Chapter 5 - Time Flies

Well the theme of this week is.. time flies.. it does ^^' It's week 5 people! :) This week we have to make another Stu pose. The theme is Devastation. I have done some sketches.. I did not sketch as many as the those I did for the excitement pose. This time i want to let my right brain works. I would like to challenge myself whether I could elaborate much from  the pose that I have now. In my previous work I did not manage to apply all the animation principles to my pose. I particularly missed staging. So this time around I want to add some stories for the pose. Wish me luck ^^ ..

Here are the sketches:

Quick Revision on Photoshop:

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Chapter 4 - More Bouncy Balls! part 3

Bouncy ball is not as simple as it sounds after all. It is really tricky to get the right timing for me. I mentioned that I used animation snapshot to refine my spacing. However, this is not a really good idea. I happened to become too attach with the tool that I forgot to check how the animation looks like without the snapshot. So the lesson is, the snapshot is good to check the timing and the distance of the balls, however it is not a tool to determine the entire movement of the ball. I also find it tricky to determine when the ball start losing its momentum..(i hope i got this right..) so the bounce starts to die out..I also did my revision for last week, i hope they are going to be all right.

My Revisions:

This week assignment:

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I forgot to post my planning. Planning was a lot of fun! It is almost like evoking the uni student inside me hehe :) So here I go:

... i have tiny hand writing, click the image to view the larger version :)

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Chapter 4 - More Bouncy Balls! part 2

My problem last week was timing and spacing. During q&a i consulted my biggest problem with my mentor :) He offered some tips and at the moment i'm trying to apply it on my animation!
Happy animating everyone!

These are the progress so far:

Planning:

Blocking:

Enable the snapshot to check my spacing! This helps me to reduce the snappy contact as well :)

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Re-Blocking:

Chapter 4 - More Bouncy Balls!

We're going to animate two balls that have different weight this week! I also took my own reference video and i'm going to post it here.. hopefully this video reference could help you all :) . Okay, here we go :

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Chapter Three - Bouncy Ball Animation

We're animating a ball this week! This week did not go that well for me .. starting with grumpy people at the cinema, alarm clock did not ring several times, and poor time management. Well this is a lesson learnt, next time i should now which one is my priority.. *phew.. so this is the animation that i did:

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Revision:

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Chapter Three - Who's Excited? part 3

Finally i finished tweaking my final pose .. following are the steps that i did to tweak the poses :

i noticed some overlapping part on the shoulder area ..and i had the same issue on my last week's pose .. so i tweak it again .. so that my pose has better silhouette ..

and finally.. with the aid of rendering tutorial from my classmate! (thank you so much ^^)

I hope he looks excited ^^

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Revision

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More Revision

I really want to thank my friends for all the feedback :) I have to admit that i got very attached to my pose.. and reading all the feedbacks really reminds me that I should see this as one scene that needs to be done and i need to listen to my peers, analyse, and develop the suggestions creatively :)

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Chapter Three - Who's Excited? part 2

Posing Stu ..!

I found out a new way to fix the pose. Following is the step by step tutorial :

1. render your pose
2. open it in photoshop
3. create a new layer on top of your rendered image.
4. re-sketch the image in photoshop. save as.
5. return to maya and put the edited image on the image plane. (It is the 4th icon from the left on your viewport menu)
6. On your viewport, select camera attributes icon, choose your imagePlane tab and set the Display to : looking through camera, so that it only visible to one particular camera. You could also customize the alpha gain to the level you want.
7. Turn on the Xray mode and start tweaking!

Original

Insert the edited image on the image plane

Tweak! and voila!

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Chapter Three - Who's Excited? part 1

So this week we have new assignments which are sketching a pose about excitement and apply that on Stu, and the other one is to animate a ball. I am going to start with the sketch first.
So today i went to the cinema to see Harry Potter TDH Part 2, which was super awesome :). I was hoping to see some actions in the cinema. Sadly, the plan did not go that well..Some of the customers there did not look excited. I even saw a grumpy dad with his kid.. (i was like .. whaa?) .. anyway, in a nut shell.. i did not capture any excited pose.. :( I did sketch few poses while i was waiting for my friends:

Well...they all didn't look excited. I like the one on top right though. I was quite disappointed because i didn't manage to draw the poses, so i decided to switch to plan B, which i actually did not plan ^^''. I unconsciously observed the body language of the people surround me. I still remember there was this kid that looked excited. I did not manage to sketch him because i was filling my drink up -o-. So back to the boy, i kind of feel that the excitement effects the way he walked. I notice there was a lot of energy when he walked. It was shown through the weight shift when his lower body parts moving, which automatically effects the upper body parts movement as well. His head was held high, with wide smiles on his face, and his arms swung beside his body.

That was the only detailed observation I did. I felt I need to do more research so I went to YouTube to browse some footages. During the research, I kind of think that there is a thin line between excited and surprised. I might have think too much about this. However, this footage that i found, this is clearly show excitement. I'm going to use this for my reference :). I'll write more after my sketching session.. i should not spent a lot of time for this one cause i still have to animate the ball. :)

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I sketched more poses:

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Revision:

So I was talking with my friend earlier today, and got some feedback from him. It seems that my poses are not strong enough and some of them did not convey the idea of excitement, which i agree ^^. After the convo, i know what i am missing on my drawing.. it is the background story, the essence. My friend suggested me to put more action, a gesture that convey excitement. I found this very challenging since i dont want it to look cliche :) .. i think i am going to spend some time with my sketchbook :) .. 

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More and more sketches:

I did a new experiment today, i felt so stuck and watching video reference did not do any good to me.. so I record my own! ..and umm i am not going to post the video! ^^''

I continue to draw my pose from my video reference, and the image above is the result. However, I still feel not good about them. My last pose (22) I got that one from google image and i decided to choose that one because the other day I drew a beaver and it used the same pose. I remember the reason I drew the beaver is because i am very happy and always excited to see my friends in eager beaver groups. It is always exciting to visit the group because I always find something new that could learnt! So.. i might have crossing the line about being too attach with my own work, but i think i have to trust my gut this time :)

I think I learnt a lot more about sketching this week, my campus mentor Chris Chua, he gave me tips and trick which were very helpful! I applied the method he gave me and i think it works really well..

So next on my post would be.. posing with Stu!

Eager Beavers! Yeah!

I was taking a break and suddenly i want to draw a beaver ... i spent the last couple of weeks with the most awesome community i have ever met .. so this is kind of a tribute for them :)

To all my eager beavers family :) 

you guys are super awesome .. Cheers!

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Note: i have never observed a beaver before.. i am surprise to find out that they have webbed hind-feet. I found it in this website. 

Chapter Two - The Poses part 6

These are the poses that got a lot of votes from the beavers.. I got a little bit confused with which one i should use .. so i decided to re-sketched each poses and see which one that has the most interesting LoE.. my personal favourites are 14,16,17, and 21 ..

I decided to choose no 17 because it shows a long LoE.. and shows the entire body shape.. I also think 14 has a lot of potential.. but i dont want that big bag obstructing the view.. it could be a good challenge though :).. i previously have also tried out pose no 22 .. I like the outcome .. but i dont think i want to submit a dead body of stu for my 2nd assignment at school ^^'' ..

This is my first try out of pose 17

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Revision

 

I received feedbacks from some of my friends about the FK arm ..oh gosh .. i found it a little bit difficult to work with FK controller .. I always work with IK controller and i find it very easy to change the shape. Uh well, i think this is because i hardly use FK controller that's why it felt so difficult. I also found out when i changed the FK arm, I also have to change the shape of the whole body..

Revision 2

More fix for the pose! i was advised to bend his torso a little bit (thanks steve) .. i think the tips work.. i obtain a more natural FK arm bend .. oh FK .. i really relly have a hard time with you! i think this is my final pose for the assignment :) i will edit the light .. it looks so gloomy now ^^

The process:

change log:

1. First attempt

2. Tweak the body and head. Bend the FK arm to give balance to the pose

3. Bend on torso area, more fix on FK arm. Change the head direction

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Chapter Two - The Poses part 5

Posing with Stu ^^

Stu is .. murdered ...

Revision:

I received a lot of feedback from the beavers ^^ .. cheri and walter told me about the natural action of the hands.. even though the person is laying on the ground.. a hand shape should not laying straight like the one i had on my pose.. there should be a slight bend on the fingers and any other hand area.. it is such a great advise because it did not come across my mind at all.. I tried to apply that on my revision pose above :)

At the moment i have difficulties to choose my final pose.. i just watched the assignment video again.. i think i will spend some time refining some of my favourite poses...

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Pose 2

 

 

this pose is more difficult than the first one i did .. i am a little bit worried about this one because the meaning of the the final pose (bottom left) is sort of departed from the meaning of the original pose..

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Revision

trying to fix the pose ... but it is still not quite right ...

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Chapter Two - The Poses part 4

I have compiled my sketches.. following are the poses I chose.. My favourite is #12

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Chapter Two - The Poses part 3

I sketched more poses, but this time I did it using a different approach. I chatted with Yen-Shih couple days ago and he told me that we are allowed to draw based on a still image. I think that is a really good idea and it did not come across my mind. So I decided to sketch the poses based on image stills from the television series and 2 statues at my home. I found that it was easier for me to draw the pose through this method because it allows me to analyse the body shape and the line of actions thoroughly. One benefit from this method is that I could pause the television whenever I saw a good pose happening. The flaw would be the inability to observe the whole pose due to the scene framing. The solution for this is simply to re-create the pose by yourself and ask someone to take a picture of you... and that would be.. a little bit.. awkward.. ^^

This time I also have an upgrade for my sketches. They are not so stick figure-y now! They have boxes to represent their body parts! and these boxes really help A lot .. :)
Now I am going to pick my poses .. and i might need your help to choose my final ones ..
see you shortly :)

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Chapter Two - The Poses part 2

I did a test two days ago. This is Stu doing a salute. I like the first render .. but I feel that the pose is very stiff.. It is supposed to be stiff because he is giving a salute, but the pose looks so unappealing.. So I tried to break down the stiffness and give a little bit of an arc in his pose.. I still feel something is not quite right.. I hope you guys could help me :)

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Revision:

not much change for the revision, i took some advises from the beavers :) but it seems i really couldn't do much for this pose .. i will leave it here and continue to practice with other poses :)

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Chapter Two - The Poses part 1

I went to the park yesterday to sketch up some people. Unfortunately there were only a kid with his bicycle, his dad, me, and my dogs. There were also a lot of people working on the construction site. I found it quite a challenge since i have never done this before. It was so hard to sketch them because they kept moving. At some point i became a little bit upset because i saw them in such a great pose but i was unable to draw it and the poses happened just only in a split second. I decided to record their activities and um ... it appears that i recorded the whole action wrongly, so i pretty much got .. nothing ^^''. Well it was a challenge, i guess i just have to do it more often and get used with the process :)

Some stuff that I learnt from yesterday was I become more aware about the line of actions that happen in the body. As I struggled to draw the pose, I decided to draw the line of actions first and then continue to draw the figure. Somehow it really helped me.. the tricky part would be when I drew the legs and hip. The reason is because when I reviewed the poses I drew.. I got them all mixed up. I confused with which one is the right leg and which one is the left leg and which way the hip is moving..

Here are my best attempts. I should do more drawings from now on..not an ordinary drawing, but a speed drawing.. hehe. Well folks.. Say hi to my stick figures! ^^ .. don't laugh! ^^''

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Chapter One - New Class

After the uber long wait, the class has officially started. It was fun to finally see everybody in the class and everybody else around the campus. My mentor is Scott Lemmer! It is really an honour to meet and have him as our mentor. I really looking forward for everything that is going to happen this term!

The first week in the campus is pretty much an introductory week. I have a chance to explore the web site an check out the training videos. I definitely have to try out stop motion animation. it looks hard but also fun at the same time.

I also have a personal project. I drew something last week, I still have not finished it.. I better finish it before it is outdated ^^'' ..

Pre - Animation Mentor Works

Hii..I just finished editing my old works. I thought it would be nice to compile them together and make it as my reel :). I find it very interesting that when I edited the videos and scrubed the timeline, I found so many mistakes and errors. I am glad the works that i did are not 100% perfect. This really tell me that I still have a Lot of things that need to be learnt. I would love to hear what you guys think about the animation :) comments and critiques are highly appreciated!