Cloudy 2: Revenge of The Leftovers!

Intro To Animals Creatures - Wk 9 Sketches prt 2

Page 2 of my sketches.

Intro To Animals Creatures - Heavy/Light Sketches

Wk 9 assignment sketching weight poses both Heavy and light.

Intro To Animals Creatures - Wk 9 Block Plus Rev

Revised Block Plus of my Ogre Attack Behavior.  Mentor Crit notes are:
1. I lost some of the weight, get it back, poses need to be checked against block and thumbnails.
2. We want it to feel nice and fast AND HEAVY.
3. Add a little more time to make it feel heavy - the anticipation at beginning needs a few frames as well as the anticipation from the start of his roar, when he's down on all fours.
4. Spacing on the hips needs to be like a bouncing ball, so spacing close at beginning then tight at top then large spacing down to the hit at ground, with some close spacing for a recovery.
5. The start f11, we want him tighter - building up more anticipation, so curl his spine in and rotate body and hip con accordingly.  Also, f12 keep his body low up until he plants that foot then explode up.
6. Get more of a 'slam' into f23, so those hips down with the rest of the body, Bouncing ball, add more frames to recovery to get feel of nice weight to get to f27 pose.
7. Lead with the head with every action - makes it feel more imposing and fierce.  So f34 sequence we want to lead with head.
8. Coming down at f70, bigger spacing, lose the ease in on the right arm, add the weight with arms.  Reverberation with the chest as well.
9. F74, again we want to lead this motion with the head.  Leading with the head will make it feel more aggressive.
10. F82, with right hind leg, good idea just reduce the amount of movement, it's distracting from where we want the audience to look - at the arm sweep.
11. F96, we want to really feel the weight of both arms come down.  The left front arm is easing in too much.  So hands come down make contact, then we see the arms push the chest up.
12. The arm wipe, f115ish, feels like a human gesture.  Make it more creature.  Get head posed so that we dont mistake he's looking into camera, he should be looking more screen right.  Also, add more into the wipe, get some head and body movement into it.  Dirty it up a bit. 
13. f145ish, on the final hand/arm plant (left arm).  plant it with purpose, no ease in open up the spacing, BUT also get the ogre to move/shift weight over this arm so that he's coming forward over both arms - showing more aggression/intimidation.

I really dig these detailed crit's.  It's always an eye opener that I stop "seeing" everything that's gone wrong.  Proof again that getting critiqued really is a very important step in animation.  Especially when the crit is coming from someone who knows more then you.  So on to the revisions!!!

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 9 Block Plus

Here is my first pass on Blocking Plus.  Still have a lot of work to do, want to make sure and get all the weight in on the settles and transitions.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 8 Blocking

Here is my blocking for my Ogre Attack behavior.  Here I want to give the weight and mechanics like a gorilla but make the performance a bit more humanistic - example the roar with the arms down at the side and the face wipe more like a human would wipe his face.  I stay away from iconic "gorilla" actions like the chest beat because those actions are too gorilla and I think would be too noticeable.  My mentor liked the direction but did add some notes on the anticipation before the roar, get him headed down a little more(rather than just forward).  Also, make sure we really feel the weight in the hips as he stands and also at the end when he settles to his last pose.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 8 Thumbs

Here are my basic thumb sketches, going through and gaining a better understanding of where my poses are showing a good line of action and where the force is most evident.

James Baxter - Spirit Roughs

 Not much to say other than enjoy.  More to see on Jamaal Bradley's Blog!

Intro To Animals and Creatures - OGRE Charge wk 8

Here I've been able to work with the rig, just getting use to the controls and such.  Also, I've gone ahead and posed out what my Ogre will do through my new shot.  Looking at these I really need to push the poses even more, so doing small thumbnails just showing a good line of action and where the force is will really get me where I want to be.

Intro to Animals and Creatures - Reference for OGRE attack behavior

OK week 8, OGRE Attack behavior, I filmed myself doing what basically I want to animate.  Next I pulled in some gorilla reference since what we are to do is treat the ogre as a knuckle walker - gorilla, chimp for the actual mechanics and timing of how my piece will actually animate.  I still need more charging footage from the gorillas and chimps.

Intro to Animals and Creatures - Final Tiger Walk To Run

Here is my final for my Tiger - Walk to Run assignment.  Overall, my mentor liked what she saw, a few notes on the transition at f39 - the rotation of the hips and shoulders could be worked out and the right front leg during its passing pose could be raised in Y, to get rid of the annoying squareness of the shoulder but other then that things look good.

Sivlerbacks in battle

Lines of action, weight, clear strong silhouettes, mixing curves with straights for contrast showing movement and big time appeal.  Nature is sweet.

Rich Fournier's Super Cool "Groper" - Coming Soon!

Yes, very cool - click on the image to go to Triplikid Blog and see where this spanktacular character calls home.

How To Train Your Dragon Flight School

Time to get flying! This is a really great piece presented at CTN 2010, Sumida will discuss his collaboration with Simon Otto and other animators at DreamWorks as they developed the real-life references for the flight of dragons in “How to Train Your Dragon”

James Baxter - Sinbad Tests

Was doing some wandering around and came across Kevin Koch's Blog and these great tests that James Baxter did for Sinbad.  These are incredible, truly inspiring - the acting and timing are REDONKULUS!

Getting use to AM's OGRE Rig with a pose

I think this guy is going to be fun to animate!  Thanks AM!

Tool developed at Harvard turns animated characters into fully articulated action figures

Really cool, click and be amazed!

Quote Of The Day

"Balance reality with artistic license."

                                         ~Jim Brown

And Now a Word On Greatness

Conviction, dedication, perseverance and hours of hard work - its no secret how one reaches greatness.  Go get it.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 6 Blocking

OK, just got my first blocking pass complete and turned into my mentor.  Notes to revise are really getting in there and making the clavicle and scapula feel and move as one.  Right now there is too much separation, so raise the clavicle and get it right.  Also, the foot flip poses need some work, rework the pose to not turn at the wrist too soon.  Still have to add all the tail animation - gulp.  Add in all the foot contact toe poses, ear poses, mouth/facial work and add some nice overlap of head and body.  Overall decent start but still need a butt load of work to finish this guy up.  PUSH ON!!!!

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 5 Reference

Again, gather as much reference as you can to build your shot.  Multiple angles help you get to the mechanics of whats happening with your cat and also reveal gems of crazy "no way I had no idea it did that moments.".  A great site for reference is Rhino Animals, pay for the service its worth it. Happy referencing!

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 5 Planning

Now on to my next shot: A Tiger Walk To Run.  Planning out my Keys and BDs, foot placement, and addressing any notes on how I want to add to performance.  It's really great to have this planning but remember to never be locked in to exactly whats on this sheet. 

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 5 Refining

So here is my first pass on polishing up my Walk To Stop.  I went in and refined foot contacts, added tail animation, and adjusted some slight breakup in the ear rotations.  I also tried to break up the overlap on body and head.  Speaking of tail animation - it's tough, too much it looks distracting not enough its frozen, just right you shouldn't even notice it.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 4 Blocking

My first pass on blocking out my Walk To Stop.  Here I really pushed the rotations and ups/downs, making the hips and shoulders really feel like they are working together.  I also added in some performance with subtle head rotations.  Definitely a big improvement from my vanilla walk.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 3 Reference

Here is my reference that I was able to put together on my Walk to a stop shot.  I got my reference from BBC motion gallery.  I  was able to find pretty much all I needed in 1 reference, so I was really lucky.  But still it is good to have different angles showing the same moves to give you more to look at.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 3 Planning

Planning my next shot, here I want to show a Cougar sized cat walking then stops.  I try to keep it simple, so that I can really concentrate on the mechanics and performance of the shot.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 3 Refined

So here again I took my mentor's notes and made the corrections she suggested.  This pass is still lacking in a lot of the qualities that need to make this cat feel alive.  It's always better to over do it and bring it back, then to just inch worm it to where it should be.  I still need to push this guy big time. I will updat this walk when a get a breather in class.  Learning, learning, learning....

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 2 Blocking

So here is my first blocking attempt, things to see where I need to push things are in the rotations and weight distribution of "each hip".  Also, I want to make the scapula and clavical feel as one, here it's not so good.  Also really pay attention to the hips and know the anatomy and why they are a lot more movement in Ty and Rx(the hips are fused to the spine, unlike the shoulder which is connected by tissue).

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 2 Planning

My first Quadruped Vanilla Lateral walk.  Here I am planning out the major poses - Keys and passing while also paying attention to foot placement and total frames.  Important to understand that we are dealing with 2 sets of "hips" - relating it to our own hips.  So what we have is as 1 set is contacting the other is passing.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 1 Posing prt 2

Pose 2 - silhouette, appeal, line of action, external/internal action.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 1 Posing

Working on posing and getting use to the cat rig.  Again, silhouette, line of action, appeal, external/internal reasons all playing a part in making the pose the best it can be.

Intro To Animals And Creatures - WK 1

Week 1, observe and sketch quadruped animals.  These were fun.  I mostly grabbed images off youtube, BBC motion gallery and framepool, and used them for my reference to sketch.  It's really crazy how much these animals are able to stretch and move. Trying to pay attention to appeal, line of action, and of course weight!

I'm Back

Wow, time to update with some work and get this blog flowing again!  Just graduated from AM's character program and jumped right into their Animal's and Creature's program.  I really had a great time with the character program, have some great alumni and mentor's.  I have a ton of cleanup and polish to do on my character pieces for my reel and at the same time trying to understand animal's and creatures.  So it's been busy understanding quadruped locomotion and performance at a pace that is a lot faster then the character program.  So on with the post's, I'll be posting mostly the beginning work from my animal's and creature work off the bat but will add my character pieces in when i start to cleanup and polish them.  Also, going to look for the next Inspiro Award winner and looking forward to adding in segments on what I learned about workflow and animation.