Animation Journey

Man I fell off the map!

2005-08-23T13:08:00.000-07:00

I realized that I haven't been good about keeping this blog alinve.. I'll post some new stuff this week and keep it goin.
-P

Second Quarter Begins with a Stroll

2005-06-30T00:49:00.000-07:00

So, I'm a little late getting this week in, as I've been away on business. Now that I'm back, here is the scoop:

Make a personality walk with Stewie (or pose model).

Here is what I turned in:

Stu Goes looking for his Arms

Crits:

More Y-rotation in hips
A little spine action please, Stu's looking pretty stiff
Timing in the hips taking the weight. (rotation to take the weight appears to early for Charles Alleneck, My mentor extrordinaire). I need some extra coaching on that, as I can never really tell how much rotation i need to lift the let forward and then how much i need to plant the weight on that same side. Hmmm. Experimentation and experience.
Im coming out of the shoulder counter too fast.. In the real world, this may actually be accurate, but it doesn't READ well. I'm beginning to understand better the concept of designing for a good "read" vs copying nature.
I also noticed that I couldnt get this one foot to not slide. GRRRR it is apparently a rigging issue that has been solved with the new Stu.

This is a short blog folks, It's late and I'm pretty tired. Look for these improvements in the next assignment.

Truth is I forgot to duplicate the hip motions to the remaining steps (DOH!) no wonder I remember doing them, but they don't show up! So many of these fixes will happen quickly :)

~philro

Schoooooooools out for summer!

2005-06-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

A little Alice Cooper for y'all.
Alice Cooper is like a 2 handicap, so he get's my respect (oh yeah, great song writer/performer too!)

So, NO BREAK.. its directly onto Session 2: Body Mechanics! I'm STOKED to get goin' on that stuff.

I was watching a KILLER walk cycle done by a mentor at AM of a recently released character in a feature film, and BAM! , I realized what it really was that I learned this quarter. I could actually SEE lots of things that I would have not noticed at all before. Better yet, I could see WHY it was the way it was.

Don't et me wrong, I'm not claiming I could just go and DO that... this guy is Ninja level animator. Its more like I could REALLY enjoy what he had done! The subtle bounce, the S&S... the asymmetry, yet in balance, the weight shift the drive off the foot.

PING! The Ah ha moment. It didn't happen till the very last QnA session, and it happened because a classmate referenced some art another mentor supplied. Just goes to show you... the Ah Ha moment can't be planned. Epiphany is like love. When it happens you know it but you can't will it to occur.

I think with what I'm learning at Animation Mentor, I can become a great animator. BUT, I KNOW that I already am becoming a great APPRECIATOR of an art form that adore!

Quick Note: Really loved all the people in my first group, and a major shout out to Derek! Man, you hung in there...at 2AM and all! Thanks man.

So ONWARD. I hope I see some familiar faces in my next group, and I am excited to meet new ones!

~philro

Refined

2005-06-13T09:32:00.000-07:00

This week was al about sensing hip movement, but really it was about understanding weight and how it is present in every nuance in every frame. If the weight is not represented, then it looks wrong to anyone who looks at it.

All along I have been sensitive to the weight and hip rotations of my character, so I really only had to follow some refinements from Derek this week to fulfill the assignment.

That said I actually had a grand plan to do a super genius version (nod to Andrew Stanton for that definition) of a walk cycle extravaganza! I had a lot of footage captured for fashion models, and i was going to create a fashion walk, dupe it a bunch and walk different shaders down the run way.

You know:
"Looking faaaabulous in Blinn this year... sporting a sassy UV map and matching bump... " etc etc.

I just didn't have the time... i spent 6 hours mucking with it, and then realized I wasn't going to make the deadline, so I back-peddled to refining and delivering the ACTUAL assignment.

So below:

Character walk refined:

removed the "double bounce" in the hip area
swung the feet out in an arc.

I kind of feel like I lost a lot of energy in the walk through the refining process... so maybe another good reason to push it hard on first passes so that when it gets refined it still has "boost" ?

Refined Character Walk

Also, took a minor hitch out of the ankle rotation (and push off) out of the vanilla walk...

Vanilla

Balance assignment was to show balance with balance. I'm not sure what that is all about, so I did chose a difficult balance maneuver. I had to muck with the model a bit to get the pregnancy dome out there. I realized that I had too much invested in the dome (I didn't have time to figure out how to change the first vertebrae area into a sphere without breaking the model)

Balance:

Of course I explored the usual cliche's:

Thats it... ONE MORE WEEK in the first term!

~p

The Big Picture

2005-06-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

No, not that movie with the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon. The REAL big picture. What it takes to BE an animator and DO animation.

This week's lesson? I'm learning about how much time it takes to do good animation. (which is to say, I need to spend more time on my stuff).

There is incubation time, blocking time, straight animation time, tweaking time, evaluation time, more tweaking time. I'm just not putting in the hours, and its only going to get more time consuming.

I'm rushing. Im not thinking it through before I hit the software. My character walk this week would have more "direct read" if I knew exactly what I was going for. I just took my vanilla walk and starting pushing curves around.

I mean, I kinda knew I wanted an "ego" walk cycle. But its not easy to do with just hips. I needed to think that one through a little more. And in the end I found myself racing the clock to deliver my work this week.. beating the mark by only a minute or two. "Gotta turn SOMETHING in" is not the criteria I was looking for.

So here it is.. it needs some curve refining, and blah blah blah.. no more excuses here it is:

Character Walk

Exhausted Stu Pose:

What's my next move? I'm considering dropping a work day to get a head start on the assignments. Or maybe a half day. I'm always doing this work after 10 PM, (once I get the kids to bed and my wife falls asleep. I need to maybe crank up the waking hours a hair.)

What else? I'm gong to stay away from the cpu until Thursday. It will force me to get organized (cuz I wont have much time to implement) and will keep me from getting distracted with the implementation tool. Its a little like writing good code. Think, measure, measure twice, code. I need more of that. (Even if the plan is to work out a section straight ahead... at least it would be the plan and not "just the way it turned out".

Spring term is almost over! I can't believe it really. This whole thing is gonna be over before y'know it. Better get BUSY!

-Philro

One Small Step for Mankind....

2005-06-03T00:42:00.000-07:00

Woohoo ( a little Adele love there)

So I back-tracked to my previous walk and methodically fixed everything I could from Derek's previous crit.. man what an improvement..

So here is the third refine on that milli-vanilli walk:

Vanilla Refined

Now I can move to the personality action and NAIL the next assignment. Yeah I'm charged up. I've had 14 Diet Cokes YEEAAHHH

Nah, I'm just stoked.

ONTO the personality walk!

P

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back.

2005-05-29T23:07:00.000-07:00

So I refined my walk cycle, and I think its worse than what I originally turned in! Man.. how did that happen ! :)

So, I have to work harder on this part of the class. I've been real busy lately,but have spent about the same amount of time on these assignments. The assignments clearly require more time.

Here it is:

Walk Refined.

I know, its getting tiring to hear me complain about my work after its done. This time its definitely deserved tho. The Walk is lots more stiff, and has no "glide" (not that last week really did either) but I was trying to get that Glide, and didn't find the handle. I'll KEEP SWIMMING until I get it tho.

So Our QnA was awesome as usual, but this time it was a 2 HOUR MEGA BLAST with Derek and Chris Hurtt. sweet. Lots of great stuff when those two perform together :) Anyway, one of the ideas form the QnA was ask EVERYONE for critique.. Anyone will do, because just about anyone eventually becomes the audience. So I showed my Stu Pose for Concern by my wife Kris.. and she looks me in the face and sez "Doh!".

I'm like "what?" Now my family is openly mocking my animation efforts? What she meant was the original pose looked like Stu had just realized something that should have been obvious to him (sniffing any irony in this yet?).

So She was absolutely right. I looked at it after hearing that and then I said, you guessed it "DOH!"

And I watched my wife's tape of Desperate Housewives looking for good reference for "concern". There was lots! (hey, they're desperate) I got some great ideas and sketched out some poses and ran those by Kris again.. (She sounded like an art director now "Hmm, thats better. I'd like to see more of this...interesting choice here...)"

Anyway, Kris went form "animation widow" to art director and it made my assignment that much better.

So here is the DOH pose...

and here is the one I turned in....

Well just two more weeks! I can't believe its gone by this fast! I think our group has really lucked out getting Derek as our Mentor. He is obviously creative and funny, but you can tell he really makes an effort to get good information back to us. Even when he is swamped at work and is having to do late nights to pull it off. Thanks D! we all appreciate it.

Next week ... Walk with Personality!

-P

Walk This Waaaaaaayyy

2005-05-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

This week was our first walk cycle. It kicked my butt a little bit.

I mean, the more you learn about truly animating, and not just moving things around on paper, the more you realize you don't know about it.

I don't have much time to comment this week. Im busy as hell and have to get back to work. But here is my walk cycle for this week.

Walk This Way

I'm always unhappy with my work after its done. Its just my way of pushing hard. And this is no exception. I got some good feedback on why it was not quite right...

the heels may be lifting a little early.
The hips take the weight, but they don't counter back to allow more clearance for the lifting foot. My stuff drags the foot under ..that is a BIGGEE and I'm glad to get that kind of crit. I can't wait to fix this and see how it looks
Leaning a little too far forward.

But otherwise pretty solid. With this single ball and legs there is no where to hide if you get something out of joint. You can't dazzle anyone with a nice hand gesture or shoulder counter to take attention away from an errant hip or step.

This was hard, but once again, i found myself unable to tear myself away from the assignment until early morning hours...its just a gas to do.

-P

So, a One legged man hops into a bar...

2005-05-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok. I thought I had the squash stretch bouncing ball stuff down cold. But I didn't. Its a little humbling.

Maybe its like a surfing thing... you know, a "searcher". But not for the perfect ride or wave, but for the interior meaning of the squash and stretch. Why does it squash and stretch? I'm sure this sounds silly to anyone out side of the this discussion.

The bottom line is I thought I knew. But I didn't. And this has kind of rocked my center a little bit. The good news is that I was willing to be wrong. And willing to be concerned about something that to the vast population of the world is quite silly.

See, I though bouncing a ball was about the way a mass reacted to events that occurred to it. It hit the ground, and that made it squash. It left the ground and that made it stretch. But that is entirely NOT the point! Its not what the physics of the world do to a ball and its materials (although that is a consideration), its the perception and READ of the ball in its action to better "SELL" a movement.

Man I'm such a DOPE! I would have told you this VERY thing if you have asked me last week or even last year. But I just finished an assignment that DIDN'T FOLLOW this very principle.

Well, that is making me review everything now. How have I gotten by so long not knowing the core aspect of this very fundamental attribute?

One of the things mentioned in a Guest lecture (Dean Deblois) was he was afraid that "they" would find out that he is not qualified to do what he does... Clearly he is being modest to a fault. But that is EXACTLY how I feel today. And that makes me feel pretty good actually. Because I know that one of the biggest things I have to learn in this Journey is to take crits and realizations like this and use them to be better.

This Animation Mentor thing is really pretty mind blowing. I am really beginning to understand how this is going to make me a better animator, and really separate me (and all of my classmates) from the pack.

So here it is:

Karate-Marita-One-Leg-Hop

i added a chaotic twitch in the anticipation to make it look a little less robotic.. but now it just a looks a little sloppy.. will fix that for the revision
and the squash and stretch thing..oy
need to push out the foot rotation a bit more.. maybe at least the instep of the foot more in parallel with the calf.

....and a bonus low res render!
(I'm going to continue to render scenes for my Blog only as I learn more about Maya materials and shaders. This was just a simple lesson in color, nothing more.)

MachioMaritaHop

Sketched at the Zoo with my family :) Observing life as they say..Sketches here:

Zoo People

Zoo Animals

See you next week!
philro

Weak 6

2005-05-09T10:00:00.000-07:00

Yes WEAK. Man, I stubbed my toe on this assignment.
I got cute and it cost me. I got all concerned about making this exercise "interesting", and it detracted me from the main point of the assignment. Fact is, the assignments are going to get tougher anyway, and I have a finite amount of time I can put to each assignment, so I'm going to cool my jets a little bit and stop wasting time on things that deter me from the "point" of the assignment.

This week was overlapping action, wave action, that sort of secondary movement that brings believability to the shot. Animate "Tailor" hopping across a side view.

Here is what I turned in ("Imagine me cringing now")...

Tailor Animation

So I lstened to Carl Satalling for a bit and decided to go with a Tex Avery looking exit to the scene. It looks like crap. It all started when I tried to do things that the model was not neccessarily set up to do. Like extreme pulls and stuff.. so I got into the model and BAM! I broke it. With no real backup file. DOH! what a dope. So here I was at 1:30 AM trying to salvage the file and the assignment. Man i was kicking myself all over.

Lesson? If I had spent the same amount of time on the actual assignment ( the tail action) I would have noticed and polished a lot of what Derek found. Lesson learned. Go big and hard, but don't make up a new assignment while I'm doing it! Sheeze I’m like a bazooka in a china shop on this one.

So I revised my Stu pose , but I don't think it improved it much.. I was just trying to get away from the symmetry in my pose, as I had seen others do so well. Bottom line, it didn't do much more for me, and Derek didn't see the need to do it either. Derek seemed to think he looked more "punched in the face" than devastated. I agree.

Stu Revised

So while I was disappointed with some decisions I made this week, I feel it was a valuable week and I learned more lessons outside of the animation space, and more in the art management space.. which is extremely valuable.

-P

Week 5 Obstacle Course

2005-05-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

This week was a bit easier. My work load was a little higher, but my social obligatiosn were lower, so I could spend more time thinking about this one. I really didn't spend more time actually at the computer, as much as just giving it brain space to block and tackle the shot.

This week we had a ball and an obstacle course. This was some fun, as it allowed us for the first time to exhibit "life" in the ball as a character. Though not much.

I decided at the beginning of this course to treat every assignment, regardless of how simple or familiar the task, like it really counted. The more we do, the more I start the process by imagining me doing a scene as a bit part on a film. Bouncing balls sounds easy enough, but I'm really enjoying going inside the simplicity of this and really "getting it". Sounds corny, but anyone who knows me will tell you, I'm an open book and a shameless enthusiast of most things big and small.

The requirements were to keep it to 120 frames, which made it challenging to bring a ball to a violent motion and back to rest without looking unnatural. I take things too literally. I should have gone the extra dozen frames to slow to a more natural stop.

Anyway, two versions to see: profile no blur and one perspective with blur.

Profile (1.1 MB)

The profile version does not accurately show the high rate of spin on the ball. It began to strobe because the rotation of the ball was faster than the frame rate to display it... so it may look a little impossibble on the last bounce.

The Perspective/blur version shows the high rate of spin more accurately.
Perspective (800K)

My mentor makes a good point about the mass of one of the stretches getting out of whack a bit...I'll be mindful to add my own deformers to adjust for scale when I can't get the model to do it for me in the upcoming assignments.

Next week is secondary motion and cool stuff. Im stoked, and alreay planning my shot.

P

Week 4

2005-04-25T20:40:00.000-07:00

What a week. I'm exhausted. I barely got my work in this week. I missed Q and A because I was driving an old truck to Oregon for a friend who needed one. Long story, but i digress.

We got our grades this week, and I was absolutely mortified to see a B+ for my grade last week. I couldn't belive it. I was working hard, my review was "great work as usual Phil" BUT I was critiqued for not haveing squash and stretch in the work I turned in! (I was really concerned last week about turning in work without S&S, but it was the assignment NOT to add the S&S so I deliberately left it out!) I feel I was likely docked for that, and it upset me. If you don't do A work in the business world, you lose business, so I was alarmed. I'm calm now, but man it paniced a bit.

This week we are to add S&S to our bouncing ball and add a heavy ball to compare the feel of the timing and spacing. I reviewed a bunch of other critiques and saw that those who rendered thier work were getting more (animated) reactions from their mentors, so I took a bunch of extra time to render mine. I felt like I had to keep up with the others. Now I just feel silly about it. My apologies to my fellow AMers for getting so competitive and so anal. I'm using playblast from now on.

Here is my assignment this week.

Bouncing Bowling Balls
(its 16MB.. so be patient downloading this :)

I rather like it. I corrected the arcs as Derek pointed them out, and really pushed the S&S for the light ball. Here are some details:

I flattened out the height of the ball bounce for a more graceful curve.
The toughest part was accurately rolling the ball... WITH a deformer in place. Once I fugured out how to do that it went pretty quickly.
One the heavy ball, I left the ball on the surface for a full two frames for each contact. This is not visible, but it is definately perceptable.
I used a camera shake to emphasize the impact on the second contact frame of the two frames.
I added a little hop to the light ball on the immediately following third frame. I deliberately chose to not roll the light ball on this little hop, just a simple hop to keep the bowling ball in the foreground. Any S&S or roll would have taken attention off the main character of that moment.
I turned off shadows (or turned we way down) per a fellow student critique, and added a stylish AM Bowling logo on the ball to really show the rotation.

This was fun assignment becuase it was my first time dealing with rendering and surface nodes in Maya. I think the animation itself was a gas too, and I hope, now, that the rendering won't detract from the actual animation. It took me a bit of time to model the bowling ball (can you say "booooo-leeean"?)

Finally, I have made a deliberate decision to not pay much attention to my grade. If I get a B out of a class, but I enjoyed it and learned a bunch, then it will eventually add up to a body of good work. No one is going to hire me becuase I got A's.. they will hire me becuase I do good work. Fail faster fail faster. That is the path to excellence.

-P

Assignment 3 Final

2005-04-17T02:16:00.000-07:00

I hate to say final, but sooner or later you have to turn it in!

Final Assignment 3

I tweaked the timing on the 2D version a bit. I added a golf ball texture to indicate motion blur real rotation. Doubled the speed of the debri in both the initial ball landing and the back spin.

The 3D version has a higher bounce, and the default checker pattern to indicate roll. The toughest part was the tiny rollback at the end. Sheez I spent more time on that than the rest combined.

-P

Disney Feature SIGGRAPH event! Awesome!

2005-04-15T09:28:00.000-07:00

Hey all,
I went to the Disney SIG event at Fort Mason last night. Wow! what a gracious team from Disney. They shared some great work in progress, some tests and some final shots. They spoke about the process and demo'ed some of the internal tools they use (Paint3D was AWESOME!). They spoke a little about technical issues like switching from Nurbs to SubD models for better paint control. It was a great talk.

Many thanks for Jefferson Thomas, one of my first Animation Mentors (he turned me on to Villpu and the Illusion of Life) for ringin' me up and inviting me to join him. He's a talented animator and one of those guys that you stay in contact for life.

Also ran into Taylor from AM! The first contact "IRL" with a fellow AM student. My strategy was to walk around with JT and talk about AM in a semi-loud voice (trolling for students). It Worked! Anyway.. Nice to meet someone as excited with this school as I am. One of the coolest things about AM is how stoked everyone is and how open we all are to each other's critics and encouragement!

Finally, I was DOUBLE STOKED to get home and find out that Derek mentioned one of my poses in the Q and A! He couldn't remember my name (its cool, I aint mad atcha :)) but it was pretty awesome to have anyone of Derek's caliber remember my work, let alone cite it.

All in all a great way to spend an evening I must say! I'm going to get more involved with the SIG. Seems like a great way to get closer to the industry and meet some cool folks!

-p

Assignment 3 extended

2005-04-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

Hey all, I threw together the Maya version of bouncing ball... see it here...

Assignment 3 movie

Tonight Im going to refine the 2d art, and then tomorrow I'll add a little more bounce to the Maya version.. as I didn't see the basketball recommendation 'til after I planned for a heavier ball.

I'm having a hard time not adding S&S... but that was part of the assignment I guess :)

Any feedback appreciated!

-p

I, Robot

2005-04-13T13:52:00.000-07:00

So I was contemplating the nature of bouncing balls, and this is what I came up with after studying methods for determining the physical nature of gravity, elasticity, friction and velocity...

Bouncin' Machine

I think it needs just a hair more speed...

P

Assignment 3

2005-04-13T08:40:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. I whipped this up last night.. its the pencil test for a shot I want to do for my 2D over achever dealio.

BounceTest.mov

I see the following things:

I need to remove the big stretch in the beginning to get it inside the parameters of the assignment. Ideas? I couldn't help myself.
I need to add "ONES" at the point of impact to create more stickyness
i need more in-betweens in the slower arc sections
I need to slow down the end just before dropping into the cup (for dramatic effect)
I have a frame out of registration right at the end (doh!)

As for the planned steps:

layering:

backspin visual indicators.. im thinking add the AM logo on the golf ball!
a couple extra splat debri peices that disapate
a mysterious ine to screen left that later is revealed as the flag stick (i'll shake it a tiny bit on teh percived impact of the ball at the bottom of the cup)
the slightest hair of debri at the end of the bounces to really punch the backspin direction change.

So I planned the animation out, then I keyed my timing, and finally animated for the most part straight ahead.

I got the debri out of animating straight ahead, but It cost me a little in my spacing on teh last 10 frames or so. Not a bad trade. I get some appeal, and all I have to do is redraw a dozen or so positioned balls!

Thanks for any feedback! I'm going to draw again after I do my 3D assignment (which will be waaaaaay more simple :)

My AM handle is philro... this animation is in my public review area.

Thanks
-p

Welcome to my Animation Journey

2005-04-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

OK, well, you're about 20 years too late for the beginning of the journey, but NO MATTER! What is happening NOW is waaay more important than what happened 3 seconds ago anyway right?

So I'm PROUD and overjoyed at being in the first wave of students at Animation Mentor. Can you imagine telling people today that you were taught by Frank Thomas or Ollie Johnson? That is what is happening here. We are getting the nine YOUNG men of animation. I'm overwhelmed at the level of industry and art know-how in our mentors. Its staggering. The course we are using for the first time now will be the rosetta stone of the animation language in coming years.

So I'll be doing my best to keep reading all of your posts and post stuff here myself. I'm a business owner, father, soccer coach and student. I have LOT on my plate. I'll tell you more about all tht next time.

To any AM readers: Good on YOU! I'm stoked to be in YOUR company! See you on campus!
-philro