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.