Monday, October 31, 2011

Chapter 5.2 - First Pass Blocking

This week's blocking was very tricky. It was hard for me and i'm sure for everybody too, to transfer from ballie to stewie rig :) I'm really grateful to have an opportunity to use ballie. The rig really teach and give me a better understanding about hips movement. :( awh i miss ballie already :p anyway! back to my blocking.. It was hard to create the feeling that there is a force that comes from the opposite of his walking direction. I also have a hard time with the spines! it was really confusing to figure out how they will move. One thing that really helped me was to act out the action.
I really thank my friends for critiquing my work. I took most of  their suggestions and apply them to my blocking. It was really helpful and i really appreciate all the help. I also drew some thumbnail sketches this week. I kind of feel that my planning was not strong enough so I thought it would be a great idea to draw some more and this helped me a lot :)


Here is the first blocking that I did :


After i received the critiques, I pretty much re-block everything, changed some poses, timing, and camera angle. Here is a playblast of my re-blocking :

 

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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Chapter 5 .1 - Walk in a Heavy Windstorm

It's week 5! whoa O.o
My final choice for Pick List 2 is walk and lose few steps in Heavy a windstorm. Someone gave a friendly reminder about this before, but.. never do your planning a day before submission!! -_______-!
.. *sigh .. anyways~~ \('')\ ~~ here are the planning pages .. and i realise that this is not enough .. im currently still analysing the reference.. i find that the movement, how the body works and react to the environment is a little bit unique and unusual o_o ..


and also, my video reference ...


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Monday, October 24, 2011

Chapter 4.3 - Polishing

Finally done with my Polishing.. however, i feel that this could be done better and it could be polished even farther. I added slight squashes and stretches on the body.. i didn't want to go too far with it because there are too many things going on on the screen already.. with all the hops and honestly the hips are moving a bit crazy.. and i''m very unsure about the hips, i like the overlap that is happening on it.. so i choose not to modify it.. i did tone down one part of the rotation because it feels too much.. I should ask other people and my mentor about this...Refining the knee pops were tricky too.. i pretty much messed up some of the poses and somehow following the knee's path of action make it looks even weirder. At this stage, i decided to just polished according to my render camera. The reason is simply because it should look right on that view. I'm a bit worried with how the knee angles correspond with the feet and i think I found the solution just now o_o...
Here is the final playblast for my Hopscotch :) :


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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Chapter 4.2 - The Progress

Tracking down my own progress for the last 2 days .. Super slow progress -o-! I aim to finish the shot by today so I could start my planning for next assignment :) Anyway, here are the refining progress :

f 1-60

f 1-95

f 1-122

f 1-200

moving on to polishing stage now :)

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Chapter 4.1 - The Second Pick List

Narrowing down the choices! i have 4 candidates : simple dance move, giant hamster wheel, the epic walk in Heavy windstorm, and the sticky gum. I'm going to YouTube some video references now.. will be back with bunch of links! :)

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hello~ i'm back!
Below are Pick List 2 reference links, i hope this would help :)
*please check out the pick list updates right after this list as well, i have added some new links.

Moonwalk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVKSGzpJD0Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XERwHkH_Zzk&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PL4C1708B0ECD443CA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_FzgtLVzbI&feature=BFa&list=PL4C1708B0ECD443CA&lf=results_video

Canonball Jump
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sV55-P8tK1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V62tkUSypzQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8pYqSfXyqI&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhUggV_15oo&feature=related

Swan dive
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW2ez_CP3eg&feature=fvsr (start at 0:55)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAncJ80dUas&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Idj_j469u0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xu95pgSgOJk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HmVaArpQgLA&feature=related

Run and lose balance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mdiUsK_Xhc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqWR_ZiVPqY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-4gGhSS5HA&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJ5xOCwRgLE&feature=related

Simple dance
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx2rmlAEqfQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxRFqhKlo6w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34z5DGZMf_s
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEFvnrmVjoM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1i68Xic1Yk (5:38)

Climbing/descending steep stairs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02_kfNDLrmk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0tO9l195Tg&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjH0D6Ef2f4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDb044P_qUk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfDGmQizsaQ&feature=related

Lifesize Hamster Wheel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZ4cBqJLGk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOO46-atzuo&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfyefoiLT28&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEuyT6R8jWs

Stalking Walk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mypTJ7p5L8w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJUSYNZqQfI

Fast run and quickly reverse (couldn't find a good one for this one :( )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8QZELFbBQQ

Walk in heavy windstorm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_RzGtEA_FI&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEUYzOBdq1c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3qz6wQiZEE&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTRuKTWRAic&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GuFLrb-vL4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2XN-Az-vYc&feature=related

Step on gum
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg50KJbQ-BU&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPaUUs-URqs (6:44)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-65RqjraEYw&feature=related

Parkour
http://www.youtube.com/user/americanparkour?blend=6&ob=4

Jump and land on non-squishy ball
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PR0586HA5o

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hmm it seems i lean towards to lifesize hamster wheel and walk in heavy storm... both topics really interest me and either one of them could be a really great exercise for weight shift and posing .. i hope some inspirations will appear on my dream tonight :D

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i think i have the winner.. it's walking in heavy rainstorms.. my mentor suggested on q&a today to pick the one that you could visualize the most.. and for the past few days, i feel that i have a good theme or story going for this one.. so this would be my final pick.. the choice is locked in! :)

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Pick List UPDATE


I got the newest syllabus i thought i'm going to update the list since i found some changes on it, here are the newest addition:

Walk on balance beam/log
Balance beam:

Log

Jump on high dive and then off (dive, leap, fall)

Run into a high jump and land/recover

Breakdancing

Push a heavy object (no arms)
- i could not find this one :( im afraid we have to shot our own reference, which i encourage you to do it! :)

Change of speed and direction while in motion

External force effecting a walk/run (see the wind walk links above too)

Jumping on stones

Walking and suddenly frightened into jump and recovery/knocked over

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Monday, October 17, 2011

Chapter 3.2 - Blocking+

So .. i finally decided to hit the Spline button :) I did it from frame 1-70 first.. refining each body parts one by one, change them into spline mode.. then continue to the next frames..and so on.. Somehow i got carried away and treat the blocking more like refining the whole parts.. maybe it's all right to treat it like that? or should i use linear..hmm.. .. I changed the last bit of the animation as my mentor suggested last week.. i hope the idea will go through :) and good news is.. Final Fantasy 13 is officially finished! so no more gaming!! I feel bad this past 2 weeks.. i was so distracted!! anyways~ below is the blocking+ for my hopscotch :) :


This is my quick sketch  based on a quick video reference that i took for the walk in the end of animation..i did not use the whole poses due to frame limit.. but it was a great source for reference! they really helped me a lot :)


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Sunday, October 16, 2011

Creating Stu Silhouette Tutorial

I was helping a friend to create a tiny silhouette for Stu pose assignment. Many of you might have already know how to make the silhouette but I thought i would make a tutorial video about it and share it with everybody :) I hope this would help... and.. This is my first ever video tutorial! ^^ yay! Enjoy the video and thanks for watching! :)


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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Chapter 3.1 - Blocking+

Cleaning up silhouette..Fixing the poses..adding moreee breakdown poses.. i think i'm ready to depart from my blocking+ .. :| im anxious to press the spline button! here is my process so far .. -o-

fixing the silhouette of the poses..

Tried out layered animation.. im not used to it yet.. but it's an interesting method :)
Fixing Ty and Rx

followed by fixing Rz

: >

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Monday, October 10, 2011

Chapter 2.2 - Blocking The Hopscotch!

This week is the the first stage of my blocking! I found it very challenging, mostly because with hopscotch, i have so many similar poses and my mentor suggested me to exaggerate the poses so that i would have contrast in between the poses, and exaggerate the weight shift. I also struggle with the frame limit, i need to cut down some of my hops so i dont exceed the frame limit. I had some dilemmas about which part i should cut out, for example: should i cut out the walks at the beginning of the scene or the ending or the hops :/. I really think i should focus on the hops.. but at the same time i would love to have the intro-content-ending aspect on my scene. Below are my process:

40% blocking:

Before i cut out the hops


After the cut out:

First pass blocking:

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Monday, October 3, 2011

Chapter 2.1 - Hopscotch

I made my mind, hopscotch is the winner! :) I was a little bit unsure on how i will draw my thumbnails.. i have tendencies to draw every details which leans to almost rotoscope my video reference. I thought i should draw this frame by frame which i tried, and it was way too complicated and extremely unclear.. and coloured pencils did not help :( i remember one of the mentor show us a thumbnail sheet on the lecture..i thought i will make my own version of the thumbnail sheet. I also made a list of the elements that i need to put on my planning so i will not forget them. At first i was still.. sort of  rotoscopig my video reference.. i drew the essential poses on my thumbnail sheet.. and then, when i refined my planning.. it came to my mind an idea, that i should treat this like drawing a comic! i used to draw comics.. and why dont i apply this to my planning, maybe it'll work :) So here is my attempt, i think this works for me.. because i got the rough timing, the main key poses, and the weight shift. One thing i did not get is the distance of the translation z or whatever it is that goes forward..




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