Class 1, 2 & 3 Progress Reel

This clip includes everything I've done since Class 1 until Class 3 :)

Class 3 Week 11 - There Goes the Hat Again - Refining

This is my last version to my assignment 3, still have some more stuff to tweak, any comment is welcomed :)

Class 3 Week 10 - There Goes the Hat Again - ReBlocking & Splined

Elaborated more squash and stretch during the escape to the tree, smooth mode is only in first part of the animation until frame 102

Class 3 Week 9 - There Goes the Hat Again - ReBlocking

Class 3 Week 8 - There Goes the Hat Again - Blocking

Here's my first blocking pass for my final assignment in class 3, I'm excited because I will have 4 weeks to work on this, 1 extra week can really help a lot especially in the beginning and extra time for refining in the end.

I'm concerning about the transition part where Stewie runs really quick in the air then disappeared into the wood in the back. My idea is to insert a geometry blob in between this 2 frames simulating the motion blur like in Japanese anime, my second idea would be give one more frame of ghost image(semi-transparent), or I don't know if it looks fine as it is now, let me know what you think.

Class 3 Week 7 - Stewie's Unstartable Lawn Mower(?) Refining

This is probably the first time I turn in my assignment and update my blog before 12am :)
However, I wouldn't call it done and there are still many thing I can keep refining, but my eye are pretty sore and I'm sure I'll be able to get a lot of useful feedback so I can target those area once I hear back from my mentor and fellow classmates, and for those who check out my blog of course :)

Class 3 Week 6 - Stewie's Unstartable Lawn Mower(?) Part II Re-Blocking

*hip now has better arc from left to right on the hopping
*add some stretch to the arm and make it appears less pop on the elbow
*fix the kicking arc
*change the head motion in the end
*Change the hat movement and hand position in the beginning
*several other minor tweaks on arc and pose....

Class 3 Week 5 - Stewie's Unstartable Lawn Mower(?) Part II Blocking

Class 3 Week 4 - Stewie's Unstartable Lawn Mower Refining

Here's my latest version, I will be move on to working on different shot next but I will continue to tweak those little areas that might need attention to make it flows better

Class 3 Week 3 - Stewie's Unstartable Lawn Mower Blocking Plus

I've implemented some suggestions from my fellow mentor and classmates such as giving it more overshoot after he falls back, rotate the hip a bit as he stumbles back....etc. Still need to fix more stuff, standby for the new revision Sunday :)



Here's my final adjustment for this week's submission, few major changes are foot movement and ending, didn't get to spline mode yet...hope I can get it done in next 7 days :-p

Class 3 Week 2 - Stewie's Unstartable Lawn Mower Blocking

Here's my first blocking pass for my first part of my anim jam story
I may still need to work on timing a bit more....

Class 3 Begins.....

After one week of wonderful break from school, it's now time to get back to animation. I got some sneak peak on some of the class 3 assignments during the break(ugh...bad idea), we have two choices, one is to go with one theme and break it down into 3 shots throughout 12 weeks, another one is choose 3 different themes to work on. I was feeling nervous about it already, I started to plan out my shots in my head whenever I can, and man..... planning sure drains out a lot from you, it's what I consider one of the hardest process in making animation.

I already have list of actions in my head that I wanted to do or challenge myself that I haven't done yet. After several sleepless night, I finally came up with a theme to work on, for some unknown reason, I wanted to pair up Stewie(my character) with a lawn mower because I think it would show really good sense of weight and timing as stewie is starting the lawn mower. Obviously, I couldn't get a good reference video of myself pulling lawn mower in Las Vegas(yes, we have no grass, but we do have fake grass), so YouTube is my friend!! I got some really nice clips from it and my coworker suggested this really good idea of letting me borrow her P-90X stretch tool for me to imitate myself starting the lawn mower. So here's what I have so far for the planning...

Class 2 Wk12 - Wrapping Things Up - Class 1&2 Progress Reel

Here's my progress reel with all of the works I did from Class 1 and Class 2 with newest shots in the beginning. There seems to be some drop frame issue also after uploading big video.....if anyone know a good video uploading tool let me know.

Class 2 Wk11 - Butterfly Kick & Twist Animation Final

No time for twittering, but I'm sure doing a lot of tweaking.....here's what I have for now and was approved by my mentor, added more overlapping in spine, arm and head area in the ending pose. I'm still going to continue pushing the spacing even more...

Class 2 Wk10 - Butterfly Kick & Twist Animation refining

Implemented my mentor's suggestion by making the beginning movement more fluid, as you can see I'm still having trouble with the kick arc, will keep working on it. After this week's critique from my mentor, she wanted me to put most concentration on the ending by seeing more fluid movement on the spine area towards the end.

Class 2 Wk9 - ButterFlyKick & Twist Animation Re-Blocking

Moved out of the stepped tangent mode this week, still working on the arc in the mid way of the first jump, something doesn't look quite right there.

Class 2 Wk8 - ButterFlyKick & Twist Animation Blocking

This is my 3rd project in class 2, I decided to pick Butterfly kick because I found the motion beautiful and dynamic, and I'm hoping after doing all the research on how to do butterfly kick, I'll be able to do it myself........if I'm 10 years younger. I'm not sure why AnimationMentor listed Butterfly kick under level 2 difficulty under the picklist(level 3 is the hardest), because that was a lot of twisting going on and I had to make sure all the motion follow the curve nicely. After hours and hours of tweaking, here's what I have so far:

Class 2 Wk7 - Parkour Polishing Stage

I implemented several suggestions from my mentor's critique on beginning and the ending,

Class 2 Wk6 - Parkour Re-Blocking

Here's my refined blocking from my previous version, I added the beginning for story telling purpose and also to fill up my frame to be more than the required minimum 120 frames for this assignment.



Here's the final version I'm turning in for this week :)

Class 2 Wk5 - Parkour Blocking

This week we are required to use a new character-Stewie with no arm, so time to say goodbye to Balli-E, took me a while to decide between doing parkour or drunken stumble, I chose parkour in the end since I love action shot.

Class 2 Wk4 - 180 Turn Animation Final

Finally got my 180 turn animation in pretty "OK" shape, will probably do one more round of refinement before I submit my final version this Saturday night (the assignment is due Sunday noon, why due Saturday?) you didn't ask but I'll answer it anyway, because I don't work well in the morning and usually work super late at night, getting up early on Sunday is almost impossible, so there goes my Saturday night life :-(

Polishing Stage


Final Stage

Class 2 Wk3 - 180 Turn Animation Re-Block

This week we are suggested to start moving out of stepped tangent blocking mode and move on to linear/spline mode from our last week assignment. I learned some really useful tips from my mentor and fellow classmates:

*Never convert ALL the keyframe to one single tangent mode, do it by section so that way we have more control on what part should be linear, flat or spline.
*It's generally good idea to keep the foot in flat mode, that way the foot will stay flat on the ground while maintain the slow-in and out timing
*keep the body in spline most of the time.

Any other tips to share? feel free to leave comment :D
here's what I'll be turning in this week

Class 2 Wk2 - 180 Turn Animation Blocking Part II

After getting lots of useful feedback from my classmates and mentor, here's my revised blocking that I'm going to turn in(the 3rd one). At first I'm not quite happy about the anticipation in my 1st revision, but now with more dynamic poses, I think it's looking a lot better, thanks to all of those who leave comment, couldn't have gone this far without everyone's help :)

1st Revision


2nd Revision


3rd Revision(Final Blocking)

Class 2 Wk1 - 180 Turn Animation Blocking

After a short 1 week break from AM(Thank you AM), Class 2 finally started. Class two break down into 3 big projects over 11 weeks rather than 11 projects in Class 1, it will involve more complicated movement in each projects which is why they give us average 3 weeks for each project to really polish it and make it look perfect. First week is blocking, second week will be moving out of blocking mode and 3rd week will be polishing mode.

In our first assignment, we'll get to pick an action to work on from a pick list ranging from easy to difficult (see list below)



I do feel some movements such as climbing stairs or #2 should be fairly difficult as well. So my ambition got me to pick the difficult one on the list, I picked # 9 and here's what I have so far:



Still pretty rough, will need to polish a lot by this Saturday, any comments are welcome :)

Here's my Class 1 progress reel

Wk10 & 11 Final Assignment - Personality Walk

This has been a pretty challenging and confusing assignment for me, I do understand we need to show the personality within the walk we chose, such as a happy walk, angry walk, sad walk.....however, before I started this assignment I also did tons of research and reference online seeing many people do just about all kind of walk that may not necessary show the personality, such as dancing, sneaking, one feet got hurt....etc. So I decided to go for sneaky/stealth walk in the end and thought my mentor should be ok with it. At first I was trying out for cartoony style, however, the exaggeration in timing only enable me to have total of 2 side steps within 100 frames and i wasn't able to get another step in as my mentor wanted, so I completely scratched it and start from beginning by having it stealth in two different style in a more realistic way throughout 100 frames(the maximum frames allowed for this project). After the first critique session, my mentor suggested that I play with the timing and make it more interesting, he wanted to see this walk filled with personality, I was really glad he made this suggestion, I went for it and here's my final result, the first part is blocking, second part is the final rendering.

Sneaky Ballie

Here's my last Stu Pose for Class 1 "Balance"

Wk8 & 9 Assignment - Vanilla Walk Cycle

Vanilla walk cycle? chocolate walk cycle? what ever flavor it is, it's well known as one of animator's worst nightmare :)
One of the most important thing I learned about walk cycle is to make sure the knee will always travel forward, if there's any backward motion occur, the infamous knee popping issue will occur, and my eye almost pop out a few time fixing those problematic knee.

Vanilla Walk Cycle

Here are my Stu poses communicating Physical Strength and Concerned

Wk7 Assignment - Tailor's Agility Training

After getting good grasp on squash & stretch, overlapping, spacing and timing, it's time to COMBINE everything I learned so far together into this little AM creature "Tailor" AKA squirrel/raccoon/chipmunk/ball with a tail....etc.
One thing I wish I could have done was to give it a bit more personality....

Tailor's Agility Training

Wk6 Assignment - Pendulum Animation Showing Overlapping Motion

In this assignment we show our knowledge in overlapping motion by animating each joints on the pendulum. I also learned a useful trick where you can animate the base joint first, and then offset those same keyframe onto second, third and fourth joints, the result is quite effective. However, crap load of tweaking still required to get the curve to look nice and correct.
This is one of my favorite assignment even though I received my lowest grade on this one.

Pendulum Animation

Wk5 Assignment - Squash and Stretch

After getting good sense of weight and spacing, it's time to add in that squash and stretch to give it a bit more personality and exaggeration so it's more entertaining to watch and more readable to viewer

Squash and Stretch Animation

Here's my Stu Pose showing Devastation

Wk4 Assignment - Bouncing Ball Showing Different Weights

This week we are required to animate two bouncing ball showing differences in weight, one has to be heavy weight, the other one will have to be light weight, I decided to do all 3 because I think they all have unique weights and showing differences in timing.

Bouncing Ball with Different Weights Animation

Wk3 Assignment - Bouncing Ball

My class 1 bouncing ball assignment in AnimationMentor learning how to animate a simple sphere with proper timing and spacing using graphic editor. Back in school I used to hate using graphic editor and modifying keyframe spacing on timeline, but after learning more about GE in AM, I totally fell in love with GE and found myself using it all the time now :)

Bouncing Ball Animation

here's my Stu pose showing Excitement

Class 1 Wk2 Assignment - Stu Pose

This week we get to go out to public and do tons and tons of drawing on human figures and gestures. Honestly I'm really not a drawing type of person and certainly not very good at it, sometimes I will even pose my character on 3D and then draw on sketch book, but practice makes better, gotta learn it the proper way, thanks to my coworker here at work giving me lots of useful tips on how to draw human figures.

here's what I have

AnimationMentor

On March 29th, 2010 I've officially start my class in AnimationMentor, this will be a full time online school, should be interesting doing this while keeping up with my full time job, I hope I'll survive so good luck to me :) . My mentor for Class 1-Basic Foundation is Hyrum Osmond from Disney Animation Studio, he's the nephew of famous Donny and Marie Osmond, pretty cool, and he's totally awesome!