class II, week 12

The end of the Body Mechanics! Class III starts at the beginning of January so I have two-week break :D

My progress reel:

Animation Mentor Progress Reel class II from Weronika Roksz on Vimeo.

Now I can see I made a HUGE progress during these three months. Thank you, AM! :) 

Class II, weeks 08-11

We had a couple of weeks for making our last animation in class II. It was very challenging but I had so much fun! :D Here is the final (but it's possible that I will improve it a bit in the future):


And here you can see stages of my shot: reference, blocking, splining and polishing-final:



As you can see I changed quite a lot, mostly because of feedback from my mentor (on every single stage). The biggest change is the exaggeration of the balancing pose :) 

Class II, week 07

This week we started something completely different - our task is not walk cycle anymore! We had to choose from the pick list what we'd like to animate. There were a lot of options so I didn't know what to do. I recorded a few references of various movements and then finally I could choose the one  :)
It's a combination of lifting and carrying a heavy object (and a bit of locomotion as well).

My reference:


To be honest, this scene was much longer and funnier but our limit is 250 frames (I didn't want to change the timing too much). It's about 10 seconds. Maybe after this term I will animate the full version of my idea :)

My planning:

I guess I drew too many brakdowns (?) but anyway I'm pretty satisfied with that.

Aaaaand this is my final of quad walk cycle!


I had a lot of fun with Sloan :) I'll get back to this rig some day, though it has unusually long neck what is a bit frustrating at some moments (in my animation you can't see it because I shortened it a bit). 

Class II, week 06

This week task: splining (dog walk)




Sketches and poses:

I have so much fun with all that doggie stuff! :D

Class II, week 05

Dog walk!
It wasn't easy. But I remember my first animation of  the walking dog (:D) - it was horrible (before AM). Now it's much better :)

This week only blocking:



And some sketches and poses:

Class II, week 04

Wow, one month has passed since the beggining of this class! Finally it's time for dog topics. I'm very excited because I love dogs :) This week we had to record reference of walking dog, make sketches, poses and planning for the next assignment.

My sketches:

Poses:

 Video reference (with my dog Yuki) :D


And planning:

Class II week 03

Continuation of vanilla walk - splining:

At the end of this term I want to come back to this animation and improve it a bit (there is some knee popping etc).

Sketches and poses:

Class II, week 02

Vanilla walk again! But this time we won't animate only a ball with legs :) Full "human" body - it's not easy.  A lot of subtle rotations and translations. This week we had to record our own reference, make planning and blocking.

My planning and notes:

Reference:



And my blocking:

Class II, week 01

After a six-month break I finally got back to my favorite school :) Now I will learn body mechanics - sounds great! This time my mentor is Paul Allen (e.g. he worked on The Book of Life what is super cool). 

Week 1 - only sketches of movement and poses in Maya (with new rig - Stella)

Squirrel

With some delay but here it is: squirrel animation. It's more difficult with this rig, recently I animated just ball with the tail! :) I still have to work on that a bit but now I'm going to animate some walk cycles.


Squirrel WIP from Weronika Roksz on Vimeo.

Pendulum

Now I know for sure - pendulum IS the hardest task in class 1! :)

Pendulum WIP from Weronika Roksz on Vimeo.

Three balls

Three balls WIP from Weronika Roksz on Vimeo.

 Poses:
1. Curiosity

2. Shyness

So now it's time for pendulum! :)

Obstacle course

Hey, I finished my first animation exercise - obstacle course with one ball:


Obstacle course wip from Weronika Roksz on Vimeo.

I had a lot of fun with that :)

The next task is also obstacle course but this time with three different balls.

I also made a couple of poses:

Anger:

Astonishment:

Break between class 1 and class 2

Ok, so officially I finished the first class in Animation Mentor! I can go to the second one in June so I have to practice my skills during the next three months. I created a plan and I post it here (maybe it will be helpful for someone?). I will show my progress on this blog once a week or two.

Animation Mentor class 1,5 :)

Assignments:

1. Ball - obstacle course 28.03 - 10.04
2. 3 balls - obstacle course (balls with different weights) 11.04 - 24.04
3. Pendulum - advanced level 25.04 - 08.05
4. Squirrel (with orange squirrel rig) 09.05 - 22.05
5. Personality walk 1, 23.05 - 05.06
6. Personality walk 2, 06.06 - 19.06

Poses:

1. Anger, rage
2. Surprise
3. Moved, touched
4. Weakness
5. Gratitude
6. Relief
7. Thoughtfulness
8. Curiosity
9. Self-confidence
10. Shyness
11. Tiredness
12. Relax
     

I'm going to watch a lot of webinars from AM Student Services and read at least two or three books from Recommended Reading List.

Class 2 starts on June 27

Class I, week 12

Today is the last day of class I. The time has passed so quickly! I learned a lot of new things and I feel so happy that I'm a part of Animation Mentor community :)

My first progress reel:

Animation Mentor Progress Reel Class 1 2016 from Weronika Roksz on Vimeo.

Unfortunately, I can't go to the second class now, but I want to come back in June. So  I have three months to practice everything what I've learned so far! I have a lot of ideas what I can animate and I will post my plan, maybe it will be useful for someone :) 

Class I, week 11

In this week I recorded a new video reference. I wanted to know how exactly looks walk with skips.


My final animation of Personality Walk:



This week's posing theme: Balance

Class I, week 10

It's time for the most interesting task in class 1 - Personality Walk! :)
We had to create a character with personality and mood - I chose a young happy girl. Then I recorded reference video:


And made planning:

With those references I animated first stage of this walk - blocking:



My mentor said that I can try to make "skip cycle" - it would be happier and snappier :) This version I'll show you in the next post.

This week's poses (theme: Exhaustion)

Class I, week 09

This week we polished our vanilla walk so this is my final animation:



And "concern" pose:

Class I, week 08

This week we started to study human walks. It's amazing that each person has his own unique way of walking!  And after analyzing someone's walk we can say if he is healthy or sick, young or old, happy or sad etc. But for now we had to learn how to animate "standard" vanilla walk.

In week 8 we had to make only blocking of our animation:


And for posing - this time the theme was "Strength":

Class I, week 06 and 07

This week assignment was very funny! Our task was to animate the ball with tail - Tailor. We had to use squash & stretch, anticipation, follow through and overlapping action. Enjoyable and challenging!

At the beginning it was difficult to understand the movement of  the tail, but our mentor said that it's similar to the ribbon dance. That helped me a lot!

We had two weeks for this animation - the first one we animated our "squirrels" (mostly with "straight ahead" method) and the second one we polished the splines in graph editor.
So this is my animation after all critiques:



PS Scrat is the best inspiration! :)

Class I, week 05

Hi! Today I'll show you my pendulum :D Honestly, it was very difficult task for me. I'm currently in week 7 and we animated the ball with tail (Tailor) but I think that pendulum was harder! I had to fix it a lot of times... It was our first animation of overlapping action - quite difficult topic.

My sketch:

and my animation after two critiques:



My biggest problem was the speed of the chain when the block slows down.  I hope now it looks good :)

And our second task was posing (I love it!).
Theme: devastation

Class I, week 04

Recently we had to make one bouncing ball. This week (wow it's one month already!) our task is to animate two bouncing balls, one light and one heavy.

My planning:

And my animation (after Scott's critique):

This week we were assigned to peer buddies. It's awesome idea because we get a lot of help from them, they are in the class 2-6 so we can ask them about animation and AM. The best thing is that I have TWO peer buddies (by mistake) and it's really cool :D

Class I, week 03

Hey!

"The third week" means that we finally begin to animate! It's "just" bouncing ball but this task is really important. It helps us understand what the timing and spacing are.
First part of our ball assignment - sketch:

And we also had to make an EXCITEMENT position sketches and then pose Stewart.

I wanted to do something more unique than just joyful jump with hands up :P  I found out that sportsmen are very inspiring! Their gestures are so expressing and clear. I wanted to choose excited footballer, but suddenly I reminded about... "Singing in the rain!". So one of my favorite movies was my inspiration :) I changed and exaggerated this pose a bit because I needed more cartoon style.

 Hooray! :)

Class I, week 02

Hi! I finally decided to start a blog about my progress in Animation Mentor. Now I'm in class I, week 04 but in this post I'll focus on my first assignment.

My mentor is Scott Lemmer, Dream Works animator. He worked on Home, Rio (I love those movies!), Peabody and Sherman, The Croods, Ice Age and many more. You can see his awesome Demo Reel here.

In my class there are nine students, most of them live in the USA. They are all nice, helpful and give good feedback :)

The CroodsT

Peabody and Sherman

Peabody and Sherman

Peabody and Sherman

Our first week was very easy because we didn't have to do any animation task. There was only setting up our campus profiles and introducing ourselves.

The second week we got our first task: "Sketch various poses from life and recreate one pose in Maya using Stewart".

Seemingly easy but it's quite difficult to sketch moving people in public place. Your drawings have to be fast and rough. No details, only lines of action and simple shapes.

I had two sessions of drawing in park. I found out that watching people is quite fascinating :) But I warn you, you have to do this discretely...

My sketches:

You have to be patient to see people who do something more than just staring at the phone :P

And my Stewart pose, first version: 

and improved version after my mentor's critique: 

 

 Well, that's all for now. Cheers!