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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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 11 & 12 - Class 2 dun dun dun!

Hola! This entry is supposed to be posted last year! I was away to one of my favourite places in this earth.. and no .. i did not manage to visit Square Enix office -o-!  .. i think i will cheat the publish date .. just to keep things organized hehe .. anyways ..! Class 2 was wrapped up last month .. and I think i could have done better for my last assignment.. One thing that i learnt is never leave for holiday before school is officially on holiday.. I know that this is an online school .. but .. It didn't feel right hehe :p So here is my last shot and my progress reel for Class 2: 

Push:

Progress Reel term 2:

I really want thank my mentor, Scott Lemmer .. I had him for 2 terms and I have lots of respect for him! I promise to keep up all the good work and keep improving! Again, thank you sir! *cheerss! :)

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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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