1 Year L'Anniversary ;)

I supposed to post this on the 20th of May (19th on the states) .. well it's better than never! I drew this during my flight back to Sydney :p It's been a year since i received an e-mail from AM, i still remember that i missed the phone call as well (>,<) .. well, happy 1 year anniversary! Have a pie ;)

one of my favourite scenes from Toy Story hehee :

"you saved our lives, and we are eternally grateful" - Aliens, Toy Story

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Chapter 12 - a Cup of Coffee with Sugar

Naw... It's the bitter sweet week :')
I wrapped the week by doing some revisions for both of my shots. I'm glad that i found some flaws on both of my shots as i revisited them. I believe that both shot can still be improved as well. This term, I learnt a brand new workflow. My mentor taught us a traditional animation approach workflow. I feel that this new workflow works very very well for me. I spent a lot of time on blocking stage. I feel that i managed to put all the necessary information during the blocking stage and as the result, the spline stage   went less horrifying than it used to be. I definitely have to watch for spacing, moving holds and where the residual energy would lead the movement, secondary action, and of course the rest of animation principles as i move on. My mentor's final critique mentioned that my shot is still more on the pose to pose-y side and i need to loosen it up a bit more. The facial animation is obviously one thing that i have to improve. I feel that I lost a control over it at the beginning, but i feel that i'm catching up as the week goes by.. It is very tough but i really enjoy the process, and you know.. there is a joy when you finally see Bishop's talking! :) 'he's aliveeeee~~!' :p

I really enjoy class 4. There were only 7 of us in class and we're all got called up to the cam every week. It was very fun and our mentor is really awesome! I'm very grateful to have Dimos as my mentor this term and i appreciate everything he taught us... It was a very amazing class :')
it's sad.. but hey, the good news is i made it to class 5 yiippiiee :D

Last but not least, below are the revisions of my shot and my progress reel :

The eyes on the last pose.. i supposed to make him look psycho.. but it's so hard to achieve that :

Next try .. :( he's still not looking psycho enough .. : 

I decided to go back to the original file ... i don't think he looks psycho at the end but i hope it works :

My Progress Reel :

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Thanks Mom for helping me during the last two weeks of the term. Your support means a lot to me.. *virtual hug :)

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Chapter 11 - Polishing (?)

On week 11, I sort of got an answer for my own question that i had a year ago. I used to think that if we only had half of the body visible on our shot, that means we do not really have to pay attention to the bottom half part simply because we can't see them. Well, the answer for this question is we Do have to pay attention to this unseen bottom half part of the body. The reason is pretty clear; even though we can not see them, we should have them posed correctly. The movement that occurs in any of our body parts will effect the other the body parts, e.g. : we can not shake our head if our neck perfectly stay still and we can not raise our hand if our elbow and shoulder stay still, etc. So, if we have the right amount of information to start with, our animation would turn out better as well. I'd like to think that this is similar to making a planning for our shot. It would be a pain to carry on if the necessary information is not there. In my humble opinion, this would be one among of many other important recipes that will help us to achieve a correct, or i should say, believable body mechanics. We should also remember that we don't have to polish this unseen part to the max because no one will see it. In a nut shell, put all the information you need for this unseen part (the pose, timing, etc) but it'd be less necessary to make it super duper pretty. (i guess it'd wrong if i said unnecessary, words are tricky! hehee :p)

Week 11 was also a polishing week. The lecture showed a brand new view of Polishing! It is indeed not about making the curves look pretty, it is rather to see if the whole piece works well or not. It is a stage where we focus on the small details. I would say that polishing is the new tough stage but i think it's the fun one as well! Blocking is one fun stage and so does planning. Frankly, the whole animation process is fun (>w<). Back to my shot.. I need to get rid of the eye roll that i added on the previous week, i think there was a lot of arc tracking, especially the head arc.. it's quite hard to remember D:! but  hey, here are some of the playblasts :

Tracking the arc of the head using the tiny ball on the nose :

Get rid of the eye roll and fixed the SL hand pose; reposition the thumb :

Get rid of the eyebrow raise at the end :

Fixed SR hand hiccup around f 120 :

The one that was submitted :

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