This week, I pretty much carry on with my shot and did a revision for my ballet shot. I need to trim my third shot so that it would fit the frame limit.. Last week I encountered constrain issues as well.. and i wonder when i'll finally go civil with constraints! :p but anyways, my friend helped me out to fix the constraint and explained some basic constraints settings! :) i'm very grateful for that and i really want to thank him! so thank you Vedanth! i usually don't mention name but this time around, it's a must, i have to credit him! :D
I decided to start my shot from the moment stewie looking around to fit the frame limit.. looking back at it.. it didnt look good at all D:! so many issues that need to be fixed! But anyway, here is the playblast from the past:
Vandalism shot followed by Revision of Ballet shot:
Week 9 was very special for me! i asked Bobby for some feedback on my ballet assignment on the previous week.. i was a little bit hesitant at first, but Bobby is very kind and his feedback helped me out a ton! So on that previous week, he told me that he'd like to use my shot for a demo showing overlapping action! I was super excited and i of course sent him my file! It was one awesome experience and the demo that he did was really an eye opening one! For the whole term my peer buddy always told me that there were lack of hand movement on my animation and Bobby pointed this out as well.. This is a very solid point and i wonder why i never really put animation on stewie's hand :| i couldn't answer that myself.. probably because i'm too focus on the main body and forget about the fingers.. Honestly, it was painful to animate the hand at later stage. I learn that when you are building poses.. hands are part of it as well.. so dont forget to pose hands too folks! :O
As for my assignment, my mentor gave a huge critique to fix my shot's staging! I still stay in stepped mode this week and did some changes.. there were really.. not much changes on my workflow.. i would say i didnt like my workflow for this shot.. and i feel it's a bit too late to change it.. so i carry on with it.. as indonesian says ... "nasi telah menjadi bubur...." which basically means: uh well.. it's a bit too late, i have to live with it.. .. well kind of like that.. D: .. geez it sounded as if i was giving up o_o! but no way, no i aint giving up! im mad at the 'past me' on week 9! but anyway, here are playblasts from week 9:
There were a lot of analysing and i feel i become more critical to myself, my friend's critique helped me out to see which part is working and which part is not working, and to cut out some part on the animation...It was tough and I exceed the frame limit.. awfully a lot! :(
On week 8, i did my first past blocking.. I pretty much transferred what i had on my 2d test shot to Maya..
I vaguely remember that i tried to keep the key frames as minimal as possible.. but it was hard to do so.. i tend to rush to fill in the in between poses.. i had no idea why but this led me to have dozens of key again in my timeline.. i would say i did not offset my keys as bad as what i did on my first assignment. On my first assignment i bluntly offset the spines curves on GE.. looking back at it now, it was an awful thing to do! it mess up the timing and the overlap was out of control.. So here is the playblast from that week :
On week 7, I also did a new planning for my last class 3 shot
(Whaaa...!?) it feels surreal.. i cant even say the magic word about
this.. (hint: time _ _ _ _) ^^' .. My initial idea was to do something related with Japanese theme. I have always loved this country since forever.. I decided to do a shot about ninja and i'd add some parkour move or some ninja tricks. During my research, I discovered some stuff that changed my mind completely. I always want to make something unusual and i guess this part of me told my heart to find something else. I moved on to the next idea which was samurai. I carried on to do some research and at some point, i felt that the idea has somehow stopped inspiring me. I'm not saying that samurai is dull though, my favourite anime is about samurai :)
I went back to my sketchbook and started brainstorming again. Couple of weird ideas were born, there were spy, samurai, samurai spy (which i like a lot, i should try to develop this one :D ) and all of sudden there was a painter, grafitti.. there were a lot of ideas and they confused me a lot!
I certainly had to narrow down these ideas. Before I continue, this is one of my inspirations:
How awesome is that! i drew on my wall when i was a little, my parents thought i was crazy and i think they were upset cause i ruined my room's wallpaper :p (and it was just a drawing of a tiny hobbit door! D:) .. anyways, that guy inspires me a lot, i love his art work! i wish i could hire him to draw on my room's wall ^^'' .. back to the main topic.. So i was thinking to make a shot about someone do wall painting or do finishing touch on a painting or showcasing a hidden art work. However, each shot has its own problem. My first shot this term turned out soo difficult because of constraint problems. This time around I need to consider the tech problem before I locked in the idea.
So, my tip would be; consider what kind of problem or difficulties that possibly comes out when you bring your shot to computer. I believe this would be different for everyone, cause every single person has different software expertise. So really, be honest with yourself and think if these issues will possibly consume most or your time or not. However, we also should see the situation and the condition, ie; are we working in studio, personal project, school assignment.. but if we really, really, really want to do it, and we confident about it, then just do it! There is nothing to lose to try out something new, but we should also seek people's advices and suggestions at the same time! :)
Basically my idea was wall painting. The problem of this idea was most of the time the audience would see Stewie's back -_- .. there were lack of motion. One advice that came from one of my tutors back in uni is, 'if you dont have something on your art work, dont get confused, just add what you need.. If there is no motion, bring motion in that piece, if there is no dimension, make a dimension for that piece'. That was the simplest advice i have ever received but it was literally drilled into my brain and it just stay there. That's exactly what i did, i added motions to my planning and all of sudden this idea of a kid drawing over a painting in museum popped out.
The idea of vandalizing an art piece was locked in and i started planning the shot. This time around I planned out what i wanted to do before i shot video reference. Here are some sketches and my video references:
On week 7, i pretty much spent the entire week refining and polishing my ballet shot. By the end of week 6, i splined my shot (as i mentioned on my last entry). One thing that I notice was, I actually did not do a lot of tweaking compare to what i've done on my previous assignments. I was very surprised by this because I usually did major tweaks on my shot.. and I, like everybody else, is of course very terrified of Spline. So this is kind of new for me! and I find this shot is very special, i really learn a lot from this one. Here are the playblasts:
The part that i have not achieved in this shot is that graceful feeling and the overlap on the body parts. I did not see this when I refined and polished my shot, but now as i look at it, the movement feels very sharp. I have to continue polishing, or maybe i should say revise the shot to make it better and better! :) It is always good to go back and see your past assignments :)
Hello hello! i owe myself a bunch of entries D: it's kind of blurry to remember what happened during week 6 .. but, i guess i know where i was during that week :) So here we go!
I did my blocking plus on week 6. I found that i tend to rush my shot, by that i meant spline my shot way too early. The reason of that is because i could not see the in between motion on stepped mode. So what i did was i splined my shot right away and i freaked myself out. The shot went crazy the movement was not in place, it was a total mess. I decided to switched back to stepped mode.
I learnt that if we switched to spline and the animation goes crazy, this means that you probably miss in-between poses or maybe your in-between poses might be not strong enough, and from this you might know that maybe you're not ready to spline your shot. However, this is of course depends on your workflow and i'm still learning myself :) so i'm not saying that this is the correct way to do your shot, just a thought :) So i filled those missing in between poses and ended up to have key on every single key frames. Uh Oh. o_o this does not look pretty. I definitely have to work on this.
Here are the process of my shot:
Blocking from a week before:
Adding more in between:
i couldnt remember what was the different between this and the one above.. D:
non-silhouette version:
departed from blocking + .. say hello to first pass spline:
2 playblasts of the shot, one with still camera and one with moving camera:
As i moved to spline.. i also learn to treat my own shot as a footage not as an animation that i need to tweak.. i dont know if that make any sense or not.. but this certainly helped me out to spot the part that feels not right.. So I submit this for week 6's assignment :)
