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 - what? it's week 12?!

Woot woot!? it's week 12! today term 1 has officially ended. It was closed by final q&a hosted by Jay :)
it goes so fast! .. too fast! people say time flies when you do something that you love :)
i'm so happy that we're all made it through class 1 and i'm so happy that i could meet a bunch of very friendly people all around the world! haha this is so cool ^^''
After 12 weeks, here is my first progress reel! shame that i have not finished my tailor revision :/ i'm going going to take some computer day off and will work on tailor before term 2 starts. Tailor is one of my favourite rig so far :) well folks, here we go:

Thank you very much to my mentor Scott Lemmer for all the awesome critiques and tips, also to all my classmates and everybody who helped me throughout the course. Thank you so much and i'll see you next term and all around campus :) !

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Chapter 10 & 11 - Character Walk & Stu Poses

The last 2 weeks were so hard for me. I chose a shy walk for my character and lots of people interpreted it as down or sad walk. It was a tough one and i learnt that it is really, really hard to convey a subtle emotion, especially in a character that has no facial expression. This is a really a lesson for me :) During these last 2 weeks, i took many of video references. It was very helpful but I had a difficulty to transfer that poses on the video to my animation. Looking back at the process, i do know why i struggled in finding the correct poses. It was because I did not make a clear thumbnail on how the footworks and the body works. It was not just about taking a lot of video reference, but it is also observe how the body works. After I submitted the assignment, i kinda find out that by seeing our upper body as ballie's head would help. At first i just observed the hips area. It has a very subtle movement which make it so difficult to see what is really going on there.

However, i treated my last weeks as a special learning week. I tried a lot of workflows. I tried to do pose to pose, combine it with straight ahead animation, the process really taught me that in order to achieve one shoot, you couldn't really stick with only 1 workflow. It was an experiment! if it didn't suit or you're  not getting anything out of it, tried something else! don't be afraid to try many different workflows (as this was mentioned by my seniors yesterday during our AM gathering, yay gathering!). Practice makes perfects no? :)

Below are my works for the last 2 weeks :)

Let's start with Stu Poses:

Concerned:
Original and Revision:

Exhausted:

Original and Revision

Balance:

Original and Revision:

Click the images to view the larger version :)

Now the animations:

Vanilla Walk Revision

Character Walk Blocking

Character Walk

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Chapter 9 - The Vanilla Walk

I close week 9 with this post :) Walk cycle has been a great learning experience, really grateful that my classmate told me about the Ghost tool. It was definitely very helpful. The knee popping drive me nuts, but i really learn a lot about the importance of spacing. On the other side, posing Stu was so difficult this week. It was really hard to  make a nice pose. I am happy with my pose, i tried to tweak it just now but i could not think any more and the more i tweak the weirder it becomes. So i better leave it alone.

Below are my sketches, yes there are a lot of them! I found it so difficult to portray the emotion through my drawing. So i thought the more i draw the more variation i will get :) I get my final pose from a video reference of myself. Also, I'd really thank the mentor for telling us the tips. 

And these are my final Stu pose and my Vanilla Walk :

and last but not least, Revisions! :

That's all for week 9 and I happily welcome, Week 10!! :D

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Chapter 9 - More Walk + walk cycle copy-paste tips

This week we're refining our blocking and pose Stu, this week theme is Concern!! I find this very tricky because there is a very thin line between concern and devastated. I did some sketches but i feel like i still don't have a strong pose that portrays concern. My mentor suggested that we should narrow down which type of concern we're going to portray, for example will it be nervous? worried? intense? staring? etc! there are many kinds of concerns and it is hard to find the unique one! i will definitely do more sketching tomorrow :)

I also decided to make a tutorial note about copy-paste the walk-cycle key since me and my fellow classmates were discussing about it this afternoon. I will upload it here and I hope this tips would be useful! I also have to credit my classmates for teaching me the correct way to copy and paste! Apologize if there's any error/misleading.. if you had a better way to do it feel free to edit it :)
And Remember to Keep tracking your timeline! You should not rely on this 100% since this is not the base formula to do walk cycle. Keep Tracking and Refining your animation! Most importantly, Have Fun guys! Happy Animating! :D

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Chapter 8 - The Walk! part 3

Here are my blocking videos! the only difference between them is my first blocking didn't have rotation z which makes Ballie tilt to the weight where the foot steps (thanks to my friend Donna for pointing out this part!). Lesson for this week, never underestimated simple things! :)

1st Blocking:

Final Version:

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Chapter 8 - The Walk! part 2

I spent some days to really understand the walk cycle. I shot my own video reference and re-watch the lectures, i really think walk cycle is tricky and it's not as easy as it sounds ^^. I have my walk cycle planning here, i will post some of my try outs too :)

My first messy planning that i love!

Clean up :

Final Planning with some small revisions, thanks to my friends for pointing out the mistakes :)

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Chapter 8 - Stu Pose

My First Attempt applying one of the poses on Stu, it seems the silhouette is not clear ..

Change the angle:

Second Pose

I had some trouble figuring out which way the torso arch should go.. i decided to look for some image reference, and after debating with me self for hours, i really do think that it should go inwards, like this >> (

I also decided to use my Second Pose for my assignment since this pose is more readable by my friends, though i really enjoy creating the first pose :) So here is my final piece:

I'd like to thank all my friends who help me improving my work this week :)

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Chapter 8 - Physical Strength Poses

Below are my sketches for this week Stu Pose! I try not to over think about it cause I usually make myself confuse by doing that :p My favourite poses are the ones I circled.  I lean towards pose no 9 because there is no props involved in that pose and it is just pure physical strength, and it is a very simple pose. I might have to do a lot of tweaking to make it seems less effortless cause at the moment it looks like he's pulling his legs up easily. The other one is no 10, the reason is simple, rock climbing is cool hahaa. I actually like no 6 and 5 too cause they have strong and long line of actions.

I browsed more basketball slam dunk photos and found Nate Robinson's photos during Sprite Slam Dunk Contest on 2010! (He's still in NY Knicks ^^). I used these photos as reference for my strength pose and I believe lots of physical strength is needed to do a slam dunk. Below is the updated sketches:

I did few more sketches, you could see them on the bottom right of the drawing area. I'd also like to thank my classmates for giving me such an awesome tips for drawing!

Complete Strength Sketches for Week 8!

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Chapter 8 - The Walk!

It's week 8 everybody! This goes too fast! (>w<)
Anyway, this week we're going to do a walk cycle! I went to the park and since there was nobody there, i decided to stay inside my car and observed the crowds. A lot of them were carrying grocery bags, back pack, and other objects, so it was a good chance to observe how the weight effects the body.

My first observation was on this guys who walked across the park. He was quite far away from the place I was sitting down so it's good, i could observe his movement without him noticing. (well.. it will be extremely awkward and embarrassing if the person caught me staring at him -o- ). I notice that there would be always this subtle movement on the chest and the head will follow up. For those who were carrying the backpack on one shoulder, I notice that the shoulder that carried the weight was tilted up and it was stiff. The object also effect on how the person is walking. My further observation also give me some new info that the way the body moves is also effected by the body shape and the personality. It was hard to observe the torso area since it was covered by the person's outfit. I also notice that the hip makes ∞ arc shape when it moves. I also clarify one thing that  always confuse me, this was the hip movement when the foot makes a contact to the ground. The hip will tilt up.
Below is one of the sketch I did today, i think the observation was really helpful.

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Chapter 7 - Tail-or part 2

So .. i really pit myself into trouble .. I really struggle with my animation.. my friend told me that there are too many things going on on the screen and they suggest me to cut out some part of the animation. I totally agree with them! So I decided to simplify the animation and bring down some unnecessary decoration. I'm still refining my animation now, well it seems like it start to come together..*finger-cross.. +_+ I'm working on the timing of the tail.. Below are the progress clips:

Planning:

Modified:

Cut the end part 

(i actually like the part when tailor jump on that green ball :( .. but hey, it's not about me, it's about the animation!)

Refining:

Keep Refining~

Final:

Conclusion: Tailor is very challenging ^^ I had to go frame by frame to monitor all the poses. I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it. This week i decided to go and challenge myself.. i also don't know if this a wise move or not.. hopefully everything goes well..

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Chapter 7 - Tail-or

It's week 7!! This week we're going to animate either one of the character! Taylor / One Leg! I'm super excited this week :) I'm off to plan my shoot, keep an eye of this space folks :)

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a preview of my first plan .. i kind of feel it's too complicated.. .. do you think this is too complicated ..? i want to challenge myself a little bit.. but i'm scared i'll be overwhelmed by this ..

Complete planning:

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Chapter 6 - The Pendulum part 3

I have finished my the pendulum assignment. It seems simple but it is not. The more i think about it the more complicated it become. I think I do quite well for this assignment though. I think the most challenging part is to figure out how the pendulum looks like on each frame and the timing. Below is my final planning and my final version of the assignment. I'm sure there will be some stuff that need to be fixed.

So I animate the pendulum on the wrong camera view -o- Lucky my friend mentioned this on my PR.. Here is the right one:

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Chapter 6 - Revisions

I just finished my obstacle assignment revision. I have to admit that I almost defeated by this one because it was so difficult! The important lesson that i got from this assignment is that I have to spare 50-80 or even 100 frame left to let the ball settle (my friend actually told me about this, but it didn't hit me until I started making my assignment ^^''). So it's like writing an essay, there should be introduction, main body and the ending. It was difficult but fun at the same time! :) Hopefully the revision looks better!

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Revision Updates:

This is a revision for my pose. My mentor suggested to make the pose look more appealing. In order to achieve that he suggested me to push the pose more by tweaking the legs position, move them apart so that they are not sitting on the same line and by doing that, the pose will look more 3 dimensional. Below are the drawing by my mentor and my revision:

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Tiny Revision for weight balls assignment :)

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Chapter 6 - The Pendulum part 2

A Sneak Peek of my planning shoot. Something is not quite right here and i think it is because i let the computer do my breakdown poses .. i have to go frame by frame and see what is wrong inside! :)

Planning:

Refining:
I did some changes so it doesn't look that boring

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Chapter 6 - The Pendulum

It's the Pendulum! I'm excited to do this one. I saw many pendulum assignments on YouTube before I attend AM and i always told myself that I dont think I could do it. Now, here i am trying to animate the pendulum! this is cool :) Sneak peek of my quick planning! Trying to keep it simple :)

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Chapter 5 - Revision

My Revision for Week 4 assignment :) 

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Chapter 5 - The Obstacles

Obstacle assignment was.. sooo tough!! It was really a challenge and I think I started to get the understanding of the whole concept (timing, spacing, anticipation). These concepts sound very simple, however it took me quite awhile to be able understand the flow and co-operate them in my animation. It was really a tough assignment for me and im sure it was too for everybody else, but it was a really good exercise.. I am very anxious to receive e-critique from my mentor this week ^^'' .. Here are my process:

Planning:

This is my initial plan .. there's gonna be a slight change on my first blocking cause i thought the shoot is too plain.. so i decided to make the ball slides~ ..

Blocking:

Well.. it became a little bit hard to settle the ball .. cause the slides accelerate the movement and i found it super hard to stop the ball... and i feel like it was not a good call to continue the idea especially I only got 30 frame-ish left to make the ball settle :/ so I went back to my original plan..

Re-Blocking 1:

Re-Blocking 2:

Final:

This was one hard assignment haha! I had a lot of trouble trying to settle the ball and i find it so hard to make the perfect rotation for the ball.. I kind of feel that these have become my recurring problems.. :( I hope I could find a way to fix these issues. I'm still not happy with my final piece too...But like what i've said, this was a really good exercise! I'm really nervous now ^^

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*Beep Beep this is an extra clip!
My Revision for last week assignment!

I hope I showed the weight contrast better :)

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Chapter 5 - Devastation

So this is my process in achieving my devastation pose.. and I listened to some old sad Laruku songs while I was posing Stu, just to set me in the mood ^^..so here i go:

This was the first attempt .. it was so hard to tackle the overlapping body parts.. (although now that i look at it again.. the pose actually didn't look that bad..-_-)

So I talked to my classmate and he gave me some suggestion to tweak the pose a little bit, I take his suggestion and put his hand on his head to provide a clear silhouette.

Comparison:

I feel the pose on the right is more stronger, I decided to go with that one!

More tweaking on his legs, arms, hands, and tiny tweak on the weight shift ..

The one before the final tweak:

I got more suggestions from my friends after I uploaded the pose above, which were to lower the head a little bit and to clench his fist a little bit more:

tadaa! I uploaded that one.. I actually did some last minute tweaking on the pose.. but I had a trouble with the image file. The colour that I got from Maya was changed drastically when I imported it into Photoshop. I tried to re-render, took a screen shot of it and i had no luck.. I have no idea why.. I really want to upload this newest version, but I did not manage to do it in time..this is soo ironic, i'm still Devastated i didn't upload this version hahaha .. but hey it is a lesson, I need to keep moving on, don't I? Well folks.. hope you like it :)

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Lesson of The Week: "I Should Not Listen To Any Musics While Animating"

Well some people able to do that.. but I found that I was really distracted >.< so my solution was to play only 1 favourite song during my 5 minute break! and afterwards, I continue Animating! Yeaah! :D

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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