11 Second Club: What they say

Unfortunately with the calibre of my entry the comments were less useful than I would like. The method for commenting it seems is that each registered member has the opportunity to vote and comment on each entry. With there being 200+ entries you find yourself steaming through and not giving each one enough justice. Only one comment actually made note of what could do to improve which is what I thought was the whole point. Others comments just point to the fact they didn't bother observe it much.

Oh well this just means I need to aim higher to get the attention of those who would offer some some feedback and breakdown of my work.

My own person notes are that I should start by finishing it and the notes from the 11 Second club critiques are that the cigarette hand, fingers open at one point which would result in a burn and also that the whole thing is rigid due to the bodies subtle motions not being fleshed out.
On top of that I want to finish working on the timing, I didn't get any of the dramatic feel that I wanted from the eye and head motions, I could use a bit of punctuation and snap, the whole thing seems to be a singular pace. I think there is a degree of camera staging and lighting I would also like to use in future to achieve greater theatricality.

11 Second Club May Entry!

Well I finally managed it, I entered the 11 second club.  My entry was still a WIP which is a shame really. But at least my rank should be significantly better when I upload a completed one in the future.

So heres the video, I didn't get to smooth all the motions out, the acting is minimalistic to be honest and I didn't even get to animate the hands properly. I'm going to finish this one, It can be my bench mark to beat. This months entry was more about just getting involved in it. I have wanted to since university so I'm just happy to have done it.

I was working up to the deadline, mainly on working out how to render, compress and upload.
In fact learning all those things in the last hour felt like an epic battle, after all if your going to stay up till 4am with a 9am work shift the following morning you want it to work fairly badly! Truth be told I wasn't even sure my entry had been uploaded successfully untila few days after. They will destroy me with any critiques I may get, but I can just use them to fix the obvious problems :)

Lip sync test!

Well its not perfect but heres this months entry to the 11 second club so far!



Its just the lip sync so far, biut with there only being 4 days to go I'm going simplistic on this one. Just a bit of wiggling about and some hand gestures. Nothing fancy, anyways back to work!

2D tests and 3D lip sync!

Yo, Rob and I decided to go with some tests of one of his characters before inevitably bitting off more than we can chew. First up we have one of his Cow (or Tauren if your familiar with WoW) people drawings with a simple head turn. Now I say simple, but after drawing in some key frames over some of Rob's sketches I found a familiar problem in that I don't know how to draw these characters from memory! So first hold up to the project and its time to get on with some drawing practice before hitting the animation software!

Heres a cool snap shot anyways

Now I have to break down the characters into their most simplistic geometry to reverse engineer them and learn how to draw them myself!

In other news, my next attempt for this months 11 Second clube entry is on the way. This months sound clip is from Iron Man 2 and features the voice of Mickey Rourke's character, yes thats right! this month I get to play with a Russian accent.. or is it Ukrainian? No Idea anyways, this sound clip is a lot less energetic then previous clips and it hasn't lent itself to many scene ideas. So this time I'm just going for a subtle piece, not too much moving around, just a brooding character leant over his cigarette... and yes he'll be sitting down again. In all fairness i've left it a while to start so I want to keep this one simple, plus as i've said I don't think any grand gestures will suit this audio.
I decided this time to start with the lip sync, in the past i've done it this way around before. It's an excellent way to get over that first step and actually get animating, always takes me forever to get going, I'm hoping that will fade with practice. So i've set the first pose, which can change, i'm happy to alter it down the line. But the mood is set by the characters body language which will help me get into the mood/shoes of the character and act it out as i go. Anyways stay tuned for more on both these projects.

Laters!

Yeah ... So I moved house....again, again.

Oook. So I decided mid december, that enough was enough. I refused to sit in a retail job leading me no where. So I made my plans to move back to the homeland, where the family was kind enough to offer me some space to call my own. A space to smash out some projects and get myself a job that doesn't make you regret your choice to get out of bed that morning.  It all happened quite fast and the blog has been a little neglected since my last run of travelling about. But I did it! I left my job and house and moved back to the Midlands. So here I am, rent free for a while, heres what I'm up to now anyways.
A couple of my ideas/projects remain the same, I still want to do my 1000 pictures and I still want to do my action tests, focussing mainly around punching for now. But new just in, is a collab with an old college buddy. Its 2D! I haven't tried any 2D work for a few years now, so its finally time. My good friend Rob has a flare for character design with an emphasis on the ability to create character. Together the aim is to create some character tests and hopefully a couple of web episodes!

Heres a sample of the theme, watch this space!

1000 pictures says what?

Well Its been a long few days with not a whole lot going on. The Mrs has turned 24 and its been mothers day and basically not a great deal of time has been spent sat at the screen, well not this one at least. Tomorrow I AM going to upload a quick 'playblast' of my blocking so far, should include most of the motions for the second character all fleshed out. I have found myself going over the same motion over and over again, which is no one else's fault and I'm not going to complain either. With each new version it improves or at the very least, because a lot cleaner, often with a lot less (messy) frames blocked out.
With there being 21 days left (ample time) with my sisters wedding thrown in the middle I am hoping to make decent head way with this in the next few days, allowing for a "rest" period in which  I can flex my animation muscle on some of my pet projects. First one that comes to mind is simply an exercise, it will be a short clip of one guy slugging the other in the face. Nothing spectacular, but its one thing they get wrong in a lot of films.

An action sequence looks terrible if you dont get a sense of genuine contact between fist and face.. or whatever your striking. It all looks too much like a sport points match of karate. In karate sparing, no one ever really sinks a move in, or hits to the persons mass, its just a surface blow, snapped back and forth. In real fighting its hit hard and hit deep, no pulling the punches. So i'm going to do my research, theres lots of different takes on this, i'll be looking at classics like Enter the Dragon, this style would help me practice exaggerating speed and keep me loose, rather than keeping it safe and animating everything on twos. There's a lot of snap in Bruces' moves and no one ever really moved quite like him. Another example film with intense action is The Bourne Ultimatum, mainly due to its use of unorthodox camera shots, the camera appears to give an apathetic jolt with each coming blow. This is another technique I will attempt to utilise in my "how to make a punch look good...mission, thingy" Well its a working title..

Before I go, getting to the point of todays blog title. I can't really draw very well, once upon a time I could draw well for my age. But this soon wore off with a lack of development, by the time I reach college I had met a number of people who already had a good understanding of drawing, I had just sat back in blissful ignorance. By the time Uni came around this had multiplied, my fellow peers who enjoyed drawing and dedicated so much time to it that they left uni with skills worthy of paid work.. Now I may be focussing on Animation, but I enjoy drawing and furthering my skills can only aid my chances of getting hired. Plus I would love to believe one day I could also be paid just for using a pencil and not having to write with it. So as mentioned before in a previous post i'm going to have a crack at my first 1000 drawings, today i'm uploading one of the first 10 and i'll keep you posted as I progress!



-Paul

Behave yourself! References are your friend!

I'll be first to admit I have bad animation habits. One the worst of which is steaming ahead setting poses without using my reference, at this stage I either haven't got any, its rubbish or I'm just not looking at it properly. Luckily I caught it early on this time and I've filmed some new footage and ive gone over my first poses again. I probably mention this flaw on a number of occasions previous to this, but its definitely something I need to work on.
I usually like to use a lot of different clips for different stages in the animation. My break down will usually include; General body motions, head motions, lip sync and facial expressions. Being only an amateur actor at best I cant get it all right in one take, ah well. One of the main reasons I can think of right now why references are key at this moment, is for things like weighting. If I hadn't been viewing my footage during my first blocking phase I would miss out simple things like putting weight down as a character leans. This is something that would be less fun to have to add in a later pass.
I'm still very much in the starting phase and I'm getting there slowly with Maya, I still find the flow of animation is less fluid as I would like, little things like selecting things and keying are coming to me now though. Next months entry will run much smoother I'm sure, this month will just have to be  the prototype.

Gotta run, apparently I've burnt my dinner whilst writing this... whoops.