Session 308

It's been a really good week. I'm back working with my old workflow on this assignment (blocking in linear - playblast in stepped) and I feel a lot more comfortable and in more control by doing that instead of the copied pairs method. I get a sense of the timing right away and I can keep the shot fairly open to changes pretty far along. I'm sure the Copied Pairs method have its pros, but I tried it on my previous assignment and it didn't quite worked out that well for me.

What else....the lecture this week was about eyes/lids and blinks and it was hosted by Disney's Jason Ryan. Eyes truly are the window to the soul :) Great lecture. I also read a post over at Jason Schleifers blog about receiving critique. Check it out. Very interesting thoughts and I totally agree.

Here's my 2nd pass of blocking of "Zeus":


And another revision-pass on the Letter-shot:

Session 307

First week of blocking with Bishop, our new character. I got a go from Michelle on the "Zeus's" clip, so everything is set for this one to be a really fun shot to do.

During the past months, Animation Mentor has collected students work and put together a showcase that first was presented at Comi-Con and later at Siggraph. That showcase is awesome! Take a look!

Here's my first pass of blocking of "Zeus's":

Session 306

Busy week. I did another revision-pass on the Letter-shot and for our next assignment we had to find three lines of dialogue, which basically means watching tons of movies and television shows in order to find interesting audio-clips. In addition to that, we had to shoot videoreference and thumbnail all three of them. Phew!

For this assignment we have a new skinned character, Bishop. We will work on this assignment for the rest of this quarter and for the first weeks of Class 4, by then, with a full facial rig. Things are getting tougher, thats for sure :)

I read a very interesting post over at Keith Lango's blog - his thoughts about why some movies succeed and others don't. Very interesting, worth a checkout!

Here's my audio-clips for this assignment:


And here's the thumbnails:




And here is my revision pass of the Letter-shot:

Session 305

It's been the final week with the Letter-shot and it's been tough and exhausting, but totally fun and I've learned a lot about acting (which I knew almost nothing about beforehand) doing this shot. Hopefully I will be able to take that further on the next assignment when we're animating with a completely new character to a dialogue piece. That's gonna be tons of fun :)

I bought an awesome book last week, "A Practical Handbook for the Actor", that teaches a great acting technique. Check it out! While you're at it, check out Ed Hooks' books too. Awesome stuff.

Another very cool thing I came over was a thread at CG Talk called "The Unoffical Truth about the Industry". It's a great post about everything from wages and how to best put together a demoreel.

Here's my final of the Letter-shot: