Man vs Machine Update

So far this has been my most ambitious piece of animation, and probably the toughest, that I've done. It's been a lot of fun and a lot of stress.
The shot looks fine (to me) blocked out, but It seems like SUCH a mess when I put it to linear/spline/clamped. I know it's something that needs to be done and it's supposed to be tough, but that doesn't mean it's not discouraging.

I'm at a point where I'm not sure if my time would be better spent working on this and trying to finish it or something new.
I REALLY want to finish this one though! I feel if I really get into it it could be my best work yet.
Also considering Steve Meyer was beyond gracious in helping me out with it. I can't describe how great he's been to me.

Anyway, here it is.


I think my main problem is how much information I put without any idea of what the computer would do with it. I think I'm going to try some new workflow idea's.
Either way I'll probably finish it, I'm strangely dying to get back into my shot.


"The best animators I've known start digging in at the point when most animators think they're done."
- Clay Kaytis

Progress

Here's where I'm at with the shot I'm working on.
So far I'm not hating it. Although I know I will once I get to the Splining phase.

Back To 2D

Here's a 2D piece i'm working on, needless to say I'm not doing an 11 second club for this month. The computer can really piss you off sometimes.
Either way it brought me back to doing some hand drawn stuff, this test is actually my first acting shot in 2D.


If you can't tell whats happening due to the light line quality or my failure to bring out the emotion of the character, I'll tell you.
A bored guy is sitting down, rolls his eyes, pauses, see's something, he now see's it's something he likes, in his joy he jumps up and out towards it.

This is my second pass (Click here for detail on process) and I've pretty much nailed down my timing.
I'm going to start cleaning it up and either put a more complex character in, or just animate it fully as the "glorified stick man".

11 Second Club - December

I'm pretty sure that i'll be submitting a final entry to the December competition.
This audio clip was something I couldn't pass up.

OK Here's my flipbook pass.
Now this is a new approach i'm testing out, it involves doing a rough pass of animation in flipbook. The key is to not get attached to any drawing, this is done by only using rough drawings. I'm not gonna be hesitant to delete a 6 second stick man.
So instead of getting beautiful drawings, your focusing on your characters acting and performance.

This approach was one i took from Dreamworks Supervising Animator, Jason Ryan.

Anyway here's my rough.


Overall, i'm pretty satisfied with the performance. I think that I really avoided cliche's and went with originality in my acting. But that's just me, you could think it sucks worse than anything you've ever seen.

A Slight Slump...

So I've hit point in my contest entry where I know it's looking crappy.... BUT I don't quite know HOW to fix it...
Sadly I'm at a point where I've all but given up on my animation and have just spent time on making the scene look pretty.

Hopefully some inspiration will pop up.
Here's where I'm at right now..

To some surprise, their IS lipsync going on
maybe i should push it more...

Work In Progress - 11 Second Club

Here is my near final blocking of my 11 Second Club Entry,
(Blocking: Poses run together without computer inbetweens, so images "jump" from pose to pose)
For me, blocking is done when it "looks" splined.
(Spline: Basically the computer putting inbetweens inbetween your poses so you will have 24 frames of images a second)
At the moment I have the standing guy nearly finished, but i have nothing but the main poses for the guy sitting, I chose to work on him last because his emotions are all reactions.
So how can i have him react with out the actions he's reacting to.

*Note that lipsync is generally the last step in the animation process.

And blogger has crappy video quality.

Sheridan Head Turn

A thing I like to do a lot is look at students work and try to do it myself, of course, I don't have the teachers helping me along the way but I think that may make me a little more independant in the long run.

As far as I know, this one of the earlier projects Sheridan College students must complete.
It's a head turn of an existing character, then an expression change, then lip sync to the word meow. For now I think i'm just going to stick with a head turn only, it seems I have a lot of work to do.

See for yourself,
At the moment I have half the work done, 21 drawings out of a total of 42.


My main issue with it is the hair and the line continuity. The hair constantly changes shape above his forehead, and his eyes and nose jitter too much. I guess i need to put more time into my inbeetween's (Drawings between the main drawings - Keys).

Also if you couldn't tell, the character is Zeus of the movie "Hercules" by Disney.