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...

Annecy 2011

Annecy 2011, here I come!  Booked a (cheap) room at a hotel, got my airplane ticket  -  and now I am sooo ready to go! 

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. :-)

Progressreel class 1 - 4 of animation mentor

Four classes completed, two more to go. :-)

This last term labeled "introduction to acting" had its focus on creating belivable and interesting characters, analyzing your shot, making creative choices etc.... and we have also started to get more into the animation of more complex hand-rigs and started exploring eyes and facial expression. And in the upcoming class we will be getting even deeper into all these things...

(As you can see in my "bankrobber" assignment we didn't even touch upon the subject of the facial muscles yet, only did eye movement, blinks and jaw rotation... that will come up in the next class...)


So in conlusion, some evaluating words on this class and my experience of it...
Apart from a couple of really, really good lectures I don't think I've learned that much that is completely new to me when it comes to acting and the process of creating character, really. Knew a lot of that stuff from before...
But I have learned LOADS of new things on the more technical side. I discovered how very, very sensitive the eye animation is, how tedious and timeconsuming the animating of all the joints in the fingers can be - and thanks to my mentor Nicole Herr I've picked up a LOT of good workflow tips operating Maya and working in the industry in general.

So it has been a really good 12 weeks!

This is my progressreel from the first four classes of animation mentor, starting with the newest material.

"Thought of you" - behind the scenes

You might already have seen this wonderful animated dance video by Ryan J Woodward, it has been posted a lot around the internet the last few months;

Thought of You from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

But here is something you maybe haven't seen, a short "making of"-film, with some interesting insights to the process behind the film.

Thought of You - Making Of from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.

Class 4: Introduction to acting

This is an assignment from the "introduction to acting" class at animation mentor. It's still half-finished, there is no work done on the lipsynch nor the facial expression yet... so all that is still coming up. :-)



As a minor assignment last week we also had to work with handposes. So I made this still pose. "What's happening here?" you might be asking. - Well, either this guy is having a religious vision, God is talking to him from the clouds... - OR maybe it's the police helicopter just suddenly turning around the corner, catching him by surprise. Well, he has just robbed a bank, hasn't he? :)