Cepiiimation: 2011

Saturday, December 31, 2011

Chapter 11 & 12 - Class 2 dun dun dun!

Hola! This entry is supposed to be posted last year! I was away to one of my favourite places in this earth.. and no .. i did not manage to visit Square Enix office -o-! .. i think i will cheat the publish date .. just to keep things organized hehe .. anyways ..! Class 2 was wrapped up last month .. and I think i could have done better for my last assignment.. One thing that i learnt is never leave for holiday before school is officially on holiday.. I know that this is an online school .. but .. It didn't feel right hehe :p So here is my last shot and my progress reel for Class 2:

Push:

Progress Reel term 2:

I really want thank my mentor, Scott Lemmer .. I had him for 2 terms and I have lots of respect for him! I promise to keep up all the good work and keep improving! Again, thank you sir! *cheerss! :)

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Monday, December 5, 2011

Chapter 10 - The Lovely RGBW Spaghetti

Everything could happen right after you switch to spline. -___-
So this weeek.. not looking soo good.. mostly because of my own fault.. i was distracted a lot.. geez it is hard to keep myself focus on the assignment o_o .. this week was tough.. i do feel that i could have done better :p The only thing that i could do is to continue refining and polishing my shot.. whatever happened, i need to move one .. :( *sigh .. Below are the playblasts of this week progress:

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Chapter 9 - Reblocking

Where was I on week 9 .. I see no post o_o .. anyways...
I had to re-block my shot and this time around the camera has been chosen. My mentor prefer the first camera angle. The challenge for this one is that we could not see Stewie's face clearly throughout the shot. It is definitely hard to keep it visible to the camera. These are playblasts for my re-blockng shot:

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Thursday, November 24, 2011

Chapter 8.2 - P.U.S.H !

This week, there were couple of very pleasant distraction.. and i am still distracted..! i have a theory, if you have something that keeps coming back in your life, it might as well means something for you ^^ i never am a fan of regulations in my entire life, don't get me wrong though, this doesn't mean i love to raid a candy shop or do crimes ^^'' bottom line is that you are really in charge to write your own life story and nothing and/or nobody should stop you.. editing from other folks are necessary, but everything should come from your heart.
Uh well, back to the main reason why i am writing this entry, the blocking process of the PUSH shot. I will not say this is easy.. but i have to admit that all the lessons i got from the wind walk really help me out here. I struggled a lot to fit my shot into 250 frames..I exceeded 10 frames last week and i am still working on it now.. My mentor critiques really helps me to fix the problem. Below are the blocking and a revision I did for my rainstorm walk :

Push Blocking:

Revision:

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... let say, i am going to see Square Enix in a month? woot woot!?　：D

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Chapter 8.1 - Push! Push! Push!

So, this is our final pick list for this term... i pick push and/or pull a heavy object. The reason is simple.. I want to learn correctly about the body mechanics.. and i really want to get it done right! so for this one, i keep it simple. It took me quite awhile to take the video reference.. I came with several acting choice that ended p horribly.. I'm such a bad actor... really... really.. bad.. -o-! anyways.. here are my planning, which i did it quite differently this time, i'm giving myself an opportunity to learn 2D animation software.. it's not a good 2D animation, but i think it will help my shot :)

Video Reference + animatic in the end:

Animatic only:

Keyposes:

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Chapter 7.2 - Survived from The Storm .. o_o

Oh boy, the past 2 weeks was... superr stressful but Fun at the same time! My bum is kicked by this heavy rainstorm shot Literally. I regret nothing from choosing this one.. I learn a ton from this shot :D I'm not sure where i should start... all i could think is those spines are really killing me and im so grateful to finally have a chance to use stewie, and this week we're using stewie...(wait for it...) with Arms! :D I feel I learn a ton about overlap and drag, weight and force, ultimately the whole body mechanics in this shot.. Now it is not about moving one character from one to another point, not only creating a story, but this is really a combination of all of those. Below are the process of my shot and the polish i did yesterday, i still think it could be improved..

First pass refining

still have feet detaching from legs and pops .. sometimes hiding the head is very helpful, it gives a clear view of what's going on on the shoulder and upper spine area

still refining..

final pass refining...

polishing.. and still refining ...

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Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Chapter 7.1 - The Third Pick List

I think i will do simple dance move.. :)

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update: I think i will not do the simple dance move.. my mentor mentioned that he would avoid this one.. which i think this is make a lot of sense cause this will not show the Force as much as the other pick lists topics.. so my new choices would be: balance while standing on a ball, push/pull heavy object, tug of war, walk up the stairs and trip, and walk up stairs of different heights. Narrowing down the list, now! :)

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update: Down to 2 choices .. Push/Pull a heavy object and Walk and trip going up a staircase

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update: Push/Pull a heavy object it is! :)

Chapter 6 - Oopsie Daisy

So last week.. was super tough.. my stress level was above the normal capacity. However, i learnt a lot of stuff last week, and really folks, watch lectures more than once if you could, watch it over and over again and absorb all the information like a sponge! After watching the lecture, i realize that there are couple of important things that I miss. During my planning, i focused on my characters back story, a lot. I wrote the whole story about his life, personality, where he lives, what happens, and how he handles the situation. This, however, is not enough! one important thing that I miss is I don't bring this characteristic, all of these information into Stewie. I didn't show how all of these will effect his movement. I find this very hard and this is the last week for this assignment, hopefully somehow i could still incorporate this idea, even though it's a little bit too late and i really have to listen to my mentor's critique.

So here is my first pass splining :

This week lecture is super helpful too. It explains everything and one thing that I miss is Internal Force. This is like a hit on my head.. the external force is obviously massive - heavy rainstorm - but the internal force, the thinking, is lacking.. so .. im going to refine this shot! *pumped! :)

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Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Break - Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween :)

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Monday, October 31, 2011

Chapter 5.2 - First Pass Blocking

This week's blocking was very tricky. It was hard for me and i'm sure for everybody too, to transfer from ballie to stewie rig :) I'm really grateful to have an opportunity to use ballie. The rig really teach and give me a better understanding about hips movement. :( awh i miss ballie already :p anyway! back to my blocking.. It was hard to create the feeling that there is a force that comes from the opposite of his walking direction. I also have a hard time with the spines! it was really confusing to figure out how they will move. One thing that really helped me was to act out the action.
I really thank my friends for critiquing my work. I took most of their suggestions and apply them to my blocking. It was really helpful and i really appreciate all the help. I also drew some thumbnail sketches this week. I kind of feel that my planning was not strong enough so I thought it would be a great idea to draw some more and this helped me a lot :)

Here is the first blocking that I did :

After i received the critiques, I pretty much re-block everything, changed some poses, timing, and camera angle. Here is a playblast of my re-blocking :

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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Chapter 5 .1 - Walk in a Heavy Windstorm

It's week 5! whoa O.o
My final choice for Pick List 2 is walk and lose few steps in Heavy a windstorm. Someone gave a friendly reminder about this before, but.. never do your planning a day before submission!! -_______-!
.. *sigh .. anyways~~ \('▼')\ ~~♪♫ here are the planning pages .. and i realise that this is not enough .. im currently still analysing the reference.. i find that the movement, how the body works and react to the environment is a little bit unique and unusual o_o ..

and also, my video reference ...

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Monday, October 24, 2011

Chapter 4.3 - Polishing

Finally done with my Polishing.. however, i feel that this could be done better and it could be polished even farther. I added slight squashes and stretches on the body.. i didn't want to go too far with it because there are too many things going on on the screen already.. with all the hops and honestly the hips are moving a bit crazy.. and i''m very unsure about the hips, i like the overlap that is happening on it.. so i choose not to modify it.. i did tone down one part of the rotation because it feels too much.. I should ask other people and my mentor about this...Refining the knee pops were tricky too.. i pretty much messed up some of the poses and somehow following the knee's path of action make it looks even weirder. At this stage, i decided to just polished according to my render camera. The reason is simply because it should look right on that view. I'm a bit worried with how the knee angles correspond with the feet and i think I found the solution just now o_o...
Here is the final playblast for my Hopscotch :) :

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Saturday, October 22, 2011

Chapter 4.2 - The Progress

Tracking down my own progress for the last 2 days .. Super slow progress -o-! I aim to finish the shot by today so I could start my planning for next assignment :) Anyway, here are the refining progress :

f 1-60

f 1-95

f 1-122

f 1-200

moving on to polishing stage now :)

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Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Chapter 4.1 - The Second Pick List

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hmm it seems i lean towards to lifesize hamster wheel and walk in heavy storm... both topics really interest me and either one of them could be a really great exercise for weight shift and posing .. i hope some inspirations will appear on my dream tonight :D

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i think i have the winner.. it's walking in heavy rainstorms.. my mentor suggested on q&a today to pick the one that you could visualize the most.. and for the past few days, i feel that i have a good theme or story going for this one.. so this would be my final pick.. the choice is locked in! :)

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Pick List UPDATE

I got the newest syllabus i thought i'm going to update the list since i found some changes on it, here are the newest addition:

Walk on balance beam/log

Balance beam:

http://youtu.be/rYumFn7S1YA?t=10s

http://youtu.be/1c5edgKxtok?t=30s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wa2307_7_8E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELI5KRJVX9w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV1-ideH5D4

http://youtu.be/J-s2y-bOz44?t=10s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3BfyyMVv_E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgQXY_NMqV0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua19-16lvdU&feature=related

Log

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmXhu-1BOOQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-kxYnyrHA8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5vdNcg6WC8&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ry6cqZ8ywk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHz3wXmLhk0&feature=related

Jump on high dive and then off (dive, leap, fall)

http://youtu.be/4uHkyMh9FW4?t=2m50s

http://youtu.be/PBLGwzHo0Fs?t=10s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPS1q3QBBDo&feature=fvwp

http://youtu.be/_h3bhobQdr8?t=40s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=DYPEKYAcEFg&feature=endscreen

Run into a high jump and land/recover

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4i6j3Kl_XMI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6cFd57jppY&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-B6d5R3rAY

Breakdancing

http://youtu.be/xhBZtsee7OY?t=3m

http://www.youtube.com/user/expertvillage/videos?query=breakdance&view=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpWATMtTPkk

Push a heavy object (no arms)

- i could not find this one :( im afraid we have to shot our own reference, which i encourage you to do it! :)

Change of speed and direction while in motion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buIMhXu3qq0

http://youtu.be/t26CIBKRKWE?t=3m

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rfmx1vLbZZg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyxhHkOel2I

http://youtu.be/DzQ2xyxL0F0?t=2m45s

External force effecting a walk/run (see the wind walk links above too)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxXIy4Vu9UU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUbEiZ3jioI&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Ex4aD3b-U

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAW_XbbJBpc

http://youtu.be/7dgpsI1MdQI?t=1m

Jumping on stones

http://youtu.be/3u0QF5GJ730?t=10s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd1x6ShwdSA&feature=endscreen&NR=1

Walking and suddenly frightened into jump and recovery/knocked over

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LV067NoVmM0

http://youtu.be/w9VcmOsaHdA?t=10s

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Monday, October 17, 2011

Chapter 3.2 - Blocking+

So .. i finally decided to hit the Spline button :) I did it from frame 1-70 first.. refining each body parts one by one, change them into spline mode.. then continue to the next frames..and so on.. Somehow i got carried away and treat the blocking more like refining the whole parts.. maybe it's all right to treat it like that? or should i use linear..hmm.. .. I changed the last bit of the animation as my mentor suggested last week.. i hope the idea will go through :) and good news is.. Final Fantasy 13 is officially finished! so no more gaming!! I feel bad this past 2 weeks.. i was so distracted!! anyways~ below is the blocking+ for my hopscotch :) :

This is my quick sketch based on a quick video reference that i took for the walk in the end of animation..i did not use the whole poses due to frame limit.. but it was a great source for reference! they really helped me a lot :)

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Sunday, October 16, 2011

Creating Stu Silhouette Tutorial

I was helping a friend to create a tiny silhouette for Stu pose assignment. Many of you might have already know how to make the silhouette but I thought i would make a tutorial video about it and share it with everybody :) I hope this would help... and.. This is my first ever video tutorial! ^^ yay! Enjoy the video and thanks for watching! :)

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Saturday, October 15, 2011

Chapter 3.1 - Blocking+

Cleaning up silhouette..Fixing the poses..adding moreee breakdown poses.. i think i'm ready to depart from my blocking+ .. :| im anxious to press the spline button! here is my process so far .. -o-

fixing the silhouette of the poses..

Tried out layered animation.. im not used to it yet.. but it's an interesting method :)

Fixing Ty and Rx

followed by fixing Rz

: >

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Monday, October 10, 2011

Chapter 2.2 - Blocking The Hopscotch!

This week is the the first stage of my blocking! I found it very challenging, mostly because with hopscotch, i have so many similar poses and my mentor suggested me to exaggerate the poses so that i would have contrast in between the poses, and exaggerate the weight shift. I also struggle with the frame limit, i need to cut down some of my hops so i dont exceed the frame limit. I had some dilemmas about which part i should cut out, for example: should i cut out the walks at the beginning of the scene or the ending or the hops :/. I really think i should focus on the hops.. but at the same time i would love to have the intro-content-ending aspect on my scene. Below are my process:

40% blocking:

Before i cut out the hops

After the cut out:

First pass blocking:

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Monday, October 3, 2011

Chapter 2.1 - Hopscotch

I made my mind, hopscotch is the winner! :) I was a little bit unsure on how i will draw my thumbnails.. i have tendencies to draw every details which leans to almost rotoscope my video reference. I thought i should draw this frame by frame which i tried, and it was way too complicated and extremely unclear.. and coloured pencils did not help :( i remember one of the mentor show us a thumbnail sheet on the lecture..i thought i will make my own version of the thumbnail sheet. I also made a list of the elements that i need to put on my planning so i will not forget them. At first i was still.. sort of rotoscopig my video reference.. i drew the essential poses on my thumbnail sheet.. and then, when i refined my planning.. it came to my mind an idea, that i should treat this like drawing a comic! i used to draw comics.. and why dont i apply this to my planning, maybe it'll work :) So here is my attempt, i think this works for me.. because i got the rough timing, the main key poses, and the weight shift. One thing i did not get is the distance of the translation z or whatever it is that goes forward..

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Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Chapter 2.1 - The Pick List

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Saturday, September 17, 2011

Chapter 12 - what? it's week 12?!

Woot woot!? it's week 12! today term 1 has officially ended. It was closed by final q&a hosted by Jay :)
it goes so fast! .. too fast! people say time flies when you do something that you love :)
i'm so happy that we're all made it through class 1 and i'm so happy that i could meet a bunch of very friendly people all around the world! haha this is so cool ^^''
After 12 weeks, here is my first progress reel! shame that i have not finished my tailor revision :/ i'm going going to take some computer day off and will work on tailor before term 2 starts. Tailor is one of my favourite rig so far :) well folks, here we go:

Thank you very much to my mentor Scott Lemmer for all the awesome critiques and tips, also to all my classmates and everybody who helped me throughout the course. Thank you so much and i'll see you next term and all around campus :) !

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Chapter 10 & 11 - Character Walk & Stu Poses

The last 2 weeks were so hard for me. I chose a shy walk for my character and lots of people interpreted it as down or sad walk. It was a tough one and i learnt that it is really, really hard to convey a subtle emotion, especially in a character that has no facial expression. This is a really a lesson for me :) During these last 2 weeks, i took many of video references. It was very helpful but I had a difficulty to transfer that poses on the video to my animation. Looking back at the process, i do know why i struggled in finding the correct poses. It was because I did not make a clear thumbnail on how the footworks and the body works. It was not just about taking a lot of video reference, but it is also observe how the body works. After I submitted the assignment, i kinda find out that by seeing our upper body as ballie's head would help. At first i just observed the hips area. It has a very subtle movement which make it so difficult to see what is really going on there.

However, i treated my last weeks as a special learning week. I tried a lot of workflows. I tried to do pose to pose, combine it with straight ahead animation, the process really taught me that in order to achieve one shoot, you couldn't really stick with only 1 workflow. It was an experiment! if it didn't suit or you're not getting anything out of it, tried something else! don't be afraid to try many different workflows (as this was mentioned by my seniors yesterday during our AM gathering, yay gathering!). Practice makes perfects no? :)

Below are my works for the last 2 weeks :)

Let's start with Stu Poses:

Concerned:
Original and Revision:

Exhausted:

Original and Revision

Balance:

Original and Revision:

Click the images to view the larger version :)

Now the animations:

Vanilla Walk Revision

Character Walk Blocking

Character Walk

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Monday, August 29, 2011

Chapter 9 - The Vanilla Walk

I close week 9 with this post :) Walk cycle has been a great learning experience, really grateful that my classmate told me about the Ghost tool. It was definitely very helpful. The knee popping drive me nuts, but i really learn a lot about the importance of spacing. On the other side, posing Stu was so difficult this week. It was really hard to make a nice pose. I am happy with my pose, i tried to tweak it just now but i could not think any more and the more i tweak the weirder it becomes. So i better leave it alone.

Below are my sketches, yes there are a lot of them! I found it so difficult to portray the emotion through my drawing. So i thought the more i draw the more variation i will get :) I get my final pose from a video reference of myself. Also, I'd really thank the mentor for telling us the tips.

And these are my final Stu pose and my Vanilla Walk :

and last but not least, Revisions! :

That's all for week 9 and I happily welcome, Week 10!! :D

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Friday, August 26, 2011

Chapter 9 - More Walk + walk cycle copy-paste tips

This week we're refining our blocking and pose Stu, this week theme is Concern!! I find this very tricky because there is a very thin line between concern and devastated. I did some sketches but i feel like i still don't have a strong pose that portrays concern. My mentor suggested that we should narrow down which type of concern we're going to portray, for example will it be nervous? worried? intense? staring? etc! there are many kinds of concerns and it is hard to find the unique one! i will definitely do more sketching tomorrow :)

I also decided to make a tutorial note about copy-paste the walk-cycle key since me and my fellow classmates were discussing about it this afternoon. I will upload it here and I hope this tips would be useful! I also have to credit my classmates for teaching me the correct way to copy and paste! Apologize if there's any error/misleading.. if you had a better way to do it feel free to edit it :)
And Remember to Keep tracking your timeline! You should not rely on this 100% since this is not the base formula to do walk cycle. Keep Tracking and Refining your animation! Most importantly, Have Fun guys! Happy Animating! :D

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Monday, August 22, 2011

Chapter 8 - The Walk! part 3

Here are my blocking videos! the only difference between them is my first blocking didn't have rotation z which makes Ballie tilt to the weight where the foot steps (thanks to my friend Donna for pointing out this part!). Lesson for this week, never underestimated simple things! :)

1st Blocking:

Final Version:

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Saturday, August 20, 2011

Chapter 8 - The Walk! part 2

I spent some days to really understand the walk cycle. I shot my own video reference and re-watch the lectures, i really think walk cycle is tricky and it's not as easy as it sounds ^^. I have my walk cycle planning here, i will post some of my try outs too :)

My first messy planning that i love!

Clean up :

Final Planning with some small revisions, thanks to my friends for pointing out the mistakes :)

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Friday, August 19, 2011

Chapter 8 - Stu Pose

My First Attempt applying one of the poses on Stu, it seems the silhouette is not clear ..

Change the angle:

Second Pose

I had some trouble figuring out which way the torso arch should go.. i decided to look for some image reference, and after debating with me self for hours, i really do think that it should go inwards, like this >> (

I also decided to use my Second Pose for my assignment since this pose is more readable by my friends, though i really enjoy creating the first pose :) So here is my final piece:

I'd like to thank all my friends who help me improving my work this week :)

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Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Chapter 8 - Physical Strength Poses

Below are my sketches for this week Stu Pose! I try not to over think about it cause I usually make myself confuse by doing that :p My favourite poses are the ones I circled. I lean towards pose no 9 because there is no props involved in that pose and it is just pure physical strength, and it is a very simple pose. I might have to do a lot of tweaking to make it seems less effortless cause at the moment it looks like he's pulling his legs up easily. The other one is no 10, the reason is simple, rock climbing is cool hahaa. I actually like no 6 and 5 too cause they have strong and long line of actions.

I browsed more basketball slam dunk photos and found Nate Robinson's photos during Sprite Slam Dunk Contest on 2010! (He's still in NY Knicks ^^). I used these photos as reference for my strength pose and I believe lots of physical strength is needed to do a slam dunk. Below is the updated sketches:

I did few more sketches, you could see them on the bottom right of the drawing area. I'd also like to thank my classmates for giving me such an awesome tips for drawing!

Complete Strength Sketches for Week 8!

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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Chapter 8 - The Walk!

It's week 8 everybody! This goes too fast! (>w<)
Anyway, this week we're going to do a walk cycle! I went to the park and since there was nobody there, i decided to stay inside my car and observed the crowds. A lot of them were carrying grocery bags, back pack, and other objects, so it was a good chance to observe how the weight effects the body.

My first observation was on this guys who walked across the park. He was quite far away from the place I was sitting down so it's good, i could observe his movement without him noticing. (well.. it will be extremely awkward and embarrassing if the person caught me staring at him -o- ). I notice that there would be always this subtle movement on the chest and the head will follow up. For those who were carrying the backpack on one shoulder, I notice that the shoulder that carried the weight was tilted up and it was stiff. The object also effect on how the person is walking. My further observation also give me some new info that the way the body moves is also effected by the body shape and the personality. It was hard to observe the torso area since it was covered by the person's outfit. I also notice that the hip makes ∞ arc shape when it moves. I also clarify one thing that always confuse me, this was the hip movement when the foot makes a contact to the ground. The hip will tilt up.
Below is one of the sketch I did today, i think the observation was really helpful.

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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Chapter 7 - Tail-or part 2

So .. i really pit myself into trouble .. I really struggle with my animation.. my friend told me that there are too many things going on on the screen and they suggest me to cut out some part of the animation. I totally agree with them! So I decided to simplify the animation and bring down some unnecessary decoration. I'm still refining my animation now, well it seems like it start to come together..*finger-cross.. +_+ I'm working on the timing of the tail.. Below are the progress clips:

Planning:

Modified:

Cut the end part

(i actually like the part when tailor jump on that green ball :( .. but hey, it's not about me, it's about the animation!)

Refining:

Keep Refining~

Final:

Conclusion: Tailor is very challenging ^^ I had to go frame by frame to monitor all the poses. I'm not sure if this is the right way to do it. This week i decided to go and challenge myself.. i also don't know if this a wise move or not.. hopefully everything goes well..

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Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Chapter 7 - Tail-or

It's week 7!! This week we're going to animate either one of the character! Taylor / One Leg! I'm super excited this week :) I'm off to plan my shoot, keep an eye of this space folks :)

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a preview of my first plan .. i kind of feel it's too complicated.. .. do you think this is too complicated ..? i want to challenge myself a little bit.. but i'm scared i'll be overwhelmed by this ..

Complete planning:

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