Cannon Ball!

This next assignment was to spline out our shot. Our mentor told us if we end up not hyaving too much time, we could perfectly spline out half of our shot. I ended up spending way too much time on the lift, and only really got the second half of my shot splined out. This is how it looks so far!

We also had to start planning for our next shot. Below is my thumbnailing for it. I had to keep within the pirate theme, so for this guy, I used another imp and did another reaction shot. This imp is sleeping below deck, and reacts to the shake of incoming cannon balls hitting the ship. He then runs to the cannon and pushes them out the window preparing to take aim. I wanted to add a lot of slide in there that is seen in my reference videos. Here's the drawings for it!

Cannon ball blocking

I started my advanced body mechanics class! We have to pick a theme for the entire term, and have either all of our shots relate to that theme, or make a continuous flow of them. For my assignment, I chose the pirate theme! My first assignment is using one of the imps that animation mentor provides to us. The idea of this one is, to have Pinky completely relaxed and hanging out, because he just pillaged all this gold, and now he's heading home from the hard days work. Out of nowhere, a cannon ball bounces onto the deck, scaring him. He runs over to pick up the ball, and throws it overboard. The whole point of this shot, is to explore weight. I figured I didn't really get that concept very well last term, so I thought I should work on it some more this term. Plus it makes for a fun theme and story. I already can't wait to start planning my next one out. But this pass below is my second blocking pass for the shot.

New Editing Job!

I've been completely m.i.a. for a few weeks now. I got a summer job at the company that I interned at, called IDEAS. I'm the new assistant editor, and I'm working on a reality television show, that's being filmed out of Orlando and Full Sail. It's called WWE Tough Enough on the USA Network. There are contestants who compete in challenges, and every Tuesday night at 8:00, America votes for who should stay on to become WWE's next big wrestler. Basically, its like American Idol, but for tough people. I'm doing 50+ hours a week, so it's pretty hard with animation mentor right now and getting my reel completed. Coffee is really the only thing that's keeping me afloat...for now. But check out our show on Tuesday nights at 8:00 pm on USA! There's no credits, because there's too many people who worked on it, otherwise I'd be taking pictures of that!

But more importantly...2 weeks down and 8 to go!!!!

Chicago

So I was in Chicago this past week, visiting my best friend that moved up there. I would post my assignment, but it's pretty rough, since I didn't get much time to work on it. Here's some photography I took instead! This is much more pleasant to look at =] I went up there with my boyfriend to watch Orlando City play, and we also got to go to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was gorgeous, and there were so many paintings there, it could have taken us the entire day to see everything. It was a very pleasant surprise! Especially because they had some of my favorites, I was in heaven.

Test Your Strength

I had to submit a revised blocking pass for last week, based on my mentors notes. This is how it came out! It feels a lot better from the first one in terms of weight. Slowly but surely, I'll get there!

Strength Blocking

This week, our assignment was to take our planning, and block it out in our shot. My mentor told me to do a different idea, because flags aren't really that heavy. So instead, I took the same idea, and applied it to the carnival game, where you can test your strength. I am using Stan, who is this big ole guy, and he's pretty hard to work with, because his proportions are so crazy. I can't really get his arms over his head very much. I also later on, want to add a ball that goes up when he hits the pad, and it's not going to go very far at all, to give it a little humor. But this is what I have so far!

Final Walk!

We had to finish up our sloan walk this week based on our critiques. Below is my video for what I submitted.

We also had to do planning for our next assignment. For our next project, it's going to take up the entire rest of the semester. We got a list of things to chose from that we could animate. I chose to do lifting a heavy object. I had an idea for a story, and wanted to apply my heavy object to that. My story goes, Stan is climbing up a mountain, makes it to the top, and claims it with a really big and heavy flag. I planned it all out using an animatic in photoshop, and you can see what I did for it below. I can't wait to start blocking out this guy!

Palm Oil Action Team

So I just recently got an email from someone on Etsy who is a member of the Palm Oil Action Team, asking if I wanted to donate my mini rhino painting. I have never even heard of the Palm Oil problem that's been going on. Apparently, people are chopping down the rainforest to plant farms of palm trees. Palm oil is a type of edible vegetable oil that is derived from the palm fruit, grown on the African oil palm tree. According to the World Wildlife Fund, an area the equivalent size of 300 football fields of rainforest is cleared each hour to make way for palm oil production. This large-scale deforestation is pushing many species to extinction, and findings show that if nothing changes species like the orangutan could become extinct in the wild within the next 5-10 years, and Sumatran tigers less than 3 years. Over 90% of orangutan habitat has been destroyed in the last 20 years, and over 50,000 orangutans have already died as a result of deforestation due to palm oil in the last two decades. 

The woman who wrote me, is the founder of the Boston Branch of the Palm Oil Action Team. They are paired with the Rainforest Action Network, and they are hosting a palm oil awareness day to educate people. It's going to be a big event, and they wanted to work with me to have my painting as one of the prizes for the wheel of fortune. The Sumatran Rhinos are being driven out to extinction because of this problem, and the mini painting I am donating is my rhino I made.

It's very eye opening to learn about different problems that are happening in other countries, that most people are completely unaware of.  To learn more about the palm oil problem, you can view this website here-  

http://www.saynotopalmoil.com/Whats_the_issue.php

Dog walk splined!

I got my dog walked splined out for this week! Splined is an animation term for smoothed out. So now all of his poses are flowing and continuous. This is how he turned out.

This week we also have our last poses forever. I'm secretly kind of excited that we don't have to do poses again, so I can just focus on getting my animations down. We had to show dogs playing. It was a little tough getting the right movement in there, a lot of playing poses were pretty generic and either running or jumping to each other. These are my sketches for the pose.

I decided to go with a tug of war idea between 2 dogs. I haven't seen much online in terms of dogs playing with each other, using toys. I really liked the humor behind the one that I circled however, I couldn't get the character to scale down into the puppy sized dog. So I ended up turning in what I have below. This also shows more of a weight shift in the dog to the left.

I got Sloan made into a puppy! Here's my rendered result based on my mentors critique.

Dog Blocking

This past week, we had to create a blocking pass of our dog walk. It was pretty fun, a lot more fun to me than working on Stella walking. This is what I turned in for my blocking. 

I got a lot of great feedback. I was told to take out all of the personality of the stopping and head turn though, and keep it as a vanilla cycle. So it's going to look a lot different once I spline it out. We also had to do 2 more poses of Sloan showing movement. These are my sketches for it. I was trying to go with something different, like a lot of climbing and jumping down off of things. 

and here are the circled poses that I submitted

My rendered result changed up a lot. I wanted the one to look like he's starting to step down from the chair, but it really didn't come across as what I had intended. I ended up having him climbing down the stairs, so it's more apparent what he's doing, and the he's actually in motion.

Quadruped Study

We get to animate dogs!!!!! I'm so excited to move onto something that's not human! (Mostly because I've only animated 2 humans ever, and the second one was last week) So for this week, we had to start out planning our walk cycle. We had to take video reference of a dog, so I took tons of footage on my boyfriends boxer. She's a little weird and her proportions aren't normal, so we'll see if this actually turns out right. But below is the video I took of her. I tried to get a side and front view. And in the last shot, is where her personality comes out a lot, so I am thinking that I want to incorporate that into the end of my walk.

And below is the planning I created using the Animators Survival Kit. That doesn't include the end head look, so I'll have to revise it a little.

We also had to sketch out quadruped animals this week, and take 2 of our drawings into maya and then pose them out. I tried to look at wild animals to avoid the regular dog cliche. I searched foxes when they hunt, because they do this crazy pounce and leap thing, and they're very animated creatures. I also looked at wolf puppies playing, coyotes, etc. So I definitely got a lot more variety in my poses compared to the average dog. I stuck with dogs for this week, but for our study next week, I'm going to add in a variety of animals.

And now here are how the poses turned out that I submitted. I already got some great feedback, and will be fixing and rendering them soon!

And now after completing all of my changes, this is the final render!

Peter Pan Art

I made quote art! I always see such cool art paired with quotes on pinterest, and there was nothing appealing associated with this quote. It's by far one of my favorites, and I've always felt like I could relate to Peter Pan...growing up wise. Especially in my industry, making animated cartoons for a living. Dreaming is also my escape. I can remember at least 3 dreams a night, and they're so imaginative and out of this world, there's no possible way I could explain them to people without drawing them out for them to understand. Even then, they're so detailed and not normal, it would look like Dali if I could actually do it correctly. Plus sometimes I lucid dream, which is a topic that I could write an entire novel off of. So for now, I'll stick with Peter Pan art!

Stella Walk

This week, we had to spline out our walks, which is basically smoothing it out. Mine still needs a lot of work, but this is what I ended up turning in for it.

We also had to do some more poses with Stella showing movement. I'm not really sure if there's a difference between movement, and last weeks motion poses, but I have a lot less sports reference in this one. These are my sketches for the poses. I was trying to get a lot more dynamic ideas in there that clearly show the line of action.

And now this is what I animated. There's a very big difference in the pose on the left. I originally had her just beginning to touch the ground mid run, and leaning back trying to avoid the other one coming at her, like how it is in the drawing. But everyone thought she should be keeled over instead coming into more of a protective pose. 

And now here is my final render with all of the fixes I made.

Full Body Walk

For this second week, we had to make a full body walk using Stella, a new character. We had to shoot reference video of ourselves walking, and the block it out. It's pretty rough in terms of blocking, and I got a lot of great feedback for it. It was supposed to be vanilla, as in no personality is being shown in the walk, but clearly there's a lot showing still, so I need to tone it down a lot. But this is my planning for my shot.

And here is my blocking!

First Second Class!

Had my first class for AN02 the other day! My mentor is pretty awesome, and all the people seem like they're really nice! Our assignment was to make an action pose involving 2 of the same character, Stella. I had to leave to fly out to Colorado Tuesday night, so I didn't get much time to do anything crazy. But these were some of my sketches. You can definitely see here who has influenced me over the years in terms of sports....

and this is the render that I submitted for the assignment!

This is my final render with all of my fixes.