One man, four animations...

IT'S DONE! I've finished all four of my master class animations, and handed them in. It's nice to chill for a bit before getting back to the grind tomorrow.

Overall it's been a pretty good learning experience. I purposefully went for a more cartoony style of animation because I've never tried that before and it was nice to get away from realistic stuff. I've had a lot of good feedback from Kevan Shorey who has helped me out a lot throughout the process. Talking to him and getting notes has definitely opened my eyes to my work process and how to improve it. A general note he gave me in all of the animations was that I needed 'more'. I need to push poses and keep the audience interested. I improved my animations a bit on this front, but not as much as I'd like. It'll certainly be at the forefront of my mind in the future.

So, here they are, hope you like them:


The Clone Trooper Sting



The Sneaky Guy




The Angry Guy




The Depressed Guy




I think on the whole I was too timid from the start. I had some good ideas but was afraid to try them because I wasn't sure I'd have time to finish them, so my blocking passes were a bit dull. I think in future I'll follow the advice of Kevan - 'If a shot is daunting, pick the single most important moment/pose and begin to visualise around it. Pretty soon you'll have a shot!'. I think I would've had a lot more success if I'd have chosen the moments where the character interacts with the gate and worked around that. Having said all that, I am actually quite happy with the animations, they're by no means perfect, but I feel the perfectionist in me would make being 100% pleased with it impossible. There is always something I'd like to do better.

Happy animating!

Stu

A lot of animation...

It has been a while since I last posted. I've been working flat out on my master class animations, and as much as I am enjoying doing it, it's a lot of work. I need to get it done asap as well because I have innovations and the major to be working on. Also soon we'll be given the yet unknown AAT2 animation project. Hectic times and late nights ahead I feel.

Anyhow, I posted my blocking passes for the master class animations a while ago, unfortunately those videos are no longer on line, however I do have one of the animations nearly finished. Here was the first pass of splined animation I did - The Sneaky Man.

I was pretty happy with this and would have been happy to hand it in. However it was of course still worth getting feedback. So I asked some people and sent it off to Kevan at Dreamworks for some notes and critique. He was very helpful and gave me some good notes (as well as a telling off for not including frame numbers, haha). His main points were that the beats in the animation felt a bit separate from each other. I tend to agree with this, looking back I think it was my response to my animations being too 'floaty' in the past. So I made a concious decision to add pauses to the animation. Secondly he suggested that I look into making the piece more energetic, particularly after he does his tip toe run, as the animation slowed down after that and I risked losing the audience's interest. Finally he suggested I remove some of the fence so people can see more of the animation. Which I did.

So, after that feedback, this is my re-worked version (with frame numbers):



Hope you enjoy!

Stu

Dreamworks?! YES... Dreamworks!

Since I last blogged a lot has happened. Uni has actually properly started, and its hectic. Lots of animation for me to do this term, it's a bit daunting really.

Other than that we had the week of animation lectures from Kevan Shorey and his wife Robyn who work at Dreamworks in San Francisco. The whole week was a great series of lectures and talks about Kevan's process and approach to animation, it was an invaluable insight into how another animator works and I certainly came away from it having learnt a lot and will be applying a lot of what he taught us to my own process. On top of that Robyn talked a lot to us working in the US and the studio's pipeline and departments as whole, after hearing everything I was sure that Dreamworks is where I want to work one day. Overall it was an amazing week and it was shame we couldn't kidnap Kevan and keep him as a full time lecturer, haha.

As for my projects, everything is plodding along nicely, I'm currently finishing up doing the layout for our major project. Once that's done I'll be focusing my attention on the Masterclass project and it's impending 3rd of February deadline. I had a good meeting with Mike Wyatt who set us our Masterclass brief. He says I seem to have a good sense of animation, I just need to push my poses more, which I agree with, it's come up a few times so I need to work on that. My innovations has been slow to get going, but after a meeting with my tutor this morning I've got a clearer idea of what my plan is and I'm really looking forward to that one.

Kevan mentioned when he was talking to us that animating a horse was hard, he was right, you can see my attempt here in my latest showreel edit. Hope you like it, let me know what you think.




Stu

A class from the masters...

The first project I'm writing about is the masterclass project set by Blue-zoo. As a course we had a choice of briefs covering different areas of CG, each set by a different studio including MPC and Framestore. As I want to be an animator, I chose the character animation brief set by Mike Wyatt at Blue-zoo.

For the interim deadline tomorrow we had to block out 4 animations. One 2D animation which would be a sting/ident for the NCCA, and three 3D animations based on a given scenario. I chose the going over a fence scenario. The interim deadline is so that we can get feedback from the professionals, sort of like getting a shot approved by the director.

This is a great project and having contact with professionals in the big studios we hope to work at one day is invaluable.

Anyway, that's the project, and these are my efforts for tomorrows deadline. Enjoy!

2D Animation (geeking out with a clone trooper)


Angry Guy


Sad Guy


Sneaky Guy

Overall I'm pretty happy with all four of them. I'm not sure what Mike will think about the fact that I've used 3D assets in the 2D animation. This was more of an aesthetic choice as the Lego blocks at the end weren't really reading as Lego in 2D. But we'll see what he says, it's easily changeable.

As for the 3D animations, I'm pleased with how they look in blocking, and I think most of the timing works. The sneaky guy was really hard to get right, and definitely gave me the most frustration. I did consider changing the idea completely to something else, but I decided to stick with it and I'm glad I did. The issue was that I took reference of me being sneaky, and when animating I stuck too rigidly to real life and didn't push any of the poses, so the animation looked dull and also the timing was off as it turns out I'm not very good at being sneaky.

The sneaky animation was the only one of the animations I made a proper plan for. I took reference, drew key poses and the animated around that. I'm glad I did it, and i wish i had done it for the others, it certainly sped up the process of animating, even with the initial set backs i encountered. It meant I could go back to my plan and drawings and assess what it was i didn't like and change that. Without this plan I fear I may have changed my idea.

So that's the masterclass project.

I know this post is a bit long, but I'm getting into the habit of assessing my own work and practices for my Advanced Aesthetics and Techniques 2 (AAT2) exam. I'm still a bit unsure of what exactly the tutors are looking for, but hopefully I'm on the right track.

See you next time,

Stu