Session 212

Alright...this is it! Class 2 is over. I can't believe we've been doing this for six months already. It's been an awesome joyride so far and i'm now, more than ever, sure of that this is what I wanna do for the rest of my life! I can't imagine a more rewarding task than creating life to dead pixels and evoke feelings in an audience by doing it. Hopefully soon I will be able to do that.

A summary of my thoughts of this term:
The term was about learning body mechanics and developing a workflow that we're comfortable with. I feel that I'm almost on track regarding the bodymech part. My mentor said that I have pretty good weight in my animations and that the body mechanics feels ok. I think that the first two assignments, the 180 turn and the boxjump went ok, but the last assigment turned out a little bit...i dunno....blahh i guess. I'm not satisfied with it at all and it's bugging me like crazy. My mentor thought it had good weight and okay body mech, but now when we're on our way to acting, he thought it lacked some entertainment-value and crispness. I totally agree. I'm kinda angry with my self that I didn't pulled it off in the very end (Don't worry - i'll be happy again soon)

I'm still experimenting with my workflow. The Jason Ryan approach (block in linear - playblast in stepped) worked pretty well on the two first assignments, but on the last one it kinda fell apart. Too many bodyparts and IK/FK switching, made my graph editor a mess and several times I felt that i had no control over it at all. But thats ok :), now I'm trying a slightly different approach and we'll see how it works out.

My mentor, Pixar animator Robert Russ, is awesome. The e-crits each week was stuffed with great suggestions and thoughts. The Q&A's every Wednesday night (PST) was several times a lecture on it's own. He took whatever questions we had and elaborated and explained in detail what he thought based on his experience (which spans from Toy Story 2 to the upcoming Ratatoullie-movie). And what a nice guy!! Fantastic mentor!

Overall I've learned sooooo much during this term, about animation and how the human body behave in different situations. And this is only the beginning. Next up is Class 3 - Introduction to Acting. Thats gonna be tough, but also tons of fun! But first.....a week off from school! YOOOHOO!!

To my fellow classmates/students that read my blog:
THANKS FOR AN AWESOME TERM, HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY AND GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEXT CLASS!!

Here's a collection of all the assignments in class 2:


The revision of Session 211:

Session 211

Finally!! The last assignment for class 2 is turned in. I'm probably going to do a revision after Robs crit, but officially, the Sticky Door is done and it's a great feeling :)

Bobbys lecture on clearity this week was very helpful and pointed out, in essence, that the most important thing is that the audience understand the shot. It sounds obvious, but believe me, with all the stuff we've learned for the past six months, it's kinda easy to forget.

Here's my final of the sticky door shot:

Session 210

Tough week, but slowly getting there - step by step. This assignment is really really hard, but at the same time I feel that I'm learning tons of new stuff all the time, so its kinda rewarding too.

Carlos hosted a great lecture about advanced arcs and path of action - the importance of arcs and figure-8s to get fluidity and smooth motion. I also had a nice Q&A on saturday with Paul Allen, DNA animator.

Here's the refining pass of the Sticky Door assignment:

Session 209

It's been lots of "aaarrrrghhh!" and other bad language during this week. At times it felt like i didn't had a clue of what the heck i was doing. Arms everywhere, the spine rotating in its own directions, kneepops etc. But hey, thats why we're here, to learn how to deal with it. The good thing about it tho, is that it forced me to really wanted to get the concept of force - 'cause I really believe that's one of the secrets to get believable weight into the character and thereby get more control over what I want my character to do.

Wayne Gilberts book and my notes from Dave Mullins' Locomotion-lecture and the notes from Waynes Force-lecture was a big help in that matter. Im not at all saying that I understand it yet, but it feels like i'm starting to get it.....a little :)

Anyway, great stuff happend too. Kenny Roy (Weta, King Kong) hosted another q&a this week. There's always awesome stuff coming from him and it's such a huge inspiration just listening to what he has to say about animation. The lecture brought back Rick O'Connor (ILM) to talk about animating animals. After watching the lecture I tried some walkcycles and to sum up - animals is tough!

Here's my 2nd pass of blocking of the Sticky Door:

Session 208

First week of blocking with the whole package...well not really, by the end of class four we probably have at least twice as many controls to deal with. But, now we have a full body character - Stewie with arms. Dealing with FK/IK is a bit tricky, but thats tech stuff. Dealing with forces, motivations, thoughtprocess etc. in the character, is a lot harder. But learning all that stuff to be able to make the character feel alive is supercool!

Back to timing in another lecture with Carlos this week. This time - advanced timing. The idea that we probably never will learn all there is to learn about timing, is soooo great. There's always someting new to discover about the concept! It's like having a wallet that never gets empty. Cool!

It's an article on AWN this week about Animation Mentor. Nice stuff - check it out. Also, check out this interview with Bobby Beck at Animation Lounge.

Lots of uploads this week. First the assignment - first pass of blocking of the third and last animation in class 2, the sticky door. Then the revision of my box jump from last week and final, Rob asked me if I wanted to simplify my thumbnails to make it easier for myself to use it in my blocking, so I did :-)


Revision Session 207:


New planning for Sticky Door Assignment:

Session 207

It's been another loooong, but superexciting week!
We had to finish the box jump assignment, as well as shoot videoreference and thumbnail our final assignment in Class 2. Refining, tweaking and polishing the box jump took forever - ahhhh, animation is tedious, but I love it! :)

Three q&a's this week - first an awesome special q&a with Matt Simmons, Jessica Sances and Melvin Tan from Bluesky about Ice Age 2. Then the weekly q&a with Rob - always good stuff and last a q&a on saturday with Kenny Roy (King Kong).

The lecture introduced us to one of the moviemaking aspects of animation - composition and staging. A great lecture by Carlos - lots of exciting stuff to learn about that concept. Btw, check out Carlos' website, tons of good animation tips.

Here's my final of the box jump and my planning for the next assignment:

Session 206

Half way thru class 2 - yay! Time flies when having a great time :)

The lecture this week was about animating the force behind the movement. A hard concept to grasp, but crucial to make the animation believable. The host, Wayne Gilbert, is also the author of the book "Simplified drawing for planning animation" - check it out.

It's been long hours this week, tweaking and refining my box-jump assignment. The blocking was approved by Rob with some adjustments and here's the refined version.

Session 205

I've now started to animate on the 2nd assignment, the box jump. Our new character Stewie has no arms yet, but he has a spine. This means a lot of new stuff to think about. Reversals, counterbalancing, twisting etc. It's getting more complicated and tougher, yet tons of fun :).

Workflow-wise I'm getting more comfortable with blocking in linear mode. It gives me more control over the timing and spacing and fewer surprises when moving on into refining and polishing.

Robs q&a was very useful, this week too - he always come into the q&a's with some very cool tips. I also had a q&a on saturday with DNA-animator Paul Allen. He looked at my shot and gave me some very helpful comments.

Here's the first pass of blocking of my box jump assignment.


Revision of my 180 turn.

Session 204

Yeah!! The first assignment in class two is done - at least until tuesday when I receive my e-crit :). The 180 turn was hard, but superfun.

This week we had to finalize our 1st assignment and plan out our next one that we're gonna work on for the next four weeks. We have a new character now, Stewie. He's a more advanced version of our old friend Stu. We get a picklist with different assignments, graded by difficulty. I'm picking a jump on and off a box, which is something in the middle difficulty-wise.

Here's the final version of my 180 turn (expect a revision next week) and my planning for the next assignment:

Session 203

With the walkcycle last term fresh in mind, I knew this session was going to be a tough one. Going from blocking to refining is tedious and tremendously timeconsuming.

Workflow-wise, I'm refining in linear mode and next week i'm gonna convert it over to splines, start to put keys on induvidual parts to get more overlap, trace the arcs, fix the pops etc. It's gonna be a tough week as well...but hey, i'm creating life into a ball with stilky legs - can you ask for more? :) It's hard and at times frustrating, but it's amazingly rewarding to watch my shot come to life, little by little.

I'm blessed with some awesome friends from the school that constantly gives me feedback and helps me improve my shot. Feedback is gold - from anyone - at any stage.

Here's the refined version of the 180 degree turn:

Session 202

In addition to body mechanics, this term is a lot about finding a comfortable workflow. Last week I tried a workflow that Rick O' Conner (Star Wars, Narnia, War of the Worlds ) showed us, he uses a pose-to-pose linear approach and this week I've tried a workflow taught to us by Jason Ryan (Chicken Little) which is a linear/stepped approach.

During the week, I got some great feedback on my work from my fellow classmates and some really helpful comments from my campus mentor Clay Kaytis (Pocahontas, Treasure Planet, Chicken Little). He also host, in my mind, one the most inspiring websites for animators - The Animation Podcast - check it out - it's a great site!

My planning last week was approved by Rob with some minor adjustments, and here's the blocked out version in stepped keys (the main key drawings and breakdowns):

Session 201

Whooohoo!!! New term, new class and new mentor :)
Class 2 - Body Mechanics and my mentor is Robert Russ. He has animated one of my favorite shots from The Incredibles - the shot where Bob comes home after being fired and the little kid on the tricycle says "I don't know, something amazing I guess". The way that the kid looks slightly shy/embarrassed and at the same time hoping to see something really cool, is just awesome! But that's just one of a lot of cool shots Robert have animated. Here's his bio:

Robert Russ joined Pixar Animation Studios in 1996 and has had the opportunity to work on almost all of the Pixar films. He began his work at Pixar as a crowd animator on "A Bug's Life". From there, he moved on to work as an animator on "Toy Story 2," "Monsters, Inc." and "Finding Nemo." While working on "The Incredibles," he was able to expand his role as an animator by assisting the character articulation team to build the basic set of controls that animators use to animate all the characters. He then directed his attention to animating the characters Edna Mode ("E"), Mr. Incredible/Bob Parr and Elastigirl/Helen Parr.

How cool is this?!?! We also had a great first q&a where everybody was introduced and it seems like it's gonna be another awesome term. Great class!

The assignment this week is to shoot reference and plan out a shot that we're gonna work on the next four weeks.