Class 3 - Finished

This week i took a bold step and really re did the swig from the bottle. Some of it is down to ones just to really keep that bottle on the lips. Refined more arcs and curves, fixed some spacing in places. All in all cleaning up loose ends and tweaking curves in the ye old graph editor.

Class 3 - Term Over

Class 3 comes to a close and its all over again - it goes so quick............... Next term will be even more work and will be pushing my skills further!!! Michelle was a great mentor and gave wicked crits and feedback to the class, so if you get her as a mentor your very lucky. In fact all the mentors i have had to date have been wicked.

We continue on this shot in Class 4, as we will be given another Bishop rig but with full face controls. As at the moment its just flappy mouth with very limited eye stuff...

Here is my end of term reel =O)

Class 3 - Refining

This felt like a very long week. I was refining my pauses more and really getting in there and breaking down more and refining them graph curves. I try to keep the graph editor (GE) under check from the word go, as i don't want all my animation flipping out or have strange things happen. Always check your curves and keep them clean, so that by the end your not messing around to much. As you don't want to leave it to the end as it can get very messy.

So in short keep you curves tidy as you go along, it might feel like more work, but its a time saver in my view.......

Class 3 - Polish

Well i had to refine some minor things here. I did a new pass on the eyes and did a pass on the fingers.

For the most part of the animation i wanted to make sure the hips and spine are fully working and green lit by my mentor before i press on with arms and go down the chain. The reason being, if i screw up the upper body and if have refined right down the little pinky - im screwed big time.

So working in a methodical way helps. Its ok to rough in this stuff but don't key the crap out of it until your 100% committed to the idea. If say the director/client liked it one day and not the next, and wanted a big change in the scene then fair enough. He/she is paying me to get it how they want it. So i have to be able to know how to take apart my shot and put in the new changes while keeping the shot working. OR if its too much start over lol or go back to an old file before you refined it to a high level.

Class 3 - Blocking

Ok my choice was the kitchen but by popular demand "The Brain" won it. For this setting of this audio i thought a pub setting, and with the way the audio is delivered felt it was a more realistic animation over a cartoony one.

This is the block pass, done in copy pairs mode. Its very rough timings and mostly hitting key points of the animation.

Class 3 - Blocking and Breakdowns

This week i had to get the darn thing look a bit more alive and less like the computer is doing all the work..... So with added keys and them all important breakdowns where all the "action happens".

Class 3 - Lip sync challenge

New challenge this week, which will cover the entire term. We had to find good single audio clips which lasted around 10 seconds or less.

For each clip i had ideas and notes of what i wanted to do for them and then from that shot reference for each and then awaited the response from my mentor.

Drug Store

Kitchen Audio clip

The Brain

Also i had some final tweaks on my "Vote for Stu" shot, nothing big just really minor things.