Chapter 5 - Coppelia

It's week 5! well actually it is week 6 now, but i'm writing an entry for my last week's progress! so let's pretend that we're in week 5 now, *rewind the clock~~~

I had couple of ideas in my mind for my next shot, those are ballet, gymnastic, and ice skating. I did not really narrow them down, it was just stuck in my head and i feel that i really want to do a ballet for my next shot. It surprises me that i really enjoy the dance as i browse and observe the video reference. These dancers, they have this amazing capability to balance their body. I find that very amazing. I did learn ballet when i was a kid.. and it was not a really great experience ^^'' but anyways.. the references that i found were amazing. It was a bit hard to choose which dance that would fit into 200 frames.. and that is like 8 seconds long. All of the dances are amazing and all of them go for more than 2 minutes and even longer! I then found this clip - Coppelia. I was simply very impress with the ballet dancer, she is still so little but she dances very gracefully. She simply inspires me.
I, of course couldn't take the whole clip so i decided to use the last 10 seconds part of the dance. I had to nip tuck the choreography a little bit too. I was a little bit unease when i did it, cause i did not mean to disrespect the original choreography, which by the way is really beautiful.. i did it to create a kind of contrast for my shot and i hope it works well.
This week, I also revisit the basic foundation of animation that i think I miss. My previous mentor, told us that in earlier days, he has a list of 12 animation principles near him when he did his shot. I never forget about that. In fact, I have them on my wall.. but i guess that doesn't work so well.. so, this time around i wrote them down again in a small piece of paper and stick it in between my 2 monitors. It is at the center, very spot on, and i would never miss it lol..
Below is the planning of my shot:

 

and the video reference:

I did something different this week. I kind of rotoscoped my video reference -o-. I hope this is not a bad thing and i feel a bit guilty about it :| I tried to modify the timing a little bit so it wont exactly look like the video reference. This time around, as i mentioned before, i revisit all the basic foundations again. My peer buddy mentioned that the poses that I did for my class 1 assignments have nice line of actions on it and he suggested to incorporate this to my shot. Everybody that i meet also mention the same stuff and this time around it really hits me.. why am i so slow, duh! >.<! i should have understood this earlier.. but at least this shows a sign that i learn something ^^..
Also, one thing that i learn about sketching, draw them big! you will be able to see them even more clearly and you could push them even more.. the bigger they are the clearer they become! :D
So folks.. here is my first pass blocking:

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Chapter 4 - Experiment part 3

Week 4.
On my last post, I mentioned that i would changed my shot to Spline a week early. I really wish that i really did it. I can't changed what has happened though. So i would talk about my experience with plateau tangent. Before I start.. maybe this only occurs to me, not to anybody else.. and if you are a plateau tangent fan.. im sorry if i against you.

I have mentioned on my first post that at first, it seems that plateau tangent gave me a nice timing. However, i found out that the slow in-out and the even spacing in the middle really distract me. It was all right at first, but right after I playblast the shot, the shot would look very mechanical due to the constant slow in-out. The other problem happened when I refine my curve. The timing right after I refined the curve sometimes felt a little bit off. It probably because I really got used to see the animation played on plateau tangent and since it already has given me the in-between poses, i felt that the work is done. 
Again, i was Wrong! I think the slow in-out and the even spacing has really manipulated my eyes and i did not realize this until this week. So in this case, i would say that stepped mode is a better option. I feel that in stepped mode, I could really think about the approximate timing between one pose to the next ones without (obviously) looking at or worrying the in-between poses. I also miss one important part that i always do in stepped mode. Every time i use this approach, I put the in-between pose at the right timing. In plateau mode, I did not put my in-between poses at the right timing. - I hope this make sense - I was simply enjoy the in between poses that was given by the computer and i did not even think to place them at the right timing. So, the lesson from this are; do not be lazy, pose that in-between poses, and watch your timing.

I also thought that it was not necessary to change the tangents type when you refine your curve. It seems like i got this one wrong too. It probably better to change the whole tangent type beforehand. I encountered this weird behavior of this tangent type. It probably because i did not change the entire curve tangents type. So this is what happened, when i refined the curve, i always have them on weighted tangent, break them, and free the tangent weight. Normally, after I break the tangent, if I adjust one of the handle it wont effect any other curve shape beside the one at the side of the handle that I'm adjusting. Let's say i have an A key frame and a B key frame on A's right, and i would like to adjust B's curve using B's left tangent handle. Here I have all curve tangents broken down and they are all set to free tangent weight mode, and when I adjust the curve tangent, it seems that any movement that i do affects the shape of the curve shape on the Left side of the A key frame. I hope this make sense.. I'm not sure why this happened and i have not done any research to fix this. My suspicion says that this is because i just partly changed the curve tangent type on the one that i felt it need to be changed into spline. So I would say that next time around, it would be better to have everything on the same mode.. or in any mode but plateau (sorry plateau fan ^^'). The other thing that i found is, no matter i tried to refine the curve, it led me to a sort of plateau shape, uh well maybe that's why it is called plateau mode.

So this would be what i experienced this week and also the last couple weeks. The term is getting even more challenging and there is really no time to slack. I always treat my shot as one part of experiments and i regret nothing from this. I definitely learn and find new stuff even though my grade this week is going down drastically hehe.. It is sad but i feel that that's the mark that i should get. I'm honestly not too proud on how my shot turn out.. it obviously has tons of stuff that need to be fixed. But yeah, i think i will give myself a break from this shot and carry on with the next one, which would be Ballerina Stewie! :) Below is the latest playblast of my shot:

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