Class 2 - Spring 2012

So, I did it! I passed my first term at Animation Mentor and I feel epic!!! ha ha But now, it's not time to sit on my laurels! I only had one weekend to catch up on my sleep and now I am already half way into the first week of the 2nd term: Psychology of Body Mechanics.

Let's get ready to:

• Learn the core concepts of body mechanics
• Create physical performances that are believable
• Recognize the most common pitfalls in animation and practice nimble recovery from them

In no less than 118 hours of instruction! Tomorrow, I have my first Q&A session with my tutor Dana Boadway, I am exited to meet her and hear more about her work. She has been working in the animation industry for over 10 years!

End of Term 1 (Winter 2012)

I have reached the end of my first term at Animation Mentor. I has been a terrific experience, I just love it! I have learned so much, I have grown as an artist and animator.

I have learned how to take critiques from other people and to follow my mentors directions. I really feel 12 steps closer to my goal and I'm determined to enjoy every bit of the journey!

This is my basic reel for this term, I still have to put some music to it, but in the mean time Enjoy!

Personality Walk

w10 -11 Personality Walk

A walk can define a character. It is affected by the character's proportions, size, personality, mood, attitude, etc.
I chose a female catwalk walk for this assignment. I am quite girly and I wanted to show something about me on my assignment. So I put on some killer heels to Ballie and gave some sexy swings to her hips.
The rotation on her hips a a lot more pronounced that a male walk, because the heels put extra pressure into the lower back, knees and feet. The position on the feet as she moves forward have to be aligned to keep her balance. Finally there's an extreme stretch on the leg and it moves forward.
It is quite difficult just with words, so here are my drawings visual aids.

 Sketches

Blocking

Final Personality walk (perspective, side and front view)

I also worked on some poses with STU, using my personal experiences as inspiration!

Exhausted: the word to describe the way I felt everyday after work... and couldn't help falling sleep on the subway.

Balance: I was a cheerleader for a couple of years, and although I never mastered an "scorpion stunt", I was always amazed by it!

Vanilla Walk

W8-9

Vanilla walks is the term used by animators to describe an normal everyday walk. It is probably one of the most difficult things to animate, mostly because we all are experts on walks. We might not know the names of the poses and keys needed to recreate an animated walk, but we all can tell when something is not looking quite right.

A walk cycle takes approximately 24 frames = 1 second to  complete a loop and  can be broken into 3 different parts:

Contact: is when both feet are touching the ground, usually this happens on frames 0, 12 and 24 which is when the loop starts again.

Extreme down and up: the highest and lowest position of the walk (Down: frames 3 and 15; Up frames 9 and 21)

Breakdown: the passing position (frames 6 and 18)

The easiest way to create a vanilla walk is by having a good storyboard in which your timing and movements of your character are defined. When animating, use a pose to pose technique, and later move on to a full animation. Here are my stages of the vanilla walk.

Storyboard:

Blocking (pose to pose)

Full vanilla walk

Finally, as part of these 2 weeks assignments I created two poses with Stu that represent different emotions. Any ideas of what they might be?