Jump animation exercise and brain training!

So heres my latest animation exercise or "animation workout" as I may start calling it. It's all sinking in and getting easy to produce these little clips which are perfect to flex that grey mater. Anyways heres the clip:
 



It's not overly exciting, but the thing I like about this exercise is the fact that I have been animating almost entirely in stepped mode and I enjoy how well it seems to flow despite having not splined or altered the curves in any way. Animation seems to be coming to me steadily at the moment, no stressed attempts to jump straight into splining and just sitting at my desk feeling sorry for myself! I can finally see some personal milestones being passed and now I just need to pick up speed! So what else have I been up to lately? Well I am pretty excited about the latest venture on the Kenny Roy animation site. He has launched his "Anim gym" Which I love the idea of simply because its what I have been working on for the past 6 months of so. I have long been a believer in exercising any skill you have in order to maintain or naturally progress in it. Life and learning is full of many plateaus, which can be daunting and disheartening metaphorical places. But as a great an once said "There are no limits, only plateaus,you must not stay there, you must go beyond them" (Bruce Lee) So it has long been my motto to always be moving forward, I'm not worried to be making mistakes these days, I am happy to be learning from them. It's been a fair amount of pressure to try and enter the 11 Second club along with my current animation course work and annoying part time job, so these little animation workouts that I can do as part of a community will hopefully prove to be a refreshing change of pace. I'm still keen to keep doing the 11 second club too, I am interested to see how I have progressed, plus I need something cool for a new showreel.

In other news, I just downloaded a cool free rig from the Animation Mentor people. Its the Stewart rig, looks really clean and easy to use. I'll try and use it for some of my exercises to avoid a lifeless expression from my usual Morphy rig. It should lend itself well to some of my martial arts driven clips. I've just finished a Seminar in Russian Systema and would love to animate some of the clips available on youtube. I mean, the flow these practitioners get on their techniques would be amazing to get down in my animations! Essay over :) - Watch this space!