TERM 4- Introduction to Acting

I started term 4 last week and am pretty much half way through the Program, and loving it. This term , we're being introduced to Acting in Animation.

I got Jamy Wheless as my Mentor this term.

Jamy graduated from Auburn University in 1987,and then worked as a freelance illustrator in Atlanta, GA, storyboarding and creating traditional animation.

In 1995, he caught the eye of George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic when his short film, 'Avery', premiered at SIGGRAPH.In 2000, Jamy became a member of ILM's feature production team, where he ultimately became responsible for the character development and performance of Yoda for the Star Wars prequels and Davy Jones for the Pirates of the Caribbean films.He is currently president of Lightstream Animation Studios in Petaluma, CA.(http://www.lightstreampictures.com/about/#jamy)

WOW ! Something tells me, this term is going to be Bags of fun!

The last week, we started with thinking of ideas for a 10 second PantoMime Shot. I thought of about 6 different ideas and finally stuck to the one I really think works and the one that looks pretty simple but might have a lot of scope for acting in it.

As a part of this 1st assignment, we also had to film ourselves, acting the idea out, which I wouldn't put up here, since I am way too embarrassed to do that ! So you'd have to spare me on that one! I find it the hardest to ignore the camera and act ! And because we've been subjected to exercises like this, I have learnt to appreciate the jobs of Live action actors a lot more! Trust me, it doesn't come easy,... well it doesn't come to me at all ! LOL

Anyway! Back to The idea then :)

Stewie (Our character) is in a China Shop. He picks up an ornament from the shelf, and looks around cautiously to check if no one is looking. He then places the ornament ever so carefully back on the shelf and turns around to now face the camera.

Just then, the shelf comes tumbling down, breaking everything that comes in its path. Stewie, has a sense of surprise and shock on his face on hearing the sound (He is still facing the camera) his posture goes from a slouch to an Upright stance, and eyes closed on hearing the crash !

The camera reveals words behind him ,... on the wall that read " DO NO TOUCH- WEAK SHELF" , (the words were apparently hidden by the objects on the shelf)

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Some really rough thumbnails :

I'm off to blocking the key poses and breakdowns on Stewie in Maya this week then! THIS is where the fun begins! :) Eagerly waiting on the Critique from My mentor this week on the idea and the video reference that I handed in last week. I hope I can get to know what he thinks about my idea,.. sooner this week.

I might or might not post the shot up here yet, on the blocking this week 'cuz it is bound to look a bit to naive and boring. But We'll see ! We finish this shot by week 5 but I promise to keep talking before and upload progress on this one soon in the coming weeks :)

Till then U guys have fun

Blogging out for now! :)

Back from the DEAD ! :)

Hey Guys!

Yeah been ages I know. Have had a lot going on, in the outside world for me. and I hate to admit it, I've been a wee bit lazy too, as far as posting stuff here goes.

Last term I had MIKE STERN (Animator with DreamWorks - http://blog.sternio.com/) as my mentor. He worked on movies like Kung fu Panda, Bee Movie, Monsters Vs Aliens and very recently, How to train your Dragon! He had loads of awesome suggestions on pushing your shots beyond the normal in the final polishing stage.

Its a shame, I couldn't get to take much away from him as I would have liked to, if my laptop didn't crash in the middle of Last term leaving me without a computer to work with for a goood 4 weeks of Term time which was fatal but I managed to pass alright with an ok GPA which I ain't so proud of. Agggh! hate when things like that happen. De-motivates u to the core. Hate it, hate it, hate it. My GeForce burnt out on the Alien-ware and it wouldn't work again. I couldn't restart the laptop and would have LOST almost everything on there had I not taken the backups on my WD. phew! so that was good. I recently bought another WD to back up my back up and had to buy a new laptop to work on. Last term was a nightmare for me! but now I am a happy soul :) ! Had to take a Leave of absence from school for a term, as my situation demanded it!

I'm back now and am going to try my best to be blogging in regularly with updates on stuff I animate and stuff that I DO NOT animate :) !

The Shot

Hey guys!

I am back like I promised ... and this time with my final shot that I've been working on for the last 3 weeks pretty much! :)

There still is a lot of scope for improvement and I am still tweaking stuff on it... ! I am uploading what I have on it so far !

We were given a pick list to choose our shot from and this time I decided to have my character Lose balance and fall Just in a more descriptive way ... coming up with a motive and a "Why is he doing what he is" sorta thing to make my shot a bit more interesting ! :)

Hope u enjoy seeing it as much as I enjoyed working on it! :)

THE SHOT:

I am now working on another shot ... this time I picked Walking on a narrow beam ! :) I am ever so excited working on this shot too!! And guess what?????? this time the character has arms tooo ! Wicked, Init? :P ill upload stuff I work on, pretty soon up here !

Right, I'm back to animating!
Have fun u guys! Xxxx

The Personality Walk

I worked a bit further on the from Term 1; Posting that up here too! Decided to go with a happy double bounce walk here ! Hope u enjoy it ! :)

The SHOT :

I'd love to hear back from anyone ov u who has suggestions or criticisms on anything posted up here... either up here or email me ! Thanks a ton for your suggestions already! Its helped me improve a whole lot I think ! shoot me an email if you wish to see the shots in quicktime and to be able to scrub through them frame by frame ! :)

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

Week 7

The one leg Jump !

Another week over !

Hey guys,....
another week over...and its gone so quick! I didn't get enough time to update the blog cuz of assignments and projects :) but its never too late ! So here we are...!

This week was more about the Principle of "Overlapping Action" or successive breaking of joints.

In the assignment we had to animate a pendulum ... that I'm gonna post right away without anymore delay ! :)

On the Planning:

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT

The Assignment: