Weeks 6 - 8 - Posts Polish - Dive Blocking

Sorry everyone I'm a bit behind on blogging, my dog Webby passed away on the 11th and I've been a bit of a mess since.

Here is my blocking for my dive assignment:



Here is my video reference:



Here is the horrible polishing job I did on the post assignment, I'm still working on refining it:



I will add my blocking plus pass later, I forgot to grab the file so I could post it.

Week 5 - Post Jumping Blocking

Here is my blocking for the post to post jump assignment:



The poses need to be pushed more and the timing needs to be fixed, which is what I'm working on right now.

Joe gave us some additional HW to see Madagascar 2 this weekend, woo! That's the kind of homework I like, not that I wasn't going to see it anyways. :o)

Week 4 - Ballie Turn - Polishing

Polishing my shot! Just a few more tweaks and this thing might be getting somewhere:



Also video ref for the upcoming assignment:

Week 3 - Blocking Plus

Here is my blocking plus:



Still feels weird, and I think it has to do with timing, one of the campus mentors felt that it was too even, so I will begin to work on that. We will see what my mentor says about it in his eCritique!

I think that is a big problem of mine, making everything even, I think that comes from the weird math/programmer background for me.

Week 2 Done - Blocking and Vid Ref

Hey all,

Here's my blocking for this week:



Here's the vid ref I didn't have a chance to post last time:

New Mentor! Joe Mandia

My new mentor is Joe Mandia, check out his IMDb here: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0541798/

He currently works for Sony Online Entertainment, for DC Universe Online which is a games company.

It's cool to hear the difference between game animation and film. In games you really have to think about animating in the round, so everything has to look good from any angle. In film you can cheat and get away with animating to just one camera. I know for Horton Hears a Who! they did a lot of cheats by animating UVs to get better shapes for one camera, if you moved it the model would look extremely broken.

Apparently game animators are uber fast too, yikes! I'm kind of surprised they use Maya there since almost all the game companies around where I live use 3D Studio Max as their primary 3D software.

So Week 1 went well, it was planning. I may upload my vid ref a little later, but I just threw my first blocking up for Public Review and have gotten some feedback which I will begin to incorporate.

I haven't totally disappeared I swear

Hey all,

So AnimationMentor starts up again on Monday for me! I will be retaking Class 2 to hopefully really solidify my Body Mechanic skills.

I am glad the new curriculum has 2 Body Mechanics classes and that there is a new Polishing class, I'm just upset that I can't jump in on that! We'll see how the situation looks when I graduate if I can get a chance to take them as electives.

I'll try to blog when Class starts to let everyone know who my new Mentor is, etc.

If you are bored check out this sketchblog I'm a part of: We wanted to have a new theme each week, but that kind of faded away after the first week since a bunch of us were preparing to get ready for SIGGRAPH. Now I think it's a bit of a free for all, we'll see if we can get it back up and running.

I also kind of started 11secondClub's September challenge. I'm definitely not going to finish it by the end of the month, seeing as I just have a few poses in there. It at least got me back into Maya and allowed me to play around with some cool rigs.

AND in super exciting news, I have collected a bunch of NEW CRAZY HATS FOR THIS TERM!!!!!!!! I should maybe start posting pics of the hats each week, I dunno, we will see!