MY NEW WEBSITE

I'll now be posting on my new website:

www.DreamWells.com

Please take a peek!

New Quarter! " Advanced Acting"

My new mentor is Dimos Vrysellas. Check out his rockin' portfolio! In live Q&A, he's a fun, happy guy who really know his stuff. This quarter looks promising!

We've finally been given access to the Bishop model with full facial controls! It opens up an endless range of possibilities for expression. I'd estimate that the new bishop has 150 or so new controls, which seems like a lot, but when compared to the 3600 controls that Dimos had access too on Oscar's face (from "A Shark's Tale")... I can't even begin to imagine.

To get a feel for the new facial controls, part of our assignment was to select two photos which demonstrated a clear emotion and then try to capture that emotion with Bishop. It's actually quite fun! Dimos really stressed the importance of simplifying the face. It's easy to get caught up in tiny details, but what the audience is really going to read are the larger shapes as a whole. All critiques warmly welcome! Thanks!

Intro to Acting is over

Class 3 ended as of yesterday. During our last class, my mentor Dovi Anderson made an announcement that he'll be moving from Tippet to PIXAR in a week or so to work on Ratatouille. We're all very proud of him. He was an awesome mentor to have at AnimationMentor.com. He gave all of his students exceptionally long and detailed critiques and came to the Q&A sessions prepared and well organized.

My dialogue shot is still relatively unpolished. I have yet to do a spacing/arcs pass, and I need to go in and tweak the IK-FK transition on the screen left arm after he places the box. It's my first IK-FK switch, so I'm sort of winging it.

Dialogue Shot - Kleptomaniac

For our Class 3 dialogue shot, I weeded and weeded like an OCD gardener to find my favorite audio clip. One film that I most certainly do care to recommend for great audio is called "Bark." This film is about a woman who has a mental breakdown and thinks she is a dog. Follow her husband's adventures in an attempt deal with this unique situation. Sound good? It is. Great characters, seriously.
Here's the criteria that I was looking for in an audio clip: 5-10 seconds; shows a change of emotion; one character reacts to another character's dialogue; the dialogue is open for me to put my own twist on it.
The final dialogue:
Dude 1: "You know why I do it..."
Dude 2: "You're a kleptomaniac!"
Dude 1: "Fine! The man wants to pay me...$5.50 an HOUR? He DESERVES to get ripped off!"

Stewie is a disgruntled employee of a large corporate retail chain, like Walmart, Target, what have you. He's working as a department store santa and is incredibly irritated at the fact that he only gets paid $5.50 an hour. His friend watches him load stolen goods (really this can be anything) into his trunk. Stewie hates people trying to pass judgment on his actions, especially when his own friend calls him a 'kleptomaniac.' When this happens he gets very defensive and tries to justify his stealing to his friend (and even himself.)

This idea, boiled down, can be applied universally. Someone feels used and taken advantage of by someone in power. They feel powerless and resentful. By stealing from the very person who is "stealing" (time/labor/whatever) from them, they feel empowered again. I may end up changing the Department Store Santa to some other type of worker. I'm not quite sure yet.

Guitar Dude en Casa.

One of our assignments for Intro to Acting was to create a 2 beat simple story. This was fun to work on, but it's still not done. I'll just post it, and welcome any feedback. When I get some time, I'd like to try to make the animation a little more dynamic... Maybe he interacts with his environment a little bit more. Anyway, any suggestions on how to improve it are warmly welomed. Unpolished version, click pic, then make "view size 640":

The Baseball Pitch

Wow, it has been a while since I've posted! Here's my excuse: Oops.
As of this post, I'm in the middle of the 3rd quarter at AnimationMentor.com: Introduction to Acting. I'll post my last assignment of Body Mechanics. For the last assignment for quarter 2 at AnimationMentor.com we were given a few options to choose from including a heavy push or pull, a baseball pitch, balancing on a beam, or opening a sticky door. I decided to go with the baseball pitch for fun. So I shot my reference courtesy of "Frank"
For a little while, it was starting to feel a like a shot-putter rather than a pitcher. So what I did was bring the lifted leg out a more, and have him do a bigger stride and follow through.
...And here's the pitch!!!

Nothing says Valentine's Day like a blog post

Jumping from post to post across a lake brimming with a dangerous and/or unpleasant substance is the assignment I've chosen next. Although I'll have to leave the lake up to the imagination.

I'm trying to figure out which workflow works best for me. I've left my blocking in Grease Pencil mode this week. It's extremely easy to make large changes this way.

I've come fresh out of my last assignment in which I had maintained (against all professional advice) the motto of "just go with it, plans, schmans." Now for this assignment, I've made a leap to "enough planning already, throw in the real character, for cryin' out loud, Pete's sake." If there's one thing that Anna Korina has taught me, it's the delicate art of patience. You see, an animator must have the patience of a basement scientist (evil or otherwise)... Chip, chip, chip away at progress, but keep you eye on the pie. Now replace "pie" with "ultimate, fluid, life-like movement with which a mass audience can relate" and you'll get my point.