Happy Christmas and all the best for 2010!

I'm visiting family during the holidays and then I'm going on a short trip to Vienna, so I won't be online much in the next 10 days :) I'm really looking forward to getting away from the computer a little... after all it has been a full year doing Animation Mentor almost without break, and there weren't many free weekends. So I do feel a bit burned out and I need to refill my batteries to come back fresh and motivated for the next term.

For those of you thinking about films worth watching in cinema, make sure to see both "Avatar" and "The Princess and the Frog". Both are extremely well done and important in their own way. Avatar brings a very believable fantasy CG world onto the screen and comes in stereoscopic 3D, while "Princess and the Frog" is the first traditionally animated Disney feature since "Home on the Range" in 2004. 2D rocks! :)

Enjoy your holidays!!

AM Class 4 Acting Assignment

Hey guys!

Last Friday was the last day of the fall term, so Class 4 (Introduction to Acting) is finished and I can enjoy a 2 week break over Christmas. The second assignment this term was a dialogue piece with one character. We had to find an inspiring audio clip from a movie, which has some emotion, pauses, an interesting voice, breaths and preferably no profanity and swearing :)

I chose a clip from "The Odd Couple" because I liked the voice and the quirky character. I'll upload the blocking, blocking plus and the polishing, although we had a few more passes to refine the shot and make changes as the mentor suggested.

There is no real facial animation yet, because AM wants the students to focus on the body language first, so the rig did not feature mouth shapes for lipsync or detailed eye and brow controls. Basically we could only animate the jaw opening, the lids closing and the eye direction. Brows and lipsync will be added in the first 2 weeks of the next term - Advanced Acting.

The big assignment next term will be a 2 person sequence with several single shots.

Ok, feedback is welcome as usual!! I hope to light and render the shot once the full facial animation is done.

Many thanks to Marek Kochout, who was an amazing Mentor throughout the term, as well as to all my classmates and AM friends. Your support and feedback helped so much!

Only 2 more terms to go...

Polishing



Blocking Plus



Blocking



Planning

For the planning we had to submit at least 3 dialogue lines, 10 seconds max, plus video reference of ourselves acting out the scenes. It was really a lot of work to find some decent audio lines that inspired me to animate. For every student going into Class 4 I can only recommend to start looking for clips early! It saves a bit of the headache...

Long Time No Post :) AM week 401-405

Hey people!

I'm sorry I haven't posted in such a long time, I hope some of you are still checking the blog every now and then.

Right now I'm in the middle of Class 4, Introduction to Acting. So we are supposed to deal with pantomime acting, body language, gestures and dialogue. The focus is not on body mechanics anymore, although that is still important of course.
It's not about making nice and believable movement, it's about what the character does and how he does it, what he thinks and feels and how is expressing that in the body and face. The movement still needs to be done well and believable, but there is a whole new dimension added and it's more about making the right choices for poses and gestures instead of "just making it move well".

My Mentor for this term is Marek Kochout, animator at DreamWorks for over 10 years. He worked on Shrek 4, Monsters vs. Aliens, Bee Movie, Over the Hedge, Madagascar, Shrek2, Sinbad, Spirit, Road to Eldorado. Before that he worked for Disney Australia on such films as the Aladdin sequels. He is a really cool Mentor, a fun and positive guy and he has experience in both 3D and 2D, which is awesome.
I can't believe that we're already half-way through the term again, this is going by so fast!!

So here comes the first assignment which was pantomime acting without facial expressions or dialogue. We were supposed to find a scenario where we could show two contrasting beats or emotions, which had to be expressed through body language and timing.

I'll include the different steps in reverse order, from close to final to blocking and planning.
I still want to do a nice rendering, but didn't get to it yet...

Week 405 - Polishing:



Week 404 - Refining:



Week 403 - Blocking Plus:



Week 402 - Blocking:



Week 401 - Planning:

Layout and Thumbnails


Pantomime Ideas

AM week 310-312

HellooO!

Term 3 of Animation Mentor is officially done, which means now the focus changes from body mechanics to acting. Next term will be "Introduction to Acting", so things get more interesting, and also more difficult.

Thanks a ton to my Mentor George Schermer for all the help and support throughout the term, and thanks also to my classmates and other AM buddies for all the awesome critiques and comments. It's really an amazing community :)

For now I wanted to upload my finished ape animation, which I'm fairly happy with. It was my first real quadruped animation, and the rig wasn't actually built for 4-legged motion, but it worked fairly well after adjusting some of the rotation orders and the lenghts of arms and legs.
Moreover I updated my Progress Reel, which we have to upload at the end of each term.
The current reel shows all my animations from term 1-3 in reverse order, at the very end you'll find a few renderings, which look a little nicer than the maya playblasts.

Enjoy!!

Finished Assignment 3 of Advanced Body Mechanics



Progress Reel Class 3 (10 mb, can take some time to load)



So the first half of Animation Mentor is done, really crazy how time flies.
However I'm looking forward to the next term, now I need an idea for the pantomime shot and some good audio clips for the upcoming dialogue shot.

Have a great week!
Thomas

AM week 308-309

Ok. Next update :)

Here is the planning, blocking and blocking plus for my third and last assignment this term.
Since we don't have creature or 4-legged animation as part of the curriculum, I thought I'd try something a little different with the character "Stewie" and just make him walk on all 4's.
The basic idea was some sort of Tarzan or ape-like animation, because I have never done that before. Actually I never really animated a 4-legged creature so far, once I did cows for a commercial but they were walking upright on 2 legs :)

So, here we go (newest first)!

Blocking Plus


Blocking



Planning



Ok, that's all for this week, I'll be back with more :)
Enjoy your week!

AM week 305-307

For the second assignment of Class 3 I wanted to try a shot that had a tiny bit of acting in it, as well as a mini story, while still focusing on challenging body mechanics. We are not supposed to focus on story and acting in this class, but I find that having a little something there makes the shot itself and working on it so much more fun.

So the idea was that a happy character is walking and hooping through the woods, enjoying a beautiful day. Then he suddenly steps on something, jumps away in surprise before he notices that he just squashed an innocent squirrel :)

I went to the park and shot some video reference before breaking down the movement into thumbnails. I was especially interested in trying a transition from a skip to a walk, as well as having the character not walk in a straight line, but around a corner. In an actual production shot I suppose a character will more often move in a non-linear fashion than just in one direction, so it's good to practice that :)

I tried several versions for the ending, you'll see that in the different steps. In the beginning the exit was more cartoony, but it didn't feel like the character's mood had actually changed, so - with the help and suggestions from my mentor - I made the ending more subtle and careful, so hopefully it feels more guilty and embarrassed.

polished version - week 307



blocking plus / refining - week 306



blocking - week 305



planning - week 304


Ok, that's it for now, I'll post more soon. Actually I think it's not too bad having all the steps for an assignment within one larger post. Maybe I'll keep it this way.
As always, comments are very welcome!! So don't hold back ;)

Have a great week everyone and go see "Coraline"! (that applies to the german animation fans, the movie was just released here. We have to wait for "Up" until September!!!)

AM week 301-304

Hey guys!

Sorry for the lack of updates, I'll try to catch up this week :)
Here is my first assignment for Class 3 of Animation Mentor - Advanced Body Mechanics. It was meant as an excercise in weight, and I wanted to do something a little different than the typical door opening or box lifting assignment.
So while I'm not completely happy with it and there is still some work to be done, here are the 4 steps - planning, blocking, refining and polish (in reverse order).

polish and quick render



blocking plus / refining



blocking



planning