Pose-A-Day

I saw this idea on (Ryan Hayford's) a fellow AMer's website and I thought it was a great idea! The idea that we all have 10,000 bad drawings in us and that we just need to get them out has been brought up to the 21st century, and so for the next chunk of my life (10,000 days???) I'm gonna try and bust out a pose a day in Maya. Reading through Ryan's blog, there is a 15-20 minute time limit. Hopefully it'll speed up my blocking, and generally make me a better animator. So here's todays pose. Straight away some problems became apparant. Pinching in the rig, and something I've always had a problem with...the size of Bishop's head :) It's not quite there, but I think I've done a pretty decent job at capturing the grace and elegance of the pose(?)

I'm back!

I think the majority of my posts here start with "It's been ages since I posted..." and this is no exception. It has been ages, and a ton of awesome stuff has happened.

I graduated Animation Mentor!! :D Went to San Francisco for an amazing graduation and met a TON of awesome people. I finished my reel, and got a brand spanking new website. So...where to start?

I am officially an AM alumni now :) Not only that, but I won an award for the most entertaining video reference!!I got to go on stage, shake hands with the awesome Travis Tohill...and I had to give a speech! The graduation was such a motivating, inspirational event. I'm so proud to have been a part of it. There was so much talent and creativity and love and respect in one room. It was great to meet and mingle with so many likeminded people, all with such a huge passion for the art. I wish all of you good luck with all of your future ventures. And to any current students that may stumble across this, I cannot recommend it anough. Go! You'll have a blast! San Francisco's a beautiful, diverse city, and a great backdrop for such an incredible course/group of people. It was a week of beer drinking, doughnut eating, hill walking, studio touring, sunburnt fun. I loved it!








So...after all that fun, it was back to work. I had to finish my reel, and I'd started a new shot as well. It's all done, and I'm pretty pleased with it. I think the last shot could do with some work, but for now I've put it to rest. I'm trying to get some ideas together for a new shot, so any ideas would be welcome. I'm thinking I'm gonna do another body mechanics shot, or maybe a pantomime, and then a new dialogue shot afterwards. Watch this space. It may be a while before I post again ;)



And finally...my new website!!! :D

Class 5:Week 1

Guess what? I got Jay Davis again!!! :D Which is great cause he's such a cool guy, and he's got a great eye for animation. I feel like he's being punished though...having to see my shot for another 3 weeks :D

I know I know...2 days in to 2011 and I've given up on the whole "sketching everyday" thing. It just hit me, on the Monday I'd worked in my job for about 15 hours that day, and I was sat there for 2 hours trying to focus properly to continue sketching. It made me feel exhausted the next day so I figured it wasn't a great idea. It just wasn't feasible for me to do that every day. I'll continue drawing, but under a less regimented...um...regime :) Anyway...it's best for me right now to focus on AM. With that said...week 1 baby!!! Yeah. Lip sync. We had an awesome lecture by Jason Schleifer which opened my eyes up to things I'd never even considered before. I've only ever tried lip sync once before, years ago when I first bought Animation:Master and was working my way through their exercise book. I just watched it now and it's pretty embarressing, but I feel it's important to show it here next to my blocking for my current shot, because I think it highlights the amazing job that Animation Mentor do, how much they've taught me and how far I've come since those old days :) So here they are. Enjoy

Happy New Year!!! :D

I know I'm one day late, buy Happy New Year everyone!!! I don't generally make new years resolutions, but I saw on my friend Leon Gittens' blog that he decided to sketch every day, and post the results up. I thought this was an awesome idea. I need the practice for sure...as you'll see ;) and I'm hoping it'll show some progress. Trying to get inspiration yesterday I came across this blog by Kendra Melton who was doing a gesture drawing class held by Mark McDonnell, who I mentioned in an earlier post. I just thought..."This is how I wanna draw!" I love the looseness and quality of the lines. The character of each person is totally caught, and the poses are excellent. I think it's awesome training for animation. In fact, if I'm thinking right, Mark McDonnell is an artist for Disney. Sweet! :) So here's my first sketches. I found it hard to find something I wanted to draw. Perhaps I shouldn't be so choosey :P Afterall, the point of me doing this isn't to produce a masterpiece every time. It's an attempt to improve my drawing skills and be able to improve my planning...and to have fun :)

Other exciting news is that I start back to AM tomorrow!!! Woot :D I can't wait to get stuck into animating the face and mouth of my last assignment. AND finding out who my mentor is and my classmates. Exciting times!!! :D It's funny...having just looked at the video of my shot, it's not as bad as I remember :) haha. It's amazing how a bit of time away from your shot can change your perception. There's still some work I wanna do. I need to up the ease-ins to some poses, and I'm thinking the arm needs to speed up as he's picking the glass up, but I'm glad to have had a bit of time away from it :D Here it is...

Dialogue Shot Blocking

Who knew it would be so hard to find a 10 second piece of dialogue for this assignment?! But man...it was tough! I guess what made it harder is that it has to excite you, after all we'll be working on it for I think 10 weeks or something? Plus it helps if it contains subtext, interesting phrasing and the such. There were loads of fairly monotone, continuous babbles, and a bunch of other stuff that wasn't fun or suitable, but I settled on a piece by Chevy Chase from Caddyshack :) I made a point of not watching the clip it was taken from cause I didn't wanna get influenced by the acting at all. It's so cool because you can get to entirely create the character, the location and the situation he/she's in. Anyhoo...here's the blocking for it:

Bishop is here!!! :D

Hey gang. Exciting news. I'm just starting week 6 of AM and we finally get to play with Bishop :)


On a side note, here's the progression of my pantomime shot. The renders not great for the final, so I may upload a better one :) As you can see, it's changed a LOT from blocking to final. Oh yeah...and it's a completely different idea from my initial one I posted up last time. That was pretty crappy!







Have a great week everyone :D

Class 4: Week 1

Man alive...it's been ages (again!) since I posted anything here. So lets try and do a recap. Ijust finished class 3 with the legendary Keith Sintay. That guys so cool! Every Q&A was so much fun, and I learned a ton of stuff to boot. I'm pretty pleased with the work I did, especially the final assignment. I chose to do the animjam...which is 3 seperate shots that combine to make a scene. The first two I think are ok, but the third one I had so much fun doing. I've always wanted to do something super cartoony, and I was able to really exagerate things in that shot. I loved doing the staggered take and crazy run off to the cannon. And I just felt like everything just clicked. Like my workflow was workin :) So here it is



And now we're onto class 4: An Introduction to acting. My new mentor is Jay Davis. He worked for Disney for like 12 years, and then went on to work for Double Negative in London on Hellboy. He's done some pretty amazing stuff, and he's hilarious :) It's already been quite challenging. I found out pretty quickly that I suck at acting :) For that reason I'm not gonna post my video reference for this assignment :) But here's my planning





Have a great week everyone :D