Class 1 / Week 7: More Overlapping Action / Tailor

Before I forget, let me  start of with saying that this week will test your patience! Week 7 was a continuation of the principles of  Overlapping Action and Follow Through. But for this week's assignment we had to apply what we've learned from animating the Pendulum and apply the same concepts and principles to a character with a character rig named "Tailor". The challenging part of this assignment is not just adding overlap, but because tails work as an extremity of a living creature, in this case, a squirrel-like character. The movement is also affected by the animal's ability to control the tail. We must be really careful and study a tail's movement to make sure not only follows all the principles of overlapping action, but it must also feel "alive" and with character. We also had to apply all the principles learned in the previous sessions like the timing and spacing of a bouncing ball, anticipation and squash and stretch. This was probably the hardest assignment for me in the entire Class 1. I understood the concept pretty well in theory. I could animate the scene in 2D and illustrate the tail movements as well, but I couldn't get it to work in 3D. For some reason, I was having a lot of trouble visualizing the previous key frames and following the shape of the tail as it moved to the next frame. Also because of the rig's tail deformations, I was getting pretty bad deformations as the tail dragged and followed the arcs in those areas. Later on, I decided to start using a screen marker to draw on my screen on top of my frames and it finally started to come together. I think I went through 20 or so versions and revisions after receiving feedback from my classmates and mentor before I had something I was "kinda" happy with. YAY! :)

Class 1 / Week 6: Overlapping Action

Week 6 was another fun yet challenging assignment! We were introduced to another principle of animation: Overlapping Action. This principle is the essential ingredient for making your animation feel "organic"by breaking up the movement so not everything happens at the same time.

For this week's assignment we had to create an animation of a pendulum with it's root or main body moving from side to side or in a "Figure 8" motion and animate the overlapping action and successive breaking of joints on the pendulum.

Here are some of the terms that go hand in hand when creating Overlapping Action :

Overlap: Not all parts of the body start their movements at the same time. Each part of the body is affected by the part that is directly above them in a hierarchy. Example: shoulder, upper arm, lower, arm, wrist and fingers. Not everything happens at the same time, once sections of the body leads as the others follow and so on. This is also called: Successive Breaking of Joints

Follow Through: generated by external forces such as weight, wind, gravity etc. For example tails, ears, hair and cloth. This can be animated once the main animation is done.

Drag: Also called as the Wave Principle. As the base or the main body moves the rest of the pieces will follow with a certain amount of drag until it catches up with the movement. The amount of drag depends on the speed and weight of the object in movement.

Lead and Follow: One object leads as the others parts are pulled behind.

*It is important to understand that all of this principles work closely together as a family and one cannot happen without the other.

My friend Lucas from Class 1 wrote a great post on his blog with lots of detailed information and illustrations on Overlapping Action. Make sure to check it out!

Here are my planning sketches and final animations after revisions.

Cheers! :)

Class1 / Week 5: Anticipation, Squash and Stretch

How can I forget Week 5? It was a crazy week for me and I think it has been the busiest and hardest week since I started Animation Mentor. Not only the assignment jumps drastically in difficulty (at least for me) but I also was volunteering for this year's AM graduation, had a classmate visiting from LA to stay over, PLUS I was planning to attend Animation Mentor's Summer BBQ. Crazy week indeed but I had a blast and wouldn't change any of it. Except, maybe having a bit more extra time to polish my assignment.

This week's assignment was to have a ball with the weight of a basketball bounce around in an obstacle course. We also had to add two new principles to our assignment: anticipation and squash and stretch. The cool thing about this assignment is that we were giving a set of 11 different courses to choose from, each with their own level of difficulty. I thought I choose wisely, but think again! We use a term in animation called K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) and as much I tried to keep it simple, I ended up with a very complicated obstacle course. Lots of changes of direction, speed and mechanical props in my scene. I also had to work on a pose depicting "Devastation"

Despite the crazy schedule and the increase level of difficulty of the assignment, it was still lots of fun to animate. I learned A LOT about timing and spacing this week. With tons of mistakes and revisions! My ecritique was like 15 minutes long! Some students are afraid of making mistakes and they are forgetting that now is the best time to make mistakes and learn from them. And I include myself, first few assignments a was bit too uptight about grades and making everything perfect. But after getting your first C on an assignment, it will humble you really fast. I started to loosen up a bit after week 5 and it's been great so far! There's a lot to be learn from our mistakes so take advantage and experiment with your animation. I tend to learn faster by trial and error so I thought it was a great learning experience for me.

Below are my assignments for Week 5 after going back and reworking the animations and applying all of my mentor's notes. I wasn't too happy with the outcome of the Obstacle Course so I did a second version just for fun.

Class1 / Week 4: Intro to Timing and Spacing

On week 4 we were introduced to yet another principle of animation: Timing and Spacing. Is one of the most important concepts in animation and they are both work closely together side by side.

For this week's assignment we had to create another bouncing ball animation but this time we had to show a contrast in weights (Light vs Heavy) between the two balls. Example: Ping pong vs. bowling ball or beach ball vs cannon ball, etc. I choose beach ball vs bowling ball.

It was a fun assignment! I wanted to shoot the reference myself so I ended up buying a bowling ball from the thrift store for  $2.50 and got a beach ball for $1 at the Dollar Store. Cheapest shopping EVER! My neighbors had to be so pissed that day,  I was bouncing a bowling ball on the roof of the parking garage. Yep, It was loud! Anyways, see below for my week's assignments and some extra info on Timing and Spacing. Cheers!

Timing and Spacing:

Timing is the amount of frames you give to each movement. In other words, is the amount of time it takes for something to happen. Spacing is the amount of frames you leave between the poses and how far apart each pose is from each other. The closer and tighter the spacing, the slower the movement. The bigger the gap between the drawings, the faster the movement. See below for example from Richard William's Animator's Survival Kit:

How can you tell something has good timing vs bad timing? 

Good timing in animation is pleasing to watch, objects in motion have the sense of weight and real world physics are applied and the audience has an easier time following the movements. Bad timing looks mechanical with no life and no sense of purpose to the movement. In computer animation is easier to fall in the trap of bad timing and spacing. Computer Animation softwares create a perfect interpolation or in betweens. This is NOT what we want. It is our job as computer animators to tell the computer what to do and not the other way around. So for those out there that think the computer does everything for us. THINK AGAIN! :)

"Spacing Is The Tricky Part. Good animation spacing is a rare commodity" - Richard Williams, Animator's Survival Kit.

AM Class 1 / Week 3: Bouncing Ball

Another late post! GEEZ! I'll be posting my other assignments and other tips soon. I don't remember being this busy with life and school but I'm doing my best to keep with the blog.

This week's assignment was all about the bouncing ball, planning the animation and observing reference material. We also had to sketch different poses of a human character communication "Excitement" then choosing one to pose with STU. Which by the way, it was one of the the most challenging assignments I've ever gotten to date and YES, even through my early days of art school. Getting emotion out of a lifeless character with no face is incredibly challenging! I think I did over 15 revision before going into the final one. Not to mention the later revision after my mentor's critique. :)

The bouncing ball is one of the most important assignment as you learn animation. There's so much information that goes on with the bouncing ball and as an animation student it's super important to understand it. Learning the mechanics of how a bouncing ball moves and reacts to gravity, along with the ball's density(weight) and momentum is key to understanding how animation works. For this particular assignment we had to animate the bouncing ball with the weight and bounce of a Basketball or Soccer Ball. You'll begin to see in my later posts how all my assignments relate back to the concept of the bouncing ball. That's it for now! Hope you guys like it. :)

Class1 / Week 2: Basic Foundations

One of 12 Principles of Animation is "Solid Posing". Without a solid pose any great idea or story can easily get lost in translation, no matter how good the dialogue is. We need to learn to pose our characters in order to convey their emotions properly and create a connection between the audience and the characters in a scene.

Week 2 assignment for Animation Mentor was all about observation and capturing emotions. We had to get out there and observe people, their mannerism, how they walks, how they sit, how they interact with each other, etc. Are they sad, thoughtful or are they excited? As we took mental notes of our observations we also had to do quick sketches of our surroundings. Our goal was to capture their energy, posture, and attitude through a simple gesture. Once we had enough gestures to pick from then we had to choose our favorite one and recreate the pose in Maya using AM's STU rig.  Below you can see my sketches and final assignment after my mentor's revisions.

Here’s are a couple of pointers for gestures and capturing the energy on your poses: 

- Capture the essence of the pose, not the details.

- Think verbs not nouns. Example: If you see someone pushing a box, don't look at the person and think: "the arm goes here and the foot goes there, etc." Instead, think about "pushing" and the forces that are driving the action, think about the line of action and the rhythmic lines that flow through the body.

-Always imagine yourself taking the same pose.

-Line of Action

-Try to use a pen not a pencil. Because you can't erase this will force you to think about your line before putting it down on paper.

I know it's easier said than done but once you get in the habit of sketching everyday, you'll start seeing the line of action and the rhythmic lines that drive the pose more quickly.

For books, they are plenty out there, but these are my favorites:

Force Drawing by Michael Matessi
Simplified Drawing for Animation
Any book from Glenn Vilppu
Gesture Drawing for Animation by Walt Stanchfield
George Bridgman Drawing from Life (This is if you want to learn anatomy)
The illusion of Life from Disney also has a lot of examples on gestures and quick sketches.

That's it, that's my secret! There’s no right or wrong way of sketching so feel free to experiment and decide what works best for you.  Hope it helps! If you need an extra eye on your sketches, let me know. Have a great week!

-Jose

AM Class 1 / Week 1: And My Mentor Is...

I've been so busy lately getting in the groove of managing AM assignments, work and life in general that I completely forgot to update my blog and write about my experience in the first 4 weeks of Class 1 at Animation Mentor.

First day of class was pretty amazing and our Facebook group started a countdown as the time of reopening the AM Campus approached.We actually set a new record in comments in a post, I think we ended up with 150 comments total in less than 5 minutes and my iphone was going crazy with messages from all my classmates. We also had our own little virtual fireworks display just for fun! GOOD TIMES! Such an awesome group! I couldn't be more happier with my graduation class. You guys rock!

Once the AM Campus opened I quick rushed to check who my mentor was. I got Nate Wall from Dreamworks. Yup, That's right! DREAMWORKS! He's currently working on the animated film Turbo and also worked on the recent release Madagascar 3. He also previously worked at Blue Sky Studios on films like Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Rio. I'm super excited to have the opportunity to learn from one of the great animators in the industry. Such a humbling experience, to just sit and listen to their stories, talk about their experiences in the animation industry and passing their incredible knowledge down to us. But the most amazing part is that they get to critique our assignments and help us make the most out of them. First week basically consisted of getting familiar with the online campus and watching training videos, so no animation assignments for week 1. Things definitely started to gradually pick up the pace after the first week as you will notice in my next few posts. I'll be posting my assignments for Week 2 & 3 in the next few days to finally catch up on my posts along with some thoughts on my progress, tips that I've learned and my experience so far.