Chapter 5 - Blurry

Hello hello, it's been weeks since the last post, apologize for the absent! :O
I went on a trip a month ago.. i flew back home, yay! :D it was really good to be back to home, well it always good to be home :) So winding the clock backwards to week 5! That would be my last week for my ghost shot.. Honestly, it is hard to remember what happened that week, but i'm trying to remember and reliving week 5!

My mentor feedback was of course very helpful as always. I remember that i had moving hold issues on the previous weeks. During this week I pretty much refined my shot, the moving hold, the jump backwards and the hand movement. Here is one of the problem that i often encounter. Every time we move, you now, one arm moves that way and the other arm moves that other way. I often get so lost with how that other hand will move! Will it drag along the body or will it make some unique gestures!? This part is unfortunately has not been resolved up until this point :( .. any suggestion guys? D: So in this shot, the problem were on the screen right arm and hand. I think i had to keep coming back to my video reference and see what happened. I really do not want to acting it out again cause that fell hurt my back haha ^^; So people, put a mattress and bunch of pillows if you want to act out something extreme! ^^; Back to my shot, i would say that going back to the reference and tracking what happened to that other arm and hand was helpful. The other thing that i did was by thinking about the arc that the hand made and just trying to feel if the movement correlates with the rest of the body. This was the solution that i came to.

Obviously, the shot still needs to be refined and polished. I managed to animate the brush tip as well! I was surprised to find out how this tiny details could make that much effect to the whole shot. The brush tip really helps to make the shot alive! :)
Here are some of the playblasts from week 5 :

Trackin' that arc~ :3

---

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:

---

Chapter 5.2 - First Pass Blocking

This week's blocking was very tricky. It was hard for me and i'm sure for everybody too, to transfer from ballie to stewie rig :) I'm really grateful to have an opportunity to use ballie. The rig really teach and give me a better understanding about hips movement. :( awh i miss ballie already :p anyway! back to my blocking.. It was hard to create the feeling that there is a force that comes from the opposite of his walking direction. I also have a hard time with the spines! it was really confusing to figure out how they will move. One thing that really helped me was to act out the action.
I really thank my friends for critiquing my work. I took most of  their suggestions and apply them to my blocking. It was really helpful and i really appreciate all the help. I also drew some thumbnail sketches this week. I kind of feel that my planning was not strong enough so I thought it would be a great idea to draw some more and this helped me a lot :)

Here is the first blocking that I did :

After i received the critiques, I pretty much re-block everything, changed some poses, timing, and camera angle. Here is a playblast of my re-blocking :

 

---

Chapter 5 .1 - Walk in a Heavy Windstorm

It's week 5! whoa O.o
My final choice for Pick List 2 is walk and lose few steps in Heavy a windstorm. Someone gave a friendly reminder about this before, but.. never do your planning a day before submission!! -_______-!
.. *sigh .. anyways~~ \('▼')\ ~~♪♫ here are the planning pages .. and i realise that this is not enough .. im currently still analysing the reference.. i find that the movement, how the body works and react to the environment is a little bit unique and unusual o_o ..

and also, my video reference ...

---

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 ^^

---

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

I hope I showed the weight contrast better :)

---

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 :)

---

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:

---