

The Blocking

The ReBlocking

(This was redone earlier today, figure I throw it up too)

WEEK 9 turn ins

holy moly does the weeks flyby!!!
This week assignment was to clean and polish that vanilla walk while doing a concern pose. honestly the animation wasn't as hard as doing the pose, I looked at what other students have done and even went out looking for people that were concern out in the world. But then I ask myself to define concern, I wrote down a list of things I thought it meant still wasn't good enough. Grabbing a Webster dictionary and reading the definition made me think concern doesn't have to be sad or scared, but really the human who is concern shares some of that emotion and is engage with the thing they are interacting with.

Crazy .......I know all this for a silly pose =]

Enjoy

here are the sketches and the pose to follow

I realize that I never uploaded my thumbnail sketch for my vanilla walk here that is with the animation

Week 8 "walks" & Rango QnA

This last week we had to do a walk cycle, but just not any kind of walk cycle a vanilla walk cycle. Holy-crap this was harder then eating a mud pie with worms for toppings. I quote my mentor "it is easier to make a caricature type walk then it is to keep it a vanilla walk." I think also at the same time it was kind of easy, cause this is just blocking so I am only really working with 5 frames/poses, then recreating them for the rest of the walks. The stu pose was suppose to be strength, I don't know if I nailed it.

There was a special QnA with two animators from Rango this past weekend, that was awesome they gave a lot of info on things that they animated. One of the best things was talking about character design, and how they can help or make you work for great animation. They also gave such great insight about the industry.
This movie is in my top 5 favorite 3d feature films, and if you haven't seen it go rent it or buy it. You might find yourself thinking "what the, did they just say that?" in a funny kind of way. They give a lot of reference to western flicks so if you like that stuff you will love this.
Enjoy

Strong Pose

Walk Cycle

Week 7 > > > > > > Week 8

I am a little behind on my posting of assignments, but this last week was crazy. My nephew was married and I basically finish this project at the wedding reception. This is what I turn in for week 7. I already got my feed back already from my mentor and it was a some great feedback. He wants it simpler, as far as assignment goes. Keeping it Simple, this is so hard to do cause I got ants in me that want to dance out animation. By the way I tried to make the ball that took out the pendulum come for tailor.

Enjoy

The Thought Process

The Animation

Week 6.....WHAAAAAT(in a minion kind of voice)

For whatever reason you tube wouldn't let me upload my assignment from week 6 on Sunday, and now I am just getting around to it today. This last week assignment was awesome in a challenging point of view, my mentor wanted us to think about what was the motivation of the movement to the pendulum. We didn't need a model or things there in the animation, he just didn't want something to move with out a reason behind it. Mine was a bird carrying the pendulum, yes I realize now that any bird can move and fly differently, next time I will name the bird instead of keeping it soooo vague. my references was a very flimsy yoyo that was perfect for this.

The Animation

The Thought Process

Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Week 5 into Week 6

This last weekend was so busy for me that I forgot to post what I turn in for week 5. Here is the obstacle course and the pose.

Stu Devastated !!!

Here is my Obstacle Course for Week 5

stu goes EMU!!!!!!!!!...... I mean EMO!!!!

Ok here is my devastation pose version 1

Week 4 WiP

This week we had to do a heavy vs light ball bounces, I am trying my hardest to stay away from youtube and other video references from online sources, if and only if I can do the task at hand on my own. This is so I can get a better understanding of what is truly happening. Also my mentor brought up some good points about when using video references from the internet you won't really know what fps it was shot at.

I used this rubber bouncing ball from the vending machines you can find at grocery stores, and when I watched it bounce I came to realize that the ball had a seam that stuck out which would cause the ball to bounces in a different pattern every time. I thought this was a great characteristic to show how random the ball can be, but improvising it into the animation didn't work for other who left feedback and felt it should go forward and finish the bounces unless it hits another object. So after putting in my keys in Maya I change it so much trying to make it work with the frame limit.

Here is my pencil timing test done before I actually touch the computer.
I spent around two days prepping to get to this point

Here is what I handed in for this week

This is all the changes I made until the final version

On a end note I was able to watch Captain America this weekend, and it was a great film. Also watched Waking Sleeping Beauty which is also an awesome film and recommend it for those who love the Disney movies or if you are wanting to be an Animator and just a fan of the arts.


until next week

Week 3 Submission

So I feel like I am done with this weeks assignment, here are the 3 pieces I submitted. One thing I took away was how hard it is to not make a Cliche Pose for Excitment. The easiest way for me to get over the Cliche Poses was to sketch out the Cliche Poses, figure out what worked in them, and what parts work in today's life style.

Bouncing Ball

Excitment Pose

Gesture Pose

Now I await my mentors feedback

week 3 is almost done 0.0*

So AM is having there yearly BBQ right now, bummer that I couldn't go. Oh well it's Friday and my Animation is almost done with.

Just about done with the bouncing ball

Excitement pose

Week 3 W.I.P

so here is my ball bounce and pose for week 3 it still being work on. Few things that I forgot to post was my timing for the bouncing ball and my references, oh well maybe next post

enjoy

Sketches for Excitement

Pose based on sketches Excitement

Ball bounce first try

Week 2

So after I got a early critic from my mentor I made changes to the pose, and resubmitted it. Here are the one I put up on Friday and the touch-ups I did today.

BEFORE CRITIC

AFTER CRITIC

what happen in a WEEK!!!!!

So I haven't post here in awhile soooo I will try to update all the cool stuff that occurred animation related to me =]

Last Thurs 6/30/11

got to meet my mentor david tart, here is his show reel.

Animation Direction Showreel from David Tart on Vimeo.

EPIC HUH!!!!!

Saturday 7/2/11

I got to join in a Q and A with one of the founders of AnimationMentor.com Shawn Kelly this guy is awesome, he talked about what is expected of us at animationmentor and spoke about some of his past projects and how he approach it, like when he animated Yoda. also got a tour of his desk where he showed some epic trophies(not sure what else to call them "achievements" maybe?), well i guess they are inspirations right.


Sunday 7/3/11

went out and watch Cars 2, really great animation, considering how much characters they had it was fun to watch.

Wednesday 7/6/11

went out and watch Transformers "Dark of the Moon", this movie was epic still I am tripping that Shawn Kelly was Lead Animator for this movie.... so so inspiring.

Thursday 7/7/11

well got to have a nice Q and A about the 12 principles of animation......so epic

and here is what I have due for week 2

do some sketches, pick one and make stu do the pose

here is my stu pose

Trying out the STU RIG

yup just like the title says I was toying around with the STU rig, trying to get familiar with it's controls.

It Has Begun!!!!!!!

Yes it has begun, animationmentor.com allowed us to logon and check out the site for the first time as students, and wow so much info for the first day. Now today is the end of day two and I feel that I haven't even put a dent in the the amount of things they have for students. Oh yeah I forgot to mention who is my first Mentor ...David Tart!!! this guy worked on things like oh I don't know, toy story, monster inc, finding nemo. This is Epic for class 1, can't wait until Q and A. Until then I will be planning for my first assignment.

EXCITED FOR AFTER THE WEEKEND

So on Monday June 27 2011, my next journey to becoming a 3d animator begins with ANIMATIONMENTOR.COM

Here is a great rundown what ANIMATIONMENTOR.COM is all about, and I am super excited!!!!!!!!!

Pencil test

Here are two pencil test I have recently done, 

finally got around to uploading them on to youtube. I don't know if I will have time to finish my timeout short but if not its ok I can make time later on. enjoy =]

 

 

 

 

My current demo reels

So here are my current demo reel. 

The 3d reel I made the first three models from sketch to rigs and animation. The last one was a model I downloaded from creative crash, just so I can get a better understanding on how a good rig should be.

 

The 2d reel is a little old, I have a update in the coming days I will upload some other pencil test I have.