Session 1, Week5 -- Anticipation, and Squash & Stretch

Well, I have dawned my trusty pencil again.  I believe that my drawing is getting "easier" -- note, I did not say better -- and feel good that I'm not taking up to an hour per stick-figure now. :)  I definitely need to learn the proportions of the human body better.

This weeks assignment has two parts.  First part is the animation of a ball going through an obstacle course.  This ball must have the feel of a basketball, or soccer ball.  In addition, the second part is a pose in the theme of "devastation".  So, I must sketch several poses, and then pick one to pose Stu in.

Warning, I'm about to show you my drawings.  I will not be held responsible for any decrease in your taste in art due to viewing them...you have been warned:

Here is the planning for this weeks assignment.  The problem with the planning is ensuring that you adhere to the KISS principal -- yes, Keep It Simple Stupid.  When you're given a lot to play with in animation, you become like a kid in a candy store.  You basically eat everything, get a belly ache, and have your parents say "I told you so".  Well, we are allowed to pick any obstacle course we want from a short list, arrange to how we see fit, but we must stay within 60 - 120 frames.  And, that's where trouble begins.  You have so much fun planning the crazy stunts the ball is going to be terrorized with, that you end up at 120 frames (5secs) in the blink of an eye realizing you still have to bring it to a stop.  Yes, this kid ate the whole candy store several times, got a bellyache, and realized there needed to be a simpler approach.  So, here's my attempt at a simpler approach...

Here's the Animation:

Well, had to give up the quarterpipe landing from the planning.  Turns out it's really frame expensive to do both a half-pipe, a quarter-pipe, and employ some degree of friction for slowdown.

Here's my pose of Stu for the theme "devastation":

Since I'm quite often in the doghouse with my wife for some idiotic comment I made, I decided Stu should be "devastated" in jail.  Rendering done through Maya's Mental Ray.  Handles shadow and reflection very well.

Session 1, Week 4 -- Timing and Spacing

This week we learned the value of timing the interaction of objects in a scene with the spacing, or distance between frames, for each object.  The assignment this week is to pick two different types of balls and correctly translate the feel of their weights via animation.  The examples given were that of a beach ball vs a bowling ball.  We are free to choose the type of balls we would imitate, so I chose a racquetball and a bowling ball.

In addition to creating an animation for the two balls we had to draw our plans for the animation as part of our assignment submission.  Yup, I learned my lesson, no flowcharts :).  Once again, the software engineer picks up his pencil to display his child like artwork.  Here is the embarrassment knowing as my planning:

And here's the final animation:

One of the fun things that I got to do was breakout ye olde physics book to go through the laws of motion and kinematic equations.  It was pretty fun to see how closely I could imitate the physics both mathematically and visually.  Awesome assignment for math geeks. :)

See ya next post...

Session 1, Week 3 -- Planning and blocking 3

In addition to the bouncing ball planning and blocking we had to do another round of sketching poses.  The theme for this week is excitement.  Due to Anthony Wong's tips on the horror I call sketches from last week, I think my drawing improved a couple percent.  One of the things he asked me to do was sketch a series of action lines to convey different poses and see how many poses I can get out of them.  I will confess, that exercise is simplistic and pure genius.

Here's my sketches:

I'll post the CG pose when I have that completed this weekend after some feedback from my fellow AMers.

[update]
Received some feedback.  Looks like poses 1,2, and 5 won out.  I have 2 & 5 done, and am still working on 1.  Here they are:

Session 1, Week 3 -- Planning and blocking 2

Well, after the bout with my stupidity I got back into the saddle and started the bouncing ball animation.  This is the blocking pass for the animation and has not been smoothed out.  I'm awaiting my Q&A with my mentor before I finish.  Remember you will need Quicktime to be able to view the video:

Session 1, Week 3 -- Planning and blocking

Okay, so I geek'd out on this assignment.  One portion of our assignments for this week is to document our "thought process".  Well, I did just that and believe I went the wrong direction with it -- I made a flowchart.  DOH!  Yes, the inner engineer strikes again.  Can't wait to control that screaming part of my id, or at least bring those screams to a murmur.  So, to commit fully to self embarrassment I thought I would post the product of my time wasted.  After which, I will update this post with what the portion of the assignment actually should be:

Fear the geek:

And what it should've been :)

That brings me to the lesson of the day -- when an artist says "document" they mean "draw" and not "flowchart".  Thankfully Anthony Wong is a patient and wonderful mentor.  So,GEEKs, take note and learn from my stupidity.  :)

See ya next post...

Session 1, Week 2 -- Pose revision from feedback

AM and professional animators in the field talk about bringing your non-art experiences to the table when learning animation.  One skill I'm thankful that I've learned from software code reviews is the art of "listening" to critique.  It is an acquired skill and very needed amongst many professions.  Here, at AM, this skill is quite useful as many students are already art professionals, understand the lingo, and know what to look for in these poses.  For example, "line of action".  This is the single most important concept that I'm currently learning.  In my words, it's the one line you can draw from the top of a persons head, down their chest or back, and down one leg that signifies, and defines, the "action" they are doing.  This may be a novice or simplistic view, but I'm sure that will change with my time at AM.  Right now, it's helping this senior software developer turn into a novice animator :) 

If you are thinking of going into AM, and are a tech professional like myself, don't hesitate.  AM has made the education and learning experience so it's on you to absorb the information or not.  This school provides all the information, tools, pointers, peer reviews, information on/offline, industry professionals, and  more.  Basically, you are left with no stone unturned when it comes to your education.  It's up to you to absorb all the goodness they provide.  I wish college was like this when I went 20 years ago.  Man, school would've been 10x more fun just because you're actually learning and getting the skills you need.

Here's the pose revisions based off of the critique/feedbacks from my fellow session 1 AMers:

 The first pose is the one I submitted for this weeks assignment.  I think it had the most personality and for me was the most fun to pose.

Session 1, Week 2 -- Poses created

Hello folks.  As mentioned earlier our assignment is to sit in a public place, quickly sketch some poses around us, and then pick a sketch and refine it CG with the rig provided from AM.  The posing proved a bit tricky as the rig is made to be quirky on purpose.  For example, the left and right arms do not function the same.  The left is FK, or Forward Kinematics, which means you can only use the rotation control to put the arm in position.  The right is IK, or Inverse Kinematics, which means you can only use the move tool to postion the arm where needed.  This proved to be a small challenge as some of the sketches were facing in a direction that would benefit more from IK over FK, and vice versa, or the need for both.  But, never the less, this is why AM gave us a quirky rig, so we can learn these types of things "hands on".   No complaints here as it was great to see, and figure out, what is more effective for posing the rig.  AND! I had a ton of fun posing all twelve of my horrific sketches with the Stu rig from AM.

Below are the three poses that came from the feedback mechanism AM provides called "public review".   This is where I can post my works-in-progress and seek feedback from other Session1 AMers.  This is truly a wonderful part of the AM experience.  For a non-art type like me it's awesome to have the feedback from those with little to vast experience in art.  Believe me when I say this helps pick up the pace of your learning.  Learning is never cheap on time, and when you can actually get the correct verbiage for things, your googling is much more accurate and you get the information you need quicker. :)  In addition, I've been suggested reading material that I would have never thought of.  For example, the book "Manwatching" by Desmond Morris.  This book has a ton of behavioral pictures of humans and is a complete compendium of human behavior from the point of view of an actual Zoologist.  Awesome stuff when you are trying to capture life in a still world. :)

See ya next post...

Session 1, Week 2 -- Sketches and Posing!!!!

 There they are in all their horrific glory.  This is the result of what happens when software developers take drawing classes.  They over analyze everything and redraw it 50 times before being "okay" with it, only to realize it was never really "good" to begin with and only marginally better than where they started.   But, practice makes perfect so the untalented go back to the drawing board.

The first part of our assignment this week is to sit in a public place and quickly sketch what you see around you.  Being a 40-something year old, the first thing you think of above all else with your free time is napping!  Yes, napping, it's a favorite past time of the middle aged.  So, what better way to give up your nap time then by going to a Starbucks coffee shop located in a Barnes & Noble's book store, getting all caffeine'd up, and stare at people.  ;)

The second part of our assignment is  to select one of these poses and use the rig provided by AM in order to recreate the selected pose.  I'm leaning towards #1, but am awaiting feedback from my fellow AM'ers on what seems best.

See ya next post.