woot....

No more sand...woohoo! Back in the USA.

Class 107 - SURPISE!!!

Welcome back, myself included. I have to today, just for you all, a special treat. Marshmallows, you ask? Nope, while I love them, it's better than that. A nice cup of hot cocoa? Nyet. A princess cut diamond? Not even close. Today's surprise is...a new post. The gift that keeps on giving even on the ninth day of Channukah.

In today's episode, Dana critiques my last assignment and I write out my disdain for one of the new characters, Tailor - also called Flippy by an unnamed asian. This week I actually did two animations and just submitted the one. One of my problems is that my ideas tend to need more frames than what I'm given. Which goes back to me needing to keep my ideas and my assignments seperate. The one animation features one-leg, really easy to pick out, with a cameo from Tailor/Flippy. The animation that I turned to Dana featured Tailor/Flippy with a cameo by one-leg. Arguably, one-leg's presence is a bit stronger than a cameo in the second video.

What did Dana have to say about Tailor/Flippy's untimely demise. Well, she said that his tail looks a bit stiff while at times it flows as it should on the whole it doesn't. Also I need to put hang time into my arcs. This is something she keeps repeating and I keep forgetting. Also the part in the middle where he is under one-leg she felt didn't read well, and she's right. (She's earning her pay.) Tag all that with some minor overlap issues and that about covers the assignment. My revision she said was spot on. WOOT!

I know I already gave you one surprise but I have another.

It's Dana.

On a non-AM related note...

Recently I've had to deal with a major musical issue. It's easy to hear, for those without, and hard news to take if you are diagnosed with it. Tonus Deafus. Or for those of you who don't speak in bad-greek word cliches - tone deaf. The problem is that if you lack the mental/aural/vocal capacity for tonal persception (can't match pitches heard or thought with your voice) you don't know it.

The issue I have to gently deflate the would-be Pavarottis or in my case, insert name of quality female singer here (no Kelly Clarkson does not count). The ability to sing well is a gift and cherished by those who have it and those that think they do. My question to my short list of readers is how would you break the news? I might even follow up with how we handled it here.

Class 106 -

Ah, class 106. You sneaky devil, you. This week we were given a platform with a jointed pendulum to help us illustrate and animate overlapping actions. Basically how to animate multiple parts of a whole. For instance your arm throwing a ball. Really your entire body's involved but for my purposes we'll constrain it to the arm. Throwing a ball is shoulder, upper arm, the elbow, forearm, wrist and all the way down through the finger tips. All of these don't happen all at once, nor do they happen in their own little voids. They occur one after the other and, wait for it, overlap each other. This creates a sort of wave action which is best seen in a flac waving in the wind.

With that said, in my first attempts with my pendulum/platform Dana told me I missed one critical part of the assignment-the breaking of the joints. In other words all of the joints, while moving in the direction of the action, were moving at the same time. I needed to offset the each joint by at least one frame. Dana appreciated the creativity but said I should try and keep it basic and to what the assignment says. That's hard.

Class 106 - Pendulum Machine

I should also mention that while all of this was going on I was experimenting with rhythmic timing. Timing is a basic concept in animation that is not covered in the basic foundation class at AM. While it may seem odd to you, it shouldn't. Rhythmic/musical timing is a concept from 2d cartoons- from Popeye, Mickey and Bugs Bunny- all cartoons and animation was done to some beat. Flash forward to today's animation and you might be lucky to have this type of thought put into the animation. Not that there isn't music but that the animation isn't made with the rhythm of the music in mind. The music, prepare yourself for a bad pun, is just second fiddle, told you. Especially when it comes to animated features where soundtrack sales are the goal. So it's no wonder that AM, who trains it's students for jobs in the big studios, doesn't teach that which is not used.

In the lectures we are seemingly beaten over the head with timing being something you develop. This is true but it can also be taught. For my assignment above I had the music of one Carl Stalling, music guy for Looney Tunes, from an Avery cartoon called "Baby Bottleneck." It's a great short with Porky and Daffy. Anyway they have an assembly line and it has it's own music. The song was stuck in my head all week long and was my inspiration for the above animation. That kind of timing is a bit difficult at first but once I got the hang of it the process became a little easier. I'll be practicing it. The planning takes some getting used to.

Oh yeah and here's my revision. At the end the ball travels too far for the amount of rotation I have it do. Blub.

Class 106 - Obstacle Course Revision

Getting caught up...Class 105

Back with a week five update. This week's assignment was to make Stu devastated and have a ball squash and stretch it's way around an obstacle course and come to a stop on it's own.

My Stu looked skyward. I found it hard to not find an overworked pose or idea for devastated. I mean if you were able look at all the poses from other students they very similar. Heads in hands and such. My reference photo was of a little Arab boy who is in far more hurt than I could get Stu to convey.

The boy in the white and blue striped shirt.

Stu's ginourmous head made that pose impossible. So decided to have him look up as I had seen in some other photos I referenced. Looking up for some spiritual answers to the disaster.

Stu "devastated."

For my ball on the obstacle course Dana pointed out that the ball doesn't anticipate it's roll forward, the midair pause as the ball drops, the bad arcs as the ball bounces and the big fact that I failed to pay attention to the instructions of the assignment and have the ball come to a stop by itself. Ouch. All very true things. Not to mention that the completed version didn't resemble any of my thumbnail sketches. Which makes sense to me as the original idea which I posted before was too long, before it was properly timed out. An idea struck me at night and hurriedly threw it together.

Stu's problems come from my seeming obsession with putting the camera on the ground to look at my subject. With his crossed legs it's hard to get a clear idea of what is actually happening. Put the camera in the air and more negative space is made. Oy!

So that's the down and dirty recap of Class 105.

Crappy caricatures...

Two weeks ago I decided to try my hand at the majestic craft and art of caricature drawing. I somehow managed to do a lot of crappy drawings in the my feeble attempts to imitate people's faces. I think they suck, you probably won't. Just trust me that they do and we'll call it even.

Trust me you do not want to see some the other monstrousities.

I need you all to do something for me...

All 5 of you that bother to read this blog. I need you to go learn to play baseball. Just do it, man I use cliches as much my former supervisor wore hideous wigs in place of any good taste. AHHH, my analogies are even worse.

Back to my request.

Anyway, don't learn how to play baseball with a coach or any formal team with practices. Just on your own, in your free time. You can read books about how to play, watch games and discuss the game with your friends that you play with on the weekend. The last part will be very helpful.

Now that you're the best in your neighborhood/block/office/borough, I have one more step in my program. I need you all to go to baseball camp or fantasy camp run by a professional, or former professional, baseball player. This needs to be a quality camp with guys who have been playing baseball while they in their mom's stomach. It also needs to have other pros on the staff as well to guide you along.

The final step in this program is how you look compared to your peers. No matter how you try and look at it, unless you were blessed with some odd baseball godlike abilities, it's going to be an ego killer. Not just a killer you'll suddenly realize why the little league kid that picked his nose, and proceeded to lick said finger, played in right field, the virtual no-flyball-zone/no-man's land.

I currently am that kid, minus the public nosepicking.

Ego busted. Completely humbled.

The easy concepts are outside of my ability to animate. I don't mind starting from the bottom but it's sucks to go from a small time champ, UD animation with Tim, to global loser, AM. The global stage of which I speak is still school. This time my classmates are from the around world, for real. Nimisha and Muddusar are from India. Eyal from Israel. Jac, pronounced yauk, is from South Africa and Roberto from Costa Rica. Russia, Italy, Germany, the UK and the US, are there for some additional flavoring.

Not only do my animations noticeably fall short but their sketches add to my suddenly heightened awareness of suckitude. While it's not her fault the video part of the eCrit helps because you can read dana's face like a book, the wow-it-hurts-to-watch-this-I've-just-watched-10-more-enjoyable-animations-your's-is-the-pits types comments, while she says nice things out loud about your assignment. Oy. (For the record I don't believe Dana is that cruel but if I could show you the crtitiques, and I can't, you would understand what I'm talking about.)

Needless to say I have a lot of work ahead of me. The road isn't paved. Instead someone decided to throw pebbles the size of boulders directly in front of me, I realize that if a pebble is the size of a boulder it is a boulder (screw you, I'm writing here.)

Here is a preliminary list of things I need to work on:

-setting aside more time to get the assignment done

-reading the asignment and keeping it handy (in a hard copy form)

-making sure to take better notes from the lectures

-ask Dana more questions, even the stupid ones

-analyze my work more closely, and tell you all what's wrong with my work

-attention to detail, detail is the key (slogan from basic training, from when first got off the bus)

-work on my drawing (this is something I'm not sure I can fit in to my schedule at the moment but I'll try)

-make shorter posts to keep my readers

-make longer posts because "Reading is FUNdamental!" (GAH! Will the cliches ever end.)

-find other ways to express myself in writing (get a staff writer)

Now all I need is a sponsor to make sure I stay on the horse and AA, Animators Anonymous, should be a breeze. This post is getting excessively long. Time to go to work.

Which reminds me, shouldn't I be working right now?

Between Classes

Here are the rest of my videos to include the ones I submitted to Dana for grading and critiquing for Class 105. I'll do my best to explain what was deemed wrong with them, I have to do it from memory. But first to some explanations of what goes on at the school.

When we get the assignment, all of which are spelled out in the class syllabus, we are given the task and a frame limit. The frame limit is supposed to mimic working in a studio where you are given a specific shot and the amount of frames you have to work your magic. So far it's been 60-120 frames. At 24 frames per second, that's 5 seconds. I was working on this week's assignment a second time, I was warned that my first idea was too away from the assignment's goal. With the new "gag" I came up with I had trouble trying to meet the minimum. I actually managed to finish the original-longer than 120 frames-and redo the new version all last night. Did I mention that I also managed to fix and revise my assignment from last week as well? The most productive three hours of my life or at least the past year.

The best part of AM is that all characters, and balls, in the Class 1 world are provided by the school, granted you use Maya (software), which allows you to focus on the art of animation. I come from a 3d Studio Max background way back to release 2.5 which is about 8-9 years. What is said about animation holds very true, the software doesn't matter how you use it does. It hasn't taken me much time at all to get in the swing of animating, characters or anything else, in Maya. The software is merely a tool just like a pencil is to a traditional animator. An expensive pencil but a pencil none the less.

Now turn off your lights and prepared to be amazed; by bouncing balls. *Warning the first few videos the balls do not squash. They aren't supposed to. Squash and stretch were just introduced in the last videos*

Revision of class 103's ball. The bounces at the end have been cleaned up a bit. Not happy with it.

Class 104 2 ball bounce-two different weights. The heavy ball needs to actually bounce a little and the first two bounces of the little ball need to have the arcs redone. Very sloppy of me.

Class 105 revision fixed/made more of a mess of the above.

Class 105 obstacle course with the squishy, aka advanced, ball.

And now a pause. Lights please. Good. The last one here is the "condensed"/reworked version of the assignment. My original idea would have been about 250 frames once it was properly timed out, it was at 120 frames in a rough blocked form with no sense of real timing applied. The premise being to give my ball a reason for being, such a gracious creator I know. It was a sort of an animated ball homage to cartoons while showing I understood the principles of squash and stretch. Also introduecd as a requirement this week was the rotation of the ball.

Once I realized that there wasn't any real way to take my original plan and make it 120 frames, I took the main gags and condensed it further. Having shave this one down a bit to make it under 120 frames. Luckily I caught a Class 1 Peer Buddy in Israel, early sunday morning, who advised that this "being" and his super squishiness was a bit over-the-top and not what the assignment was looking for. Something I knew but just wanted to hear someone other than the little voice in my head say.

I went to bed Saturday night and thought of the gag above. I probably could have developed it more and not needed to make the ball aware of that fact that the obstacle course was broken. Without the extra part at the end I only had about 45 frames-a ball can only bounce for so long. I animated in a straight-ahead fashion which allowed room for the ending realization. I'll explain this straight-ahead thing in another post I think. It's really just a method of animating. I already no some areas that need fixing and recently realized others.

It turns out that others played "God" and gave their ball the spark of life. I ended up lengthening the long squishy homage to a length that properly ended the animation. And here it is.

The pacing is off and some things could have been exaggerated more. This was a lot longer originally but I like how it turned out.

I'm back!

Wow so after a complete blackout bar from Blogger I can post on a good connection once more. And in celebration of such events I have videos of my 103 and 104 assignments. Woohoo! Apparently blogger is trying something new and I'm willing to help them. Especially if it allows me to show my first, albeit crappy, animations.

Class 103 - Bouncing ball

There were some technical difficulties and I have an idea of what the problem is, so I'll update this posting later.

Class 103 (Back on Schedule)

This week the assignment was to animate our first bouncing ball, with the weight of a basketball, and have Stu show excitement. While I haven’t figured out the best way to show the videos my ball bounced well Dana did point out that my end bounces, where the ball has lost it’s original energy, were to far apart from one another. On to Stu-he’s more exciting anyway. *note-I have thumbnails for my animation but they are confusing if you aren’t me so I think it’s just easier for you to imagine a ball bouncing and tag it as my work.

My reference: the guy on the left. Yes I do realize that as a Yankees fan it’s sacreligious to use the Red Sox for anything.

Sketches from the rest of my research

Finally Stu

Excitement is a very vague emotion and can be explored in many ways. The way that first comes to mind, and also happens to be what I saw when looking at other first semester AMers, is the jumping for joy. Very few people decided to go for the reserved excitement of a Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson after they’ve one their millionth tournament. I have to admit that I too fell victim to the “jump.” Since Stu is not anatomically built I reached a point where I knew I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. I also have a seated one that was way to awkward to even talk about. Oddly enough the jumping Stu I spent the most time on with the least success.

My classmates harped on tangencies in Stu’s pose. I see them but I don’t think the tangency argument is registering just yet when I am getting my cameras set, or posing for that matter. They also suggested that a different camera angle would be better. I beg to differ mostly because I took the suggestion from the previous week that I should pose for the camera and trust me from any other angle Stu looks a mess.

Dana on the other hand liked the angle and suggested as a way to make read more clearly, with less tangents to pull Stu’s right elbow back as well as his left foot, then also to show the left wrist by bringing it up a bit more. Everyone liked the pose and line of action. Those are the two things that I wanted to get the most. I do understand from a different angle the pose would be more open but this was my midway pose just open enough that it reads as if Stu is excited to see someone without being too much, yet.

Class 102 wrap-up *finally*

Here goes attempt number three million. My new approach as I’m learning that the Army doesn’t want us writing blogs and reading them on their computers, is to do this all in Word and then transfer to Blogger which should save me some time and not risk losing all that I do because of a bad connection. Let’s have at it then.

Stu pose from Class 102 and Dana’s critique. For starters she didn’t feel the second pose worked that well and once she began talking about unclearly it read and it’s awkwardness I understood. As for the initial pose itself here’s what she had to say.
The lower hand has, what became Dana’s phrase for the week, the “lobster claw” going. It also is creating a stress point with that other knee. Both hands also appear to be ‘twinning’ one another, looking to similar which means they both are sporting the “lobster claw,” something other AM students pointed out in their comments. Also Stu’s right knee, the one on the left, Dana felt could be turned out more so that it didn’t look so flat. While she didn’t feel that the pose let people no what Stu is doing, she did like the line of action and his clear silhouette.

There you have it. Far shorter than what my original rant was but done.

Camp Arifjan hates Blogger...

I wrote about my critique and even had a pretty long rant. Then the internets died and all disappeared. I will add all to the proper blog and talk about the past week's assignment. All with more work on top of the work of last week.

This was a looooonng week - week 3

I'm trying my hardest not to let my work gripes infect my AM blog but work has been brutal this past week. I'm at the point where I really don't care about my job. Not because I leaving but because of the endless excercises in futility.

So now to what you came for. Evidently more people than myself are actually reading this thing which is great, especially if you read the last post.

So I would be wrong to not say anything about what have become my two biggest resources and cartoon safe havens. The first has to be Mr. Stephen Worth and the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive. Animation and so much more. This is a place I'd seriously like to visit when I'm back stateside. I've had the opportunity to talk online with Mr. Worth and he is definitely a man that is passionate about the past and the future of the animation industry.

The online site has so much information, theory, illustrations, notes and other things from the various studios I can only imagine what the physical Archive contains. Everything from Walt Disney and the nine old men, if you don't know their names you know their huge body of work, to Fleischer and Walter Lantz. The most valuable thing that the archive does, in my opinion, is to shed light on the true men of genius behind the cartoons and characters that made the animation famous. Carlo Vinci, Milt Kahl, Ward Kimball, Otto Messmer, Grim Natwick, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson I could go on and on. In the cases of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies the directors/animators are names that, people who gerw up watching these feats of drawing, are widely known. Add to all this great animation the amazing illustrations, most of which people my age have never seen, and Mr. Worth, and his team of volunteers, have probably the greatest collection of underappreciated American Art in the Country. I almost forgot the great instructional material which allow me to sweet segue to John K's blog.

John Kricfalusi is the creator of what was easily one of my favorite cartoons of the 90's, Rocko's Modern life was the other. Sure there was Captain Planet and a host of others whose title songs I recite from memory but Ren and Stimpy made Nickelodeon the channel to watch. With Ren and Stimpy off the air for a long time now, John preaches the gospel of cartooning and vents about the state of animated affairs on his blog, all kinds of stuff.

I personally have read every post on his site and have taken notes as well as saved the nuggets that I want to share with others. I wish I could have him as an animation theory teacher, and drawing, because his knowledge of old cartoons, the animation industry today and knwledge of what made old cartoons better than the new cartoons is amazing.

When I first started looking around at the blogs of chracter designers I noticed a common thread amongst the web of blog links of the artists. Those that went to CalArts all drew the same and it was the same style that I recognized from many of the cartoons I watched on Cartoon Network. When I stumbled upon John's site I was shown the influences behind this 'modern' style, Mary Blair and whole lot of Disney poorly imitated, and the reasons for it's existance. If more young artists read through what John has to say about animation, it's hard to think about the result. Not that hard since I desire to make it happen in the medium that John K isn't a fan of, go 3D! If watch Ren and Stimpy then read John's blog you can see how deeply infused his personality is into both, even moreso if you get the opportunity to see him talk about cartoons on one the Looney Tunes DVD collections.

With all that said my pool of influence and inspiration has been deepened courtesy of these two men and their dedication to a revival of the craft of animation, or in John's words putting the 'cartooniness' back into cartoons.

I promise I'll talk about AM later on. Especially about my first critique. I've had some long nights at the office and haven't prepared properly for a good AM post.

Who the heII drew this?

More to follow...

After Effects...

I wish someone would have clued me into all the potential of After Effects along time ago. Something else I need to learn!

No "T" poses please...

Well last night at the request of Teresa I figured out my problem of Stu mysteriously getting saved in the "T" pose. This is a problem because it caused all my hard posing work to be wasted.

Anyway, this is the pose as it should have been realized the first time. A certain Chinese girl helped find errors and solutions with "Dancing Stu," and hope the rest of you will join in the fun. I already think that his left arm is too high and that I stretched the right arm just a tad too long at least for the first camera angle.
I like the second camera angle a lot.
Did I mention this is the first homework assignment that I've ever been excited to do? Yeah, Animation Mentor rocks.

Stu's first time...

So I took my first stab at posing Stu from my sketches of people. The assginment was to sketch from life and then pose Stu. Some of my sketches came from the Gospel Service where I play trumpet. There was a new reverend that started and decided that I wanted to recreate this slow, MLK Jr-esque preacher at the point where he was at his firiest: When he was letting us know how to save our souls.

As you can see my first attempt with Stu doesn't look that fiery. In fact I wasn't really sold on the pose at all.

The cool thing about AM is the interactivity of the site. Before posting this pose for my assignment I subjected it to the Public Review to see if someone would be able help Stu help me. Within a few hours I had five responses from some folks that aren't even in my class. All of them focused on the pose.

It was Chris that took home the secret two cookie prize. His comment that Stu's pose was very "Fred Astaire like" let me know what the problem was. Stu needs to be leaning forwarding engaging the audience not leaning back and letting you come to him. He's not selling you something and he definitely should not be dancing-yet. He should be letting you know of the dire consequences ahead of those not living right.

The idea of what I was trying to do with Stu's pose was something that I'm noticing some people seem to missing, some people=the two or three whose work I've seen. But there's a lack of getting the model into a specific character as opposed just a pose. Granted Stu has no face but the pose that he's in should be able to tell what's going on every bit as well.

We'll see it's possible I've been reading way too much Kricfalusi, and by possible I mean I've read every entry that is in his blog and have the downloaded his entire 'book' from said entries.

Ok, for the record watching another mentor critique another AM student's work is...wow. I think thePublic Review and the Mentor Critique are easily worth, the sum of money I'd rather not talk about, what I paid for tuition. Twenty minutes on about 150 frames and it easily could've been longer. So yeah. These guys do a good job. Not to mention every student can view another student's Mentor Critique.

If only Animation Mentor had been around when I was looking for schools initially. Le sigh.

My little webcam takes little pictures...

Cheap little webcam it maybe but the world gets to see the stuff I call drawings.

I apologize in advance to Dana for my crappy drawing of her from my sketchbook from the first class meeting via webcam. And also before my desert wifi went kaput.

Dana Boadway looks far more human even over a webcam and the Leia danishes are her headphones.

But wait that's not the end...I was chatting to Guillermo about my great and wondrous ideas for animated shorts, they walk without legs, and decided to draw him from the one inch by one inch buddy icon on my meebo screen.

Guillermo in reality does not looking like a gay Adam Sandler whose needs reconstructive surgery to align his eyes. Damned floating facial features.

I have to admit, I like the Dana drawing.

Oh and here are some pandas.

Week One...Done!

I got a chance to meet my mentor Dana Boadway, that's boad- like boat, before being violently kicked from our WIFI. All seems well I'm not sure how I'll manage the additional work that was so graciously given to me by my myriad of bosses. In addition to the fact that when I leave this wonderful place of sand and sun I'll be out of the loop for about two weeks. Blub*. With my acquisition of my first Stu model/rig I already know that this character animation this is what I really want to do.

Now if only I can find away out of my desk job...We'll see what the cookies of fate have in store when they crumble. Until next time.



*Blub is my all purpose for anything at anytime. Get used to seeing it.

Woot...

It appears as though I've joined the revolution, late for the Ball as usual. This is mostly a vehicle for Animation Mentor stuff and away to show the world that I can skip words when typing.