AM week 108

Now we're getting serious. WALKING!

You hear many experienced animators say something like: "Walks are among the toughest movements to get right", because we see people walking all the time and are very aware if something is wrong or just doesn't feel right. So it's always a challenge.

We started with a basic standard walk, the so called "vanilla walk".

Blocking with Keys and Extremes only



The pose for that week should communicate "physical strength"

Sketches


3D-Pose


I tried to do a pose, that was not as cliché as many of may sketches, but I wasn't very happy with the result...

AM week 107

Alright, now comes the fun part. "Tailor" was a character I was really looking forward to, and I wasn't dissapointed. He's really cute ;)

And my Mentor Mario liked the animation, too, which was cool!
The assignment focused on the application of overlapping action and arcs.

Again no poses for that week.



This version is already the revised animation after I had gotten Mario's e-critique.
Throw in some comments if you like!

AM week 106

Yeah, on to week 6!

More physical animation, now focusing on overlapping action. The "pendulum" assignment was a lot of fun, I combined it with the bouncing ball principles :)

No poses this week.



It might be a little hard to see in this small resolution, actually I'll try to update the posts using the quicktime plugin for the videos...

AM week 105

Now it's time for some fun! The "obstacle course" should basically show some use of squash&stretch and anticipation, but the movement through the course was supposed to be realistic.

Here we go!
The pose for that week was meant to show "Devastation".



Sketches


Revision of the 3D-Pose


For this animation assignment I obviously couldn't shoot reference, so it was mostly just imagination, which is fun!

AM Week 104

Hey fellas!

so now that Class 1 is over I'll still quickly post my assignments and the progress reel in the end, so that I can hopefully go on blogging about Class 2 on a more regular basis.

Here comes the second animation assignment, the heavy and light bouncing ball excercise...
I also include the revision for the "Excitement" pose from week 103 .

Animation



Revision of the 3D-Pose


P.S.: I shot video-reference of a squash ball and a ping-pong ball, and used that for the timing and the height of the bounces.

Update and AM week 103

First of all I have to say this is not the way it was supposed to be. I'm really sorry for not posting in such a long time...
I've been working besides AM and the last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, so the blog suffered. Now the first term is almost over and I've posted no animations yet, not good :)

So here is the first animation assignment of the bouncing ball and the scribbles and pose we had to do for week 103!

Emotion: "excited"

Sketches3D-Pose


Animation of standard "Bouncing Ball"




More stuff is on the way... :)

Oscars 2009

Hey folks!

First of all I'm really sorry for the lack of posts, I will put the latest assignments online soon, so you can see some moving images for a change.

I just wanted to take the chance to congratulate the folks over at Pixar for winning the Oscar in the category "Animated Feature Film" yesterday. "Wall-E" totally deserves it.
Youtube Clip

The other two contestants are awesome as well, I've seen "Bolt" last Friday in 3D and I loved the movie. If you haven't seen it go check it out! I haven't seen "Kung Fu Panda" yet (shame on me), but the Blu-Ray is already waiting besides my desk. The things I've seen and read about it were amazing, for example the 2D-animated intro sequence. Check out this post at "Art of the Title".

By the way, if you haven't seen "Wall-E" or want to see it again, I can't recommend the Blu-Ray/DVD enough, it's fantastic. The quality is flawless and there are some supernice bonus features, especially the Leslie Iwerks documentary "The Pixar Story".

More stuff coming soon... thanks for your patience :)