End of Class 4- Progress Reel

I've been bad about updating my progress as I go along, but I just finished class 4 of Animation Mentor and have two new shots for my reel. I polished up the kitchen scene a tad, but it could probably use more work. I also finished up my first dialogue shot, complete with lip sync added in and the background as well. I definitely need to practice my facial animation. Since I have the least amount of practice with that I felt somewhat lost during the process and felt like I was guessing at a lot of stuff. Luckily this particular shot didn't require a ton of crazy faces and facial changes, so I'll make sure to challenge myself with that in my next class. Anyway here is my class 4 progress reel with all of my Animation Mentor work so far!

Done with Class 4!

Class 4- Shot #2 Blocking process

I am now in week 8 of Class 4- 4 more weeks to go! We just handed in our second blocking pass of our dialogue shot, so it is still in stepped mode. My mentor also instructed us not to add the lip sync yet so it wouldn't distract from how the rest of the body was working for now. I definitely have to figure out my process for approaching facial animation with the body. First I got the main movements and timing down with the body that went along with the dialogue and then I went ahead and started adding facial expressions. I had a really difficult time making sure the character maintained the framing I wanted with this camera throughout the shot while having her walk forward and hit her mark where I wanted her to end up. It turns out I had to do a lot of cheating to get her there but I think it worked out! Here's my blocking continued pass from last week.

I got a couple notes from my mentor to fix for this upcoming week and now I can put it into full spline mode and start adding the lip sync!

Class 4- Shot #2 Planning

The time is here! We're finally getting into our first dialogue and lip sync shot. So now we have to remember everything we've learned about proper body mechanics and add acting techniques and full facial animation. Our first task was to find 3 lines of dialogue that were 10 seconds or under, had an interesting rhythm in tone and emotion, and we had to try to change the context of the shot from how it originally was from whatever movie or show it came from. We also couldn't use anything that was too recognizable. We can use only one character with a static camera.
   I started searching for dialogue early so that I wouldn't be so stressed out this week, because we also had to shoot reference video, sketch out thumbnails for each of the ideas, and do two poses from our reference on our characters with full facial expressions. Unfortunately, that didn't work out too well because it was extremely difficult to find the right piece of dialogue. There's a lot of pressure because this is the shot we're going to be working on for the rest of the term and it's my first dialogue piece to go on my demo reel. I literally spent entire days from when I woke up to when I went to bed at 1:30am searching and searching.
   So it really came down to the wire and I finally narrowed it down to my three lines. I ended up shooting my reference video from about 10:00pm- 4:00am after already not having a lot of sleep so I was a little crazy during this, but here's my audio and then below is the reference I shot.

That third shot was a last minute decision I made and I didn't end up being too happy with it. I liked how the first two came out and my mentor said the same thing. He said he'd much rather see the second one as I originally intended as a medium wide shot where we actually see a patient on a gurney but if I didn't want to do that I should stick with my first idea. I had trouble deciding whether I wanted to go the funny route or the creepy route, but ultimately I decided to go with creepy. I hope it's the right choice lol. I'm really excited to get started with this, although I'm nervous about having the character actually walking and bending over and then adding a face on top of it, yikes! Wish me luck! Oh and here are the poses I did for the assignment...

Class 4- Shot #1

Right now I am in week 6 of class 4 at Animation Mentor, so about halfway through. This class is called Introduction to Acting and I have Dreamworks animator Marek Kochout as my mentor. As well as working on a lot of more recent stuff, he's also worked on A Goofy Movie, Darkwing Duck, and Goof Troop so I was really excited about taking him as a mentor.
Our first assignment was a pantomime acting shot. We needed to show a change in emotions in a maximum of 8 seconds using a rig with no real facial expressions. I found it really difficult trying to tell a story and convey different emotions in 8 seconds. As always, we start out by shooting reference of ourselves acting out the scene. This is my reference after I received notes from my mentor and I had to reshoot the ending.

This was the blocking phase of my animation. We just find main poses from our reference and put it in stepped mode so we can get an idea of rough timing.

I didn't think I had enough time to do anything else at the end so I just had these two basic poses for the ending, and my mentor wanted me to do more. I was able to shorten other parts of the shot to get myself more time to show her acting more frantic at the end. I still have to do some more fixing and polishing, but here's how the shot turned out.

Class 3 Summary and Progress Reel

Ok so I didn't make a single post about class 3 (Advanced Body Mechanics) of Animation Mentor because I was so busy! I had Dreamworks animator Drew Adams as my mentor and he was great! He gave me a lot of notes and really long critiques to make my shots better. We had the choice to pick a theme for the term and I chose the circus theme (I don't know why since I already spent 2 years on a clown related short film for school but anyway, I did). I decided to go for cartoony styled shots this term because I wanted to see if I could do it and I'd really like to be good at that style of animation. It was a little difficult and I definitely felt pretty lost at the start of both of my shots because I wasn't sure I could make up movement that wasn't happening in my reference. We could do either two or three shots this term, and I ended up with two because my second shot ended up being way longer than it was supposed to and I was having a hard time with it. My mentor said he really liked the idea and thought it'd be good for my reel so he really wanted to spend the time with me polishing it up and making it the best it could be. I was really frustrated getting through that second shot (the cannon), especially because I was animating things I had never animated before, but I'm happy I stuck with it because I ended up being happy with the way it turned out. So here's my current progress reel starting with my latest class 3 shots. Enjoy!

Week 12- Progress Reel

For the final week of class 2, we had to put together another progress reel starting with our latest assignment and all the way back to our very first assignment in class 1. Since this was our only task I took the time to address any final notes I had from my mentor after handing them in for the last time and added the final touches to all of my assignments. At the end of each term we get an overall assessment from our mentor, and mine said I had great poses and attention to detail and polish in my animations. He told me he was concerned that my final assignment was overambitious but that it turned out quite excellent and I was able to manage the scale of it. He said the one thing I really should revisit was my biped walk because it didn't quite get there. It lacked the polish that my animations had, so I spent a lot of time this week really trying to get that looking right and to a place where I was happy with it. I also fixed the ending to my final assignment (the gymnast) because that was the area that wasn't looking as good as the rest of it and he had some final notes for me on how to fix that. Overall I'm pretty happy with the way my assignments for class 2 turned out!

Week 11- Physicality Polishing

Ok this is the final time to turn in our assignment for this term! I tried my best to apply all the notes Derek gave me from last week. There are still a couple little things bothering me that I want to get right but overall I think I like how this turned out. I thought the beginning just needed a little tiny something so I added a bit of anticipation, but very subtle. Then at the end I did as Derek suggested and looked at what gymnasts do and added just a little flare to the ending. I also gave her a more fitting outfit

Derek said this looks awesome and I did fantastic job addressing all of his notes along the way. Now the timing feels pretty good all throughout and wasn't sure if I could get it right in time because messing with timing is a bit of trial and error. He said it was a good concept with really nice execution. He still gave me a few things I could add to it for more polish for my demo reel, such as adding a little bend to the arms at certain points to add some drag in the lower arm and so they don't feel so stiff. He said to try out adding some flex to things and if it ends up taking away from the reality of the action then to take it out. He said there's still a little something that's off about the way her head and body are in the air during the last jump but he can't put his finger on it. That's been a really tough spot for me to get completely right especially because of the moving camera. He likes what I did to the ending, but did give me a coupe little notes on timing and spacing. Also he said he knows he told me to simplify the ending but it would be nice if she stepped in at the end so her feet were together and I thought that'd be a good thing to do. Mainly he said to keep working on the ending because that's the part that isn't as solid as the rest, and I completely agree. I've been having a lot of difficulty with this ending so hopefully I can fix it up for my demo reel!
Basically how I feel about this assignment