You can check my progress with Perfecting the Look here.
Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4
Narrating my path in Media Specialist Practice.
Before going into the details of the class, I will comment a little on aspects that I learned that helped me to incorporate a little into the program before week 1.
About a month before starting the module, I received an email from the course leader advising the students to take a look at Maya and a reading list about animation principles.
I have to mention, that having a little bit of experience with Cinema 4D, the transition from this platform to Maya was initially a sudden shift, the Maya interface is intimidating at first glance, and the editing systems have different workflows.
Among the various tutorials that I watched to familiarize myself with the platform, this introduction by FlippedNormals was the one that I liked the most as it explained the interface and the shortcuts, I took the liberty of writing down each of the points explained and practiced them little by little in the program.
On the reading side, The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams continues to be one of the best guides within the principles of animation.
Week 1: Introduction and lots of practice.
In short, the case project will consist of very specific animations; a human walking cycle, an animal animation and a range of expressions.
Since the topics are broad, I will list a couple of ideas that I have come up with to make them fun.
- For the walk, a fat drunk walking with great difficulty, reminding me of a time when I went on vacation to the beach and there was a man drinking sea water instead of his beer.
- For animals, I would like to experiment with a reptile as I feel like they crawl uniquely, especially a crocodile or a lizard.
- Finally for expressions, I would like to make an awkward expression, as if someone wants to sneeze but can hardly achieve it. I would still like to make flirty expressions.
Closing the week I was practicing with some of the exercises from the course, especially one of a ball hitting a wall, the only thing that frustrated me a bit was that I could not install a plugin called TweenMachine that helps create breakdowns in Maya, so I did them manually.
Week 2: Practice, practice, and more practice.
Just as it is written in the title, this week I focused on practicing and experimenting with Maya. I have learned a lot about how the program works and also how MUCH it differs from Cinema 4D.
Also, I managed to focus a bit more on creating playbasts, especially basic lights, so the animation example (no need to render) looks decent enough.
I will leave a gif here with a compilation of the exercises that I worked during the week, making it clear that I did not create the rigs or the models, I just played with the animations, especially experimenting with the timing.
On the other hand, I would like to record the animators who I usually follow for their work, a lot and with whom I usually test tutorials regarding the principles of animation.
One of my favourite from Latinoamerica, check his animation in 00.48. Either way the whole compilation in this ad is amazing.
(Also his new project Gorrionetas)
Now, THIS LEGEND! This artist introduced me principles of animation waaaay before I knew those were principles, his work is incredible and I have been following his tutorials for years, here some examples. He have a lot in his Patreon.
I have to say that I have sinned a bit in the sense that most of the animators of which I refer are 2D, in 3D animation I usually follow studios or projects, of which my favorites:
- Pretty much anything made by Studio Laika.
- Pingu, non-dialogue projects like this are a great reference for stage plays.
- PuiPui Molcar's project, scenography, emotions without dialogue.
- Yakuza, Like a dragon, has been a title that has impressed me a lot in the sense of 3D animated designs, eccentric and with an air of fantasy without leaving aside the absurd.
Finally during this week I was working a little on the advancement of my final project, specifically in the segment of making a combat animation. For this I asked Don Chibi (my partner) to perform some Kung Fu movements in the park, then I filtered the videos and made some syn sketches, the movement contains 3 kicks, however I would like to replace the second with a high kick. What I have in mind that will be the object to hit will be pieces of wood falling from the sky, a small example of what I have in mind:
Week 3: POSE!
Oh my! this brings me memories of my illustration classes. When I do my personal work that includes posing I always take in consideration shadows, mirror, exageration and A LOT of reference.
During the class we good some good exercises with posing ''Jackie'', starting with a T-Pose.
In my first pose I wanted to experiment with a happy girl, full with love and dreams, almost floating in the air.
A little explanation from my notes, the yellow lines are my arcs/ lines of action, this also helps to emphasize mood, usually when you are happy, head goes UP! (unless is a shy happiness), then we have my blue lines where C means complicated and S stands for Simple, this means that one part of your silhouette is going to follow a simple line than the other. Finally something is not always necessary but it helps, trying to get the chin or cheek out in the silhouette, indicating where is going to be the face direction.
In this case my reference is a body mirror in my room, always something handy to work with. Hands and face always tell most of the story, smiling with the eyes and holding tied with hands usually means passion for something.
Next example, Jackie is tired of hearing nonsense, getting annoyed. Son in this pose I'm closing her body, feet feels more heavy and hands are ''defeated''. Extra touch: leave the space between arm and tummy, it looks less busy. Althought I liked the pose I'm not completely happy with how looks the conection between the extended leg and hip.
Alright! This one! Definitely thinking of poses for my final project, taking a reference from a professional fighter, but exaggerating a couple of details.
The first was the extended leg, his foot is at an angle of 180 but that would not look good on my silhouette, so I left it at an angle of 90. Then I had to take the consideration that if I raised the leg more it could be seen rare in the model, like the bent leg, that although it seems that his ankle is touching the rest of the leg, I think it is only an effect of the loose clothing.
A detail that was a bit indecisive was the closed fist inside the silhouette of the arm, since if I took my hand out of the silhouette it reminded me of this emoticon ᕦ (ツ) ᕤ, in the end I feel that just looking at the knuckles get the idea.
Finally (for now) I was playing a lot with a panicky expression, I was looking for images of horror houses with snapshots, like this one, and also making expressions in the mirror.
I feel like a nice touch was playing with her hair, like the phrase "It makes my hair stand on end'' or in spanish ''Me pone los pelos de punta''.
Another of the exercises was to do a pose for 15-20 minutes and then go back to improve it, first was evil laugh, then choke and finally sadness.
Very good news this week: I received some feedback in my practice animation and posing, here the major points I have to improve:
Animation Feedback:
- Improve motion trial, with my Pendulum my Motion trial was a little too straight, needs more arcs in movement.
- I need to clean my keyframes, sometimes I add too many in innecessary places.
- Improve Overlapping
- Don't be afraid of Rotation!
- Be careful with timing with legs (my little egg jumping) also I broke their knees a little too much (sorry eggman).
Posing Feedback:
- Caaaaareful with broking bone and spine.
- Eye brows need to follow a connection, since they are connected with a muscle.
- Careful with editing the major position control (the one the determinates our charecter position in the area) 'cause when you animate, change it back mess up with all your pose.
In short: I tend to exaggerate too much and forget about bones, putting a post it in my wall to remind me!
Week 4: Breakdowns and timing
During this workshops we needed to improve our habilities to create interesting breakdowns and correct timing, with some extra exercises applying an Animator’s Checklist. Here’s my quick guide:
Timing: In this exercises we were given several documents with pre-made animations, but all with a timing of 1 frame, so we needed to re-organizate this animations in a way in makes sense, following some examples. SO HERE! I present to you a compilation of my results, in the last one I made two versions, since i wanted one doing just fine with pushups and another struggling a little...
Breakdowns: with the following ones, we were given 2 poses and needed to create a transition between the two, with different moods and trying to create funtional breakdowns.
Oh boy, I did took some extra time with this ones, I feel I have some problems with breakdowns so I was trying to doing some ''pose to pose'' and cheking the examples in the workshop, I did create several ones but this 3 were my favourite.
Maya did also crash, but with a PLENTY experience in photoshop and Illustrator crashing, I was always doing my CTRL+S and autosaves every 10 minutes.
For this one I'm not completely satisfied, but I like it the result of ''Oh what, you need me? fine here I go'' I tried applying the Animator's checklist, but seeing it again I feel the timing a little too fast.
Finally I took a little of time to check some reference videos of drunk people walking and play with this in Syncsketch and here were my results my conclusions of movement:
- ARCS everywhere, even in their walking path.
- They try to move their body in one direction, but It follows their head, so If they head goes in the opposite direction, all the body needs to move there.
- Arms have their own control, only really moves drastically when they need to body to moves in a completely different direction.
- Between my different references, I really like the most of the body moving like leaving their head behind.
Also, all my references: Drunk on a hill , Drunk 2 , and this drunk boy in min 4.50.
Week 5 and 6: Catching up!
During these weeks I have been practicing and trying to follow the feedback from the previous exercises, fortunately during week 5 they gave us a little more time to '' catch up '' with the workshops.
In addition to analyzing animations, detecting that they have the 12 principles of animation, I personally advance with breakdowns and one-leaf loop exercises (which can be applied to queues, something to take into account for my project, you will soon see why .. .)
Also, during one of the previous weeks we briefly explored storyboarding. Honestly when I was in an advertising agency it was one of the steps I least like to do, but these days I have reviewed the storyboards of my favorite series.
See you in part 2.