Yet Another Awesome Term !

Hey Folks !

I've been very lazy to post stuff up on the blog ever since this term started ! but the good news is that I've been spending a fairly good amount of time on my assignments and stuff...which is cool ! about 10 hrs a day on an average [not talking of the late nights I spend in front of the computer] :P ... its way better than last term and my grades are a lot better this term, I've managed to break my record with consecutive A's this term so I'm happy! Ya ya i know...grades don't mean much.... but they sure boost u to do way better the next week and the next :) ! That's one of the things keeping my motivation up !

Oh and I need to talk about my Mentor for this term [since I've cheekily escaped off this blog for a whole 2 months]!

I have yet another amazing Mentor for this term ! His name is Elliot Roberts and he is Awesome! Very helpful, friendly and really cool ! Originally from Texas, he studied animation from the Academy of Art in San Francisco .He's worked on movies like Robots and Iron Man. He is now working with a games studio called Fine Studios animating on the upcoming game Brutal Legend starring Jack Black.
http://www.doublefine.com/news.php !

He is truly awesome! Keeps us motivated all the time and the q n a's are very interesting ...not only does he answer all our queries we have during the week but he makes it a point to go beyond and show us awesome clips and references addressing posing and timing in live action movies ! Its amazing to watch him in the q n a's! He also showed us some parts of what he worked on in Iron Man and how he addressed certain issues ! I am totally totally INSPIRED ! He is a truly amazing Mentor !

This term is called The psychology of body mechanics. We pretty much concentrate on how the body moves for the most part of our animations.

Every 3 weeks we're asked to pick from a list of actions and each on the list has its level of difficulty we can choose from! We do a Video reference for the action we pick, study it well,... observe people around, plan our shot, nail down the key poses....drawing nice silhouettes into thumbnails on an estimated time line (Story Boards) and I even go ahead putting in breakdown poses once I am happy with the key poses in the drawings. This takes me about a week that we're allotted to think about what I want to do and how to do it. yep I am learning to spend most of my time planning the shot than actually animating the shot in Maya and this is sure making my shot in Maya a lot more easier than it ever was for me! I love it !

For the first Assignment I decided to go for the easiest ...it being our character taking a side step to understand how the body weight would shift as a step is taken to the side. Pretty much focusing on the hips here ! I did a video reference for the same and thumb nailed my poses as a part of planning the shot. I'd probably skip the video reference here...and take you straight to the planning sketches and the final shot !
So here goes!

Assignment 1. : I picked to do a side step on a character, called Ballie [pretty much cuz its a ball with legs] :P !

PLANNING SKETCHES:

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE

.....and the final shot :

I'll keep you posted with more I promise. I am working on an even more exciting shot for this week and I'm almost done with polishing it. So ill have it up pretty soon ...by the weekend I reckon and the reference video and planning thumbnails for the next shot I have in mind to animate :) !

Right! Its 1:30 am here ... and I should really be hitting the sack! So ill catch u guys later ! have fun till then !

Signing out for now !

Cheers !

Sheeba Xx