Animation Mentor Week 7

Alright! Week 7! This week our lecture focused more on the technical side of this crazy ol' CG business going in depth into the graph editor and spline editing. The assignment expanded on last weeks diving a little deeper into overlapping-action. Once again we were given 2 options. One was to use a new character called OneLeg who is basically a one legged ball. The assignment with him was to do one jump. Option two gave us another new character called Tailor. Tailor is basically a bouncing ball with a squirrel like tail. This opens the door to finally give one of these rigs a little character. The assignment with tailor was to get a minimum of 3 jumps in there and focus on the overlapping action in the tail. The frame limit was 120 frames.

I decided to create a shot that incorporated both assignments. I'm still rocking my current workflow where first i sketch things out and thumbnail in my sketchbook, do a flipbook pencil test to figure out my timing, then go into Maya to finish out the shot.

First i studied some squirrels running around and feet moving in a jump. I also jumped on one foot a couple times to get a sense for what that felt and looked like. Then i whipped out my sketchbook and made some thumbnail sketches.


Next i jumped into Flipbook and did a rough pencil test.



So basically, i thought of Tailor as a squirrel, and OneLeg as a giant Squirrel-Smashing-Robot. Here's the final assignment i turned in, animated in Maya.




This week was also the first week i had to do a revision to my previous assignment. I mentioned i wasn't 100% happy with it, and my mentor called out all the things i knew were still not quite there. Here's the revision i did to the pendulum assignment:




Well there you have it! Your all caught up with my Animation Adventure thus far. This week we get into basic walking. Awesome! See ya next week.