Class 3 session 12: Progress reel

I didn't get the chance to post last week, I've been very busy and I mean it. Nevertheless I don't want to give up this assignment nor posting it. Here you will find the 2 assignment for this term, 1) Pantomime and 2)Intro to acting.

Doug Sheppeck from Pixar knows his stuff very well, the stage that my dialogue piece is at, he says that is sort of a blocking version at Pixar, there still so much room for more, its just a matter of frame by frame it. Even though I would have the time, I got lost on the last 2 weeks, I didn't know what else to work on. A couple of attempts to make it better turned out to make it worse, yikes!

Still learning animation...

Class 3 session 10: Polishing

What's new?

Arcs, inbetweens, slow in/out, moving holds and a bit of overlapping on the head.
Geez, it still feels slow, too many frames. Its like you are animating very carefully, you don't want to break it, little by little but you are not really pushing the animation nor the acting, it stays the same way or maybe loses some punch.

CARS at "EL Capitan Theatre"

Class 3 session 09: Refining

Still a lot of work to be done here, I refined some of the curves and blocked out the mouth movement, a flapping jaw (Maya sucks for scrubbing the audio)

I've been watching The Incredibles for reference and oh man! Its so good, I don't know how they do it!! Practice makes perfect I guess.

:)

Class 3 session 08: RE-Blocking

Hey!
What a week! Too much work, now I say too much work! I say I say son! Too much work!!

What's new??

a)Too many poses and a couple of them are unclear
b)Eye direction doesn't look good, a bit cross-eyed
c)Have her look at the character all the time and then she looks down to think
d)Eyes shouldn't be closed for so long at the beginning (doesn't portray honesty)
e)On "Christmas" hands are moving too much
f)"misery" pose too big, way too big!

And for you animation fans, do some research on Doug Sweden animation from Pixar, one of the slowest ones but amazing attention to detail.

Class 3 session 07: Blocking

I wanted to animate the "panther" dialogue but Doug Sheppeck wasn't excited about it, he basically said the "misery" line had so much more to play with in terms of acting, so I switched! And here I am with the first blocking pass. This is my first time animating Bishop (who you see on the screen) and the rig is kinda cool but to add some textures to it is insane! I needed help from the bunny mastah Peter Fiala to do some unwrapping and have something decent by the end of the assignment.

It has been very busy at work, the busiest ever I would say. But nothing animators can't handle!

Class 3 session 06: Dialogue options

Here are the dialogue lines I was able to find, one of them thanks to Mark Pullyblank. The lawyer is from the movie "Intolerable Cruelty" where George Clooney acts out and the "panther" line is from "Anchor Man" which is the line I would love to animate. Lets see what the mentor says!

Class 3 session 06: Intro to Dialogue - Exploratory drawings

Class 3 session 05: *Revision*

Last comments for this piece were:
-Pacing of the shot overall, its losing momentum on how it builds up, eliminate the pauses.
-Hands should be moving from slow to fast to faster.
-"take" should be sharper to keep up the pace
-Walk should be slower to contrast the emotions
-Resolve how he pivots on his right foot, now it feels sticky.

Still needs polish, I'll do it later down the road not now. We've been asked to abandon this piece and move on.

:)

Class 3 session 04: *Final*

I've been working hard on this assignment, silly me... I gave myself too much work! And to make matters worse, I needed to do overtime at my full time job...

I won't write down the list of notes I got from Doug Sheppeck, because its a long one! Basically is all about polishing, paying attention to overlapping action (what moves first, what follows) shifting weight from leg to leg, not having the feet tied down on the same place, pay close attention to arcs and so on... He gave me a 40 minutes awesome critique, he is amazing! He is the kind of Mentor I was expecting from Pixar.