polishing the shot from advanced acting class

Class 5 is close to its end now, just a couple of days to go. Indeed time flies here at animation mentor.

This piece is not by any standards finished yet. There are still lots of things to clean up and polish, textures that need to be fixed... the list is actually quite long. It will all be completed in class 6, or so I hope.

But for now, this is what it looks like.

(And if you are wondering why dad is rubbing his daughter's forehead in the last shot it's because he is smudging out a crayon mark that she has painted on there, a lightning bolt mark a la Harry Potter. She is obviously a Potter fan. I just haven't put the crayon mark in there yet...)

blocking plus, working in a stepped workflow

This is a blocking plus version of the shot I'm currently working on at animation mentor. Lots of stuff still to be done.... the next step will be to start blocking out some rough lipsynch.

And BTW, if you are wondering about why dad is rubbing his thumb against his daughters forehead.... The explanation is that there is supposed to be a handpainted bolt mark a la Harry Potter, that she has painted on herself using a crayon... just haven't put that in there yet. :)




I am trying hard to keep away from splining early this time. Following the recommendation from my mentor I struggle to learn how to "see" spacing and timing in stepped blocking. Man, that is hard to learn! And when I every now and then do switch over to spline to see if my judgements were correct more often than not I discover that I'm waaay off, having just looked at it in stepped mode.

It will come with experience, I guess.

Bankrobber, final (almost) polish from class 5

Well, this is almost the final version of this shot. There will be some more polishing and fixing with it in the final class of AM, but for now it is in quite I good place I think...

Emotions and facial expressions

Check this link out:
http://www.cedarseed.com/fire/emotut.html

Cool map of emotions and faces. Something to print out and hang up on the wall. :-)