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 - Oompa Loompa~

Week 12..
I'm not too sure why i have Oompa Loompa as a title for this week entry.. that was the first words that appeared in my head right before i started writing this entry.. maybe it's a time for some candies!
Speaking of sweets.. this is one of my favourites :D i went crazy for this one cause we don't have it back in my home town, i haven't had this for awhile though :d :

Back to the main topic, I refined my digging shot (and also the other 2!). I found so many mistakes in this shot and i feel really glad that i found them. This term i learnt abundance new knowledge. They are mostly an eye opener materials that i wished i had known earlier :) Every week in this term was full of surprise. Most of my problems were literally explained on the following week's lecture. Honestly, i had this urge to start my shot from the scratch around week 10 because of the amazing stuff that was explained on the lecture, but that's probably not the best move since i have only +/- 2 weeks left to finish the shot, and i kinda glad i didn't do it !:| .
Also, i will not forget to mention the awesome class q&a every week, i really respect and appreciate what our mentor, Tim, has taught us over the last 12 weeks! I learn a ton about body mechanics, characterization, and especially story telling from him. I also learn one new very valuable tip from him, which is analysing body mechanics from video reference (both cartoon and real life footage). This really teaches me not only to find the key poses and draw it, but also to really understand what is happening on the body. There are a lot of things that i definitely have to learn. I really want to thank him for everything, lot's of respect sir! :)
So here is, at last.. my progress reel for term 3 .. 2 .. and 1 :)

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actually... why dont we close this entry with some amazing and hopefully inspiring videos from a movie that makes me want to be involved in this industry in the first place! :D

To all my Big Folks, enjoy!

Thank you Mr Peter Jackson, my life would be different if i never saw Lord of The Rings :)

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I do not own the videos above..i'd like to simply share them with everyone here and i hope they will inspire you guys as well...
Please visit the xXmellemXx YouTube channel for more cool LoTR videos.
~Cheers~

Chapter 11 - Disco_very

(speaking with panda eyes and zombie strenght) : "Al...most.... theree .. .. gooo goooo gooo!!"

that is an exaggeration from week 11.. ^^"
my PC has been working 24/7 for the last few weeks.. it has forgotten the meaning of Shut Down button.
At the beginning of this week, our mentor left critiques for the class as always.. I discover something that i wish i had discovered at earlier stage. This would be about the critique. Listen to a critique is probably not enough, i found that not only we must listen to our mentor critique, but we should also try to kind of put our feet on our mentor and/or other people shoes and see the work from the third point of view. I hope I make any sense. A lot of people has mentioned this, but it is not easy to actually do it. This week, there is something that clicked in my head and as cliché as it sounds, we're the most critical person when it comes to critiquing our own work. I tried out to be as honest as possible to myself, I tried to see my shot and write down a critique in my book. It was a quite long list. Interestingly, i could see my shot inside my head playing more clearly, just like the way it should be. I come into a conclusion, i should have this image playing nicely in my head since the beginning. I think this means that my planning is probably not strong enough and I was most likely losing a grip of my shot as i progressing onwards.
So here are couple of playblasts from week 11, i wish i did a revision for my digging shot too :( i still regret i didn't do it, anyways here you go :

I like to switch off all the props including the lighting, this gives me better view of the silhouette.

The 2d look in this playblast helps me to see and treat the shot like a traditional animation, well of course not technically :) .. it gives me the feel that i'm watching good ol tom and Jerry cartoon, it reminds me to have a lot fun when i animate my shot :)

the shot with props back in action.. and looks who's on the painting! :D

another one, changed and refined the arms movement when stewie steps forward

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Chapter 10 - Dual

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:

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Chapter 9 - Vandal

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! :(

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Chapter 8 - Grafitti

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 :

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Chapter 7 - Catalyst

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:

Video Reference & animatic :

 

and now .. off to blocking! wiii!

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Chapter 7 - Allegro

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 :)

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Chapter 6 - Arabesque

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 :)

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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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Chapter 3 - Experiment part 2

Week 3.
I had to make some changes for my shot. It was quite stressful because i tried out couple of solutions to finish off my shot but it seemed that each of my solutions were not too helpful because they exceeded the frame limit. I shot couple video references on the previous week and again this week to clarify the steps and timing. Video references are always helpful cause they really allow us to observe what is really happening on our body when we move. I also learnt that it is not simply about recording our actions, but it is also about trying to act out our action based on the timing of our shot. This method really helped me out and this worked really well for my Class 2 shots. I have to admit that i missed this part for my shot and yep, the outcome is quite obvious, i exceed the frame limit. Below is the clip of the actual shot and the alternative shot that i did:

If i could go back to week 3, I would change my entire shot into Spline. I will talk about this on the next post. During this week i felt that i was too caught up with how i should fix the ending. I had a hard time to decide which actions that would look better for my shot. Right now, i honestly feel that it is not necessary to think which one is cooler and which one is not. The most important thing is which one that makes more sense for the shot. I realize that no matter how cool the action look like, if the timing is not correct, the action will fail. Here is the shot that I submitted:

Beside of changing into Spline mode, i would also definitely add and refine the overlap on the body parts. I also struggled with the constraint system that I created. Both hands follow the shovel wherever it goes. This works very nicely for most of the digging part, but it does not really work for the throwing part. The problem was simply solved by using the visibility method that is shown on the training video. Ultimately, I should have done more work this week.

(go to part 3)

Chapter 2 - Experiment part 1

The past 3 weeks was indeed very super mega challenging..so, this is what happened..

Week 2 was the week when I transferred my sketches to Maya. I had to change my planning and make it simpler. It was so hard because this time around my mentor really taught me about story telling. It is not only about 'create a story' and the rest is history, but now it is about 'building a story'. It never really hits me that how our head moving, a quick look to the left, and other small, tiny detailed actions would affect our shot. Our body movement is part of the acting choices. It is easy when we talk about it, but in my case.. I definitely still have to learn a lot. Moving on to how i approached my shot. This time around, i was really impressed with the plateau workflow that was introduced on the lecture this week. I decided to try this workflow right away. During my planning and blocking pass, I felt that plateau workflow worked really well for me. This workflow helped me to figure out the timing faster and not to mention it created in between poses for me (me such a lazy **s.. tsk tsk tsk..). It pretty much made feel that i might have already done with my blocking. Below are 2 clips from week 2:

 

 Silhouette stewie, to see if the poses are readable

Original View

Looking back at my shot now, the main reason why i felt like i have finished with my blocking is mainly because the curves at plateau mode have an easing in and easing out. I was very please to see the outcome because i thought it was good enough and because it felt like all the poses are in the right place, right timing and looks like it has a quite all right spacing. Boy i was Wrong.. i guess there is not such thing as 'i have finished with my blocking' and when do we actually finish our blocking? I don't have a definite answer for that for now. I hope i would find the answer in the future. Anyway, i learnt that the easing in and easing out, they created this illusion of timing. I am not sure how i am going to explain this but in a nut shell, it felt pretty much very mechanical, very pose A to pose B kind of feeling. At that time, I of course did not realize this.

(go to part 2)

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Chapter 1 - Slap!

Class 3 Week 1. This term is my first term with different mentor. I was indeed anxious, especially last night when i received a notification email that my new mentor just gave me a critique. This time around, we really have to consider to add some kind of story in our shot and to give the character personality. My new mentor is Tim Crawfurd : he points out right away that my works on my first 2 term did not really have personality on it. So i think this time around, i need to bring this to my works. I have no time to freak out or anxious about getting new mentor or to have adjustment period. Below are my planning sketches. I feel that i have to take and analyse more video references since my shot is not too strong and still lack of personality. Another thing that i did differently is that i didn't do pencil test and i didn't really act out the action. I thought i was going to try different approach.. but yeah.. it didn't go too well o_o.. but at least now i know what works for me.. ^^

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