Splined Personality Walk

So I splined my block and refined. Here's the first pass at the personaliy walk. I call it "Romper Stomper."

Revision Montage

I revised quite a bit this week. The quest for perfection is a quest never fulfilled.

Refine Refine Away

I'm feeling pretty good about this blocking of the stomp, so I'm going to convert it to spline mode and then tweak and refine to my hearts delight. Wish me luck.

Or this one... with less whip-lash.

Just playing around with the timing and poses. Faaar from finished. Pay no attention to frame one, I need to adjust the negative space.

But what about this one?

After some feedback from classmates and a coworker, I decided to try to solely focus on this so-called "goofy march." I'm playing around with the timing and key poses to see how I can extract some more likability. It's amazing how you can pull a few frames here and there and totally change the 'tude. After viewing this version, I think that I might try to have his head looking down even in the extreme low positions.

Personality Walks - Blocks

O! Hey! Didn't see you come in, you startled me! Come here often?

I am testing out a few different personality walks, and let me just say, this ain't easy. But challenge is a great thing. Since AM is having some server issues this week I'll post my blocks here earlier and hope for feedback.

I've taken some pretty funny videos of myself acting out a plethora goofy walks. Some not so bad, but some could be used for blackmail. Needless to say, I won't be posting those. But here's a sample of the different personalities walks I'm testing.

This one's a goofy march.

And this one is going to be an ice skater. I have only the first glide. It's tricky, this one is.

This walk is fun because he's a sneaker, and sneaking is a fun pastime. Agree?Since I'm on a posting roll, I think I'll display my new emotion poses. I'm hoping for them to read as "exhausted!" Phew!

Long time no post.

Oops. I haven't quite posted in quite the while, but I must excuse myself, for I have been quite busy with all these assignments! I'll be making up for the past 2 weeks. Quite.

I'm having so much fun learning and animating, and applying concepts... Woohoo!
We're learning how to create a walk. A VANILLA (no flavor, spice, nuts, or marshmallows) walk. Just a plain ol' walk. It's important to nail the vanilla walk without adding character to it. You see, a walk can tell soooo much about your character. Age, gender, mood, limp, confidence, etc. A young animator once said "A walk is like a thumbprint, unique to each body." And that young animator was me just now. I should really quit AM and become a poet. ANYWAY.


For the walk, we started out by "blocking it" (meaning setting the key poses in time and space.) Walk block directly below: Then once you nail the blockage, you can move on and add in the rest of the frames, then go into the curve editor and try to bend them to your will. Sounds easy, but no. It takes a lot a tweaking to get a walk to look right. Most of the mentors say that their least favorite thing to do is a walk cycle. In my walk, the main problem was getting the knees not to "pop." (This seemed to be all of the students biggest problem) I had only mild success fixing them. Some students changed the leg length here and there to fix their pops, and their walks ended up looking great! I'm thinking of doing that for the revision. I would have done it this time, but one student mentioned it could be cheating. I will have to ask Bret her opinion on this in the next question and answer session this Tuesday. I don't think I'd go so far as to call it cheating. But it was a learning experience to wrestle with the knees without changing their length.
To see my first edition of the "smooth vanilla walk" please click below.

Posing Stu. I've had a couple poses due in the last couple weeks. 1. Strong. and 2. Concerned.

For the strong pose, I started out attempting to have Stu seem physically strong. For example, pulling this large, non-descript box. I scrapped that idea, and decided to attempt to portray a strong attitude, for which I came up with this:

Then on my critique, Bret gave me a few pointers on how to make this stronger yet. So I revised it and then re-turned this in:

And seeing how now I've gotten another critique back from her on the revised strong pose, I shall revise again! Yes, I shall revise again.

So! Now I'll show you my concerned pose. I had a few different poses that I was trying out. I'll show a couple:


Concerned pose #1.
I did not turn this one in.
Concerned Pose #2.
I DID turn this one in.
And she said she really liked it, but gave
me a few tips to improve it, which sounded
sort of like she was describing pose #1,
so I think I should have turned in
the first one! Oh well!

OFFTOPIC notes:

I finally got a web address of my own! My URL is "DreamWells.com" Wow.
I don't know how to do anything with it yet, but still. Wow.

I'm at work right now, and the highlight of my morning was eating fruit salad and half a blueberry bran muffin. Monday morning office breakfast platters rock! It's what I work for. That and surprise pizza Fridays.

This is long enough to bore you, so I'll sign off until next time!
P.S. I'm going to Disneyland on Saturday after Thanksgiving! I've recieved some great tips from other students regarding cool animation-related things to check out at the most magical place on earth!

One-Legged Jumper - Don't call him disabled!

Week 7 we have a really fun assignment! We have a ball with one leg that we need to make jump. For kicks, I threw in a few spikes to make things interesting. But I didn't have the character interact with the environment any differently than if he were jumping on a normal, non-deadly floor. The jump is still KISS. (Keep It Simple Stupid!)
I had a blast doing this assignment!... and I don't mean "playblast" nudge, nudge! (a little animation humor.) OK that'll do.

Tailor

Our assignment was to animate this little ball with a tail to practice another very important principle of animation: "overlap" and successive breaking of joints, follow through, ect. I love the way these concepts work to give the animation such a smooth, life-like quality. Although, I haven't yet been able to get this quite right, I'll keep revising for as long as it takes. Poor Bret, she may get a tad tired of seeing my tailors. I love animation!

OK, before you view this, just know this: I put a lot of time and love into bringing this lil guy to life,, and although Tailor may seem a tad unstable, (as well as his pursuer), he has a heart of solid gold.


After a great critique from Bret, I did a few revisions, just focusing on the overlapping of the tail. I'd say they're better, but still need much MUCH work, so I can't wait to get another crit from Bret and improve even more! Improvement is exciting and a great excuse to celebrate. See link below for 3 revision tests. Note: The second two tail tests feel as if the tail is a bit heavy. Next time, my friend. Next time.