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

Week 10- Physicality Refining 2

This week was our second pass in refining our assignment. I'm still having trouble getting the ending to look right. I did add another little off balance moment at the end because I wanted to make it a little more interesting. I just can't get it to look natural. This week I downloaded even more reference of other gymnasts to look at. I also did a lot more drawing on my screen to make sure everything was following nice arcs, and that has helped a lot. Here's how it's looking

Derek said it looks awesome and it has definitely improved. I sped it up in the right places and the timing has improved, but it still needs some work in a couple of places. He agreed that the ending isn't quite there and wanted me to take out that extra little bit at the end and instead just have her kind of settle out of just regaining her balance. There were more important parts I should be working on. He gave me a lot of other little notes having to do with spacing of different body parts and sometimes everything is moving at the same time so she looks like a rock statue moving in place. This week's critique from him was really long and in-depth which was awesome because he gave me a lot of little areas where I could really polish and have a nice looking animation. We have one more shot to turn this thing in for a grade so I'm happy he really took the time to dissect it for me.
And now I leave you with this

Week 9- Physicality Refining 1

So this was my first week putting my animation in spline mode. I tried to make all the changes Derek said but I did not realize until after how painfully slow the whole thing is. It is definitely proving to be quite the challenge now that I have actually put this thing in splined. Flipping the character over and getting her to actually be in the right spot from frame to frame is really difficult and I've had to do a lot of drawing on my screen where each of her body parts should be at certain times. That method is helping though. I am enjoying the lectures these last couple of weeks on how internal and external forces affect the body and weight and balance according to how much force needs to be exerted. It's all very fascinating to observe the body doing even really mundane things like getting up from a chair and noticing how the body needs to move in order to keep itself in balance. I have to try to keep all of that in mind in these coming weeks. Here's what my first pass looks like

Derek said I did a nice job splining and he could tell there's more ups and downs and switching of the spine. He gave me a few notes on my poses and there were a couple things I could still push. He said to really look at the reference, there were a couple spots where he didn't believe that's what she was actually doing until he looked at live action and realized that's actually how it looks. I had some spots where I needed to change the spacing of certain body parts because she looked kind of locked in place for a few frames and not so flowy. He said the main thing I need to worry about is the timing of everything. Overall everything is too slow, which seems so obvious watching it now, and a few areas within it that need to speed up or slow down. Right now it's a little too floaty. Good thing I have another couple of weeks to work on it.

Week 8- Physicality Blocking

This week we finally got to block out our physicality assignment. I was really happy I did extensive planning because it really helped me with posing out the character and getting an idea for what frames things needed to be on. I put in more poses than I usually would on a blocking pass to really sell the idea and show myself that I could actually do it. Derek said that this idea was very bold and ambitious but I had good reference. He did suggest that I cut it off after she regains her balance at the end to simplify it a little bit. He also said I could probably cut out a flip or just do one and then she falls but if I really wanted to I could do all the flips and if it looks like it's going to be too hard I should cut back. I was determined so I decided to do all of them but simplify the end like he said. Here's how it turned out

Derek said it's a great first pass and it looks awesome. He said the mechanics looks right and I did a good job of translating the live action reference onto the character. His first suggestion was to add a moving camera so I could get her slightly bigger on screen. He also said that even though this is the first pose in the live action video, in the animation world this is not a good pose so I should take a little more artistic liberty with it to make it more interesting. Another note he gave was to exaggerate the how much she goes up in the air and how much she compresses down before she jumps to feel more animated. However I can't exaggerate everything because of the nature of what she is doing so I can't compromise the mechanics. He gave me some suggestions on where to exaggerate and where not to and gave me some notes on posing with a little artistic liberty. Another great note he gave was to really sell the changing spine shape from convex to concave and it'll create a nice contrast in the animation. I did have to be careful with this because gymnasts usually need to keep a pretty straight posture for what they're doing. So this was definitely going to be a challenging assignment. Make it animated and exaggerated but keep it real to what a gymnast would actually do.

Week 7- Quadruped Walk Polish/ Physicality Planning

This was our last week to work on our quadruped walk and I'm pretty happy with the way it has turned out so far. I'm relieved that I have finally done a quadruped animation. Now they aren't so scary! Here's how it turned out

Derek said he thought this was a beautiful walk cycle and the 3/4 view looks really natural with good mechanics. He gave me a few little tweaks on leg pops to smooth out but overall he really liked it. I'll make those changes before I add it to my final demo reel.

The second part of this week's assignment was to plan out and find reference for our physicality shot, which is what we're going to be spending the rest of the term working on. We had a whole list of things we could pick from that explored different locomotion and physicality that we hadn't tried yet, and they ranged in difficulty. I felt a lot of pressure this week to come up with an amazing idea so I'd have an impressive shot for my demo reel, and of course I put so much pressure on myself that I couldn't think of anything! I don't even know what made me think of this but I finally decided to animate a gymnast doing tricks on a balance beam and then losing her balance (one of the options on the list was to explore balance on a beam and another one was to do jumps so I sort of combined them and added flips). I decided that I really needed to plan way more than usual for this one to make the actual animating as easy as possible for myself since I had never done anything like this. I searched hours of gymnast footage to find the right reference for what I wanted. I finally found something I liked

After studying and studying the reference I broke it down into these drawings and made my own notes.

Then I decided to take it a step further by animating my drawings using Photoshop so I could start getting an idea for timing.

Now I just need to wait for approval from my mentor to do this and next week we start blocking it out so that should be fun!

Week 6- Quadruped Walk Revision/ Poses

This week was our first revision to our quadruped walk. I'm still enjoying the lectures on quadrupeds as I find it really interesting the different ways animals move and what really sells how heavy they are. They talked about Eadweard Muybridge, the photographer famous for showing images of motion. It was really interesting seeing shot by shot where all the body parts were. So far, I'm pretty happy with how the walk is turning out, mostly because I started out really having no idea how to do this.

Derek said overall my walk looks great, especially from the front. He told me I might want to tone down the up and down of the head because it might be too much for the speed it's going. He also just gave me a few notes on moving some keys around and changing paw poses around to tone down pops. Luckily we still get another week to work on this so I'll polish it up with those changes next week.
This was also the last week for our pose assignments. We had to draw dogs at play and pick two to pose in Maya. At this point, it was getting really difficult to find cool poses that we haven't already drawn in the previous weeks. These are the two I thought had the best silhouette and line of action.

Derek really liked this pose. The only note he really had was that the back foot seems a little weightless and it either needs to be more on the ground supporting the weight, or further off the ground like he just left the ground. I chose the latter because I felt it looked more interesting and followed the line of action better.

Derek said this was a lovely pose and it's nice that it's in that moment where he's down and about to come up at the same time. He said it's awesome and couldn't see anything I should fix. So I kept this one the same. Here's the final!

Week 5- Quadruped Walk Blocking/ Poses

This week we got to start blocking our quadruped walk in Maya. This was definitely pretty difficult at first because it gets kind of confusing trying to keep track of the 4 different legs and how all the different body parts react to them. The front and hind quarters are doing different things at the same time so I really had to focus on one part at a time and treat each end as its own walk cycle for a while. As said in this week's lecture, what really helped animate this walk was first thinking of the dog's skeleton and figuring out how the bones move. This is how it turned out

Derek said this was looking good and gave me a few things to work on. First was to pull the feet in closer together, which would lessen the amount of side to side on the chest. I might also need to work on the timing of when the chest is hitting those extremes. Besides a couple other little pose tweaks, he said overall, the way shoulders and hips are going and the ups and down, all look really good. So hopefully when I get this into splined mode I can still keep the same feeling.
The other part of our assignment this week was drawing dogs in motion.

Coming up with more original poses to draw was even harder this week but I liked the line of action and silhouette in both of these. The first is the dog digging a hole. In the reference picture I used, you couldn't see the dog's foot down in the hole, so it was most likely on the ground and supporting some of his weight, but because I wanted to be able to see that paw, I think I threw off the balance and weight of the character.

Derek did say he didn't think the dog would be able to stay upright like this and that I should have the legs point outward more and put the weight back further. This was his suggestion.

Fixing both of these poses was definitely a challenge. This is how my my back scratch pose turned out

Derek said this was a cool pose, even though it doesn't necessarily say motion. He mentioned that the 2D drawing I did has a nice curve going through it but it didn't really come out that clear here. He said the posing of the arms, legs and head are good but overall I need to make a nice line of action.

Here are the finals

Week 4- Dog Walk Planning/ Poses

This week we started getting into studying quadrupeds. The lectures were really interesting to watch during the quadruped studies- seeing the difference in how different types of animals move based on their anatomy and weight, and even based on whether they're herbivores or carnivores. Next week we are starting our dog walk blocking, so this week our assignment was to plan out the walk by finding reference videos and drawing the basic poses.

I have never animated anything with 4 legs before, and even just researching the poses for planning proved that this was going to be very difficult. Derek said my planning looked pretty good, he just thought I may have had one too many poses and slightly adjusted where some of the paws were. He also noted that the legs should be making a pattern of 3 feet on the ground, to 2 feet on the ground, back to 3, etc.

The other part of our assignment this week was to draw dynamic animal poses and choose two to pose in Maya. Since I was going to be using the dog character Sloan, I drew all dog poses.

As usual, it was pretty hard to find dynamic poses that were also original and not overdone. I chose these two because I felt that I hadn't really seen them from other students and I thought they were pretty clear. The scratching made a nice silhouette and the pulling leash pose had a nice line of action. Here's how the scratching pose turned out

Derek liked that I chose this pose and said it looks great. He didn't have much to say but suggested I could turn the chest more so his head wasn't stretching as much. He also said I could add a little more curl to the foot that's underneath him just to give it a little more shape, but other than that everything looked great. So I made those little changes. Here's the pulling pose in 3D

Derek said this pose looked awesome and he didn't even need the leash to know what was happening. He said it's really solid with a nice silhouette and didn't have much to say. He suggested I could angle him up a little more, but it wasn't necessarily better he just thought I could try it for variation and see if I liked it.

I tried angling the dog up more like Derek suggested, but I felt that it weakened the sense of him really pulling on the leash, so ultimately I left it the same. This is how they turned out

Week 3- Vanilla Walk Revision/Poses

Wow so I got so busy the rest of the term I did not keep up with my blog at all, so this is a little late. I'll refer back to my notes to remember what my mentor actually said about my assignments! This week was our last week to revise our vanilla walk with Stella. I really could have used another couple of weeks to get this right because I still felt like it wasn't as smooth as I wanted it to be. On top of that we also had to do 2 more motion poses with Stella. I'll start with those. I started off by sketching sports and dancing poses that I thought were interesting...

The first pose I chose was the hockey one, because I hadn't seen a lot of hockey poses from other students and I really liked the way the body twisted. This is how it turned out in Maya

My mentor, Derek, liked this pose and said it was really dynamic, he just wasn't sure about the placement of the front hand and if it would really twist like that. He also felt that there was a little disconnect in the spine and I should try curving it the other way like how it is in the 2D drawing.

I also chose of the dancing poses because I loved the silhouette and the elegance of the dancer's body.

This turned out to be a really good choice because Derek said he literally gasped out loud when he saw it and thought it was a very beautiful pose. He said he didn't have much to add but did offer a couple tweaks I could make. For example, he noted that the spine has a really nice curve to it but the neck and head don't really follow it, so to make them more in line with the line of action in the spine, I should straighten out the neck in that direction, bringing the head down a bit more. The other thing he suggested was to just try to bring up the lower shoulder a bit more in the direction of the arm. 

This is what they look like after the revision

And now here is the revised version of the vanilla walk I did this week.

I still was not happy with this walk when I turned it in. I could tell it wasn't smooth and she looked like she was getting stuck to the ground, which is also what Derek said. He said there was a lot of nice energy in it and the over-animatedness of it was working for me. The arms look pretty good from the side but theyr'e doing too much from the front. I also need to work on making them look not as sharp and add more of an ease to them. He agreed that the feet seem to be stuck in mud, which is what is causing the lack of fluidity to the walk. I also need to work on spacing this outs a little differently, like in certain frames everything seems to be moving at the same time which doesn't look natural. Even though this was technically the last week for us to turn this in for a grade, he said we could still revise it and he'd give us more notes on it so that is what I ended up doing.

Week 2- Vanilla Walk blocking

It's already time to do a full body walk cycle with Stella! Before when we had to do a walk it was with Ballie, literally a ball with legs. Now it gets a little more interesting adding in a torso, a head, and arms as well. This week I felt that we didn't have a whole lot of direction going into this assignment like we did with the Ballie walk, so I really had to rely on my reference video and my book The Animator's Survival Kit, and then I was still unclear on some things. But this week was just our first pass at it- the simplistic blocking stage where we just set main key poses. Here's what I turned it...

I got my critique back and my mentor thought I did a good job and he said he could tell I really looked at my reference. He liked the arm animation and thought I had some nice rotations in the torso. He did give me some notes to fix for my revision next week, like some hip rotations happening too early, toning down the back to front rotations in the torso, and toning up the rotations side to side. I also need to have her feet planting one right in front of the other in a line because that is a sign of a really feminine walk. He gave me some other little tweaks to make so hopefully when I switch to spline mode for my revision I can get everything looking right!

Class 2!! Week 1

Well after a lovely week off I have started Class 2 of Animation Mentor which is Body Mechanics. My mentor for the next 3 months is Derek Friesenborg. He's been an animator on some huge films including Frozen, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Surf's up, Spiderman 2, the Matrix sequels, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and more! I was really excited to take his class because he has animated in so many different styles.

It feels good to jump back in again after a short break, but luckily for our first week we only had a pose assignment- to sketch out people showing "movement" and pick 2 to pose out in 3D. Here are my sketches...

For movement I really wanted to do poses that were sort of off balance- like if you just saw a person doing that they'd obviously fall over- because I feel that this really shows the character is in the middle of an action. I looked up reference of a bunch of different sports and some people swinging, and I chose the two that I felt showed the best line of action and silhouette  while also being clear and interesting. Here's what I turned in..

I was really excited that Derek seemed impressed with my poses. He agreed with the two that I chose and said that he knew exactly what he was looking at when he saw them. Awesome! He gave me some notes on how to make them better. For the swing, he suggested I could get a better line of action from her upper fist all the way down to her knee by just moving the arm and shoulder up and the leg back and to the side a little. He also gave me a couple more little tweaks. Then for the speed skater he suggested that I make it look a little bit more like my 2D sketch because there were some things about it he really liked. The main things he said was the get more of the line of action in the arms from the 2D sketch and bring her torso up and back so we can see more of it. If you notice in the silhouette there's kind of just a big mass in the middle and it looks like there's legs coming out of her head. Seeing more of the torso would fix that. Here's what his sketches looked like...

And now here are my revisions...

Week 12- Progress Reel!

Ahh time has flown and class one of Animation Mentor is officially over! Our only assignment this last week was to put together a progress reel of all our assignments from this class, so I went back and did final revisions on all of them based on the last notes Mike gave me- here it is!

I was kind of sad leaving our last live Q & A session this week because I've really enjoyed working with Mike. He's been really honest and straightforward, not only about our assignments but also about working in the industry. We spent probably a good hour just asking him questions and it seemed nothing was off limits. He was willing to answer anything we had for him and offered to keep in touch with us and told us we can always send him stuff for his opinion. I'm sure he will be invaluable to my future career. He also gave us all final overall feedback from the class and I was really happy with what he told me. He said my previous experience really showed as I came into class with a solid workflow. He said I had very thorough explorations of the pose assignments which will definitely help me in later acting classes. He also said I have uniqueness to my work and I have that "x factor". That made me really happy! For areas of improvement he said that I should continue to practice restraint because the few times that my shots started to get away from me was when I was trying to do too much. I think that's really solid advice and he is absolutely right. I'll keep that in mind moving forward. It was perfect timing on the very last day of the semester, one of the films Mike worked on- Pixar's "Inside Out" premiered and I loved it! It felt really cool knowing that the guy who's been mentoring me for 3 months and even went to this school where I am now, was an animator on this awesome film. It felt very inspiring and I am extremely excited to move forward with classes. Week have one week off and then I'll be back to discuss class two!

Week 11- Assignment #10 Part 2

The pose assignment for this week was "balance". I really liked this one because there were a lot of things to explore, like break dancing, gymnastics, yoga, ballet. I looked up reference images and got a lot of interesting ideas. Here's what my sketches look like

I really liked the ballerina pose, I thought it was different and made an interesting silhouette. This is how it looked in Maya.

Mike seemed to really like my pose this week and thought it was cool that we can see both the back and the face of the character. The only note he had was to open up the pose a little bit and give it some more negative space, because right now if it was in silhouette mode the center would look like a big mass. Here's his suggestion

So here's my final render