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!