AM.2.05 Weight and Balance
Sorry I haven't posted in a bit! I've been having too much fun hanging out with college buddies in Florida :) Tra la! It was awesome. I haven't seen most of these guys in half a year and one of them in about two years. That's a huge difference when I've been used to seeing most of them around the clock for the previous four years.
*sigh*
College was so much more fun than real life. I should go back to school! If I had the funds, I wouldn't mind just collecting degrees. Hahaa, it'd be like fulfilling the undecided major's dream of majoring in everything. Whee! Ok, enough sweet tea for the day. Hmm, though now that I think about it, I suppose none of the same people would be there and that's half the experience.
Anyways, FL was awesome and the people there are so mellow. John lives in the panhandle so we all met down there for the weekend, using two former roomies' bdays as an annual excuse to force a get-together. We did all the bbq, crab trapping (or attempt thereof), go-karting, sushi-going, and touristy things we could. The highlight was taking a boat out to the Gulf for a day, parking it in a shallow area, and just running around in the bay. Unfortunately for me, I now apparently have to admit that I've somehow developed a massive allergy to the sun (GARH!!! OF ALL THINGS TO RANDOMLY MANIFEST?!?!) that's been slowly creeping up on me this whole summer. So erh yea, five minutes out there even under a hat and SPF50 and I'm a griping ball of itchy toast for a week...ewww.... But anyways, it was simply great to see old friends and meet new ones. It feels so different now that we all have to make a concerted effort to visit each other. Hmmm, I'm suddenly jealous of people who didn't go to school in the middle of nowhere and hence have a higher chance of sticking around the same general area near all their old friends. Anyways, thanks John for an awesome vacation!!
Oh, and here's the extended blocking I turned in last Sunday. Sorry, I was too preoccupied frolicking in the ocean or something to post this earlier. Wow, I really need to stop drinking sweet tea on days that I have to get up earlier than usual. It just gives me weird verbiage.
Last week we had a short but informative lecture from Rick O'Connor on the dynamics of weight. Then, remaining in stepped mode, we went ahead and added more breakdowns to our push animations from the week before to determine all the ease ins and ease outs we'd like to control. I found this particularly tough since my personal mantra from the previous assignments was to set as few keys as possible such that going from blocking to splining would be simpler. My initial reaction to last week's assignment was that it nullified this workflow I had been living by and left me at a complete loss of understanding for quite a bit. But after finally resisting the urge to go ahead and spline things, but rather force myself to add more breakdowns, I do have to admit that I see the point of blocking more tightly to make conscious choices of intermediate poses rather than leaving it to the computer. Hmmm, though I think I still like my prior workflow better. It's inarguable that it's nice to see how your animation is flowing outside of blocked mode. More importantly, switching to splines always introduces so many things that I inevitably end up deleting keys and moving things around. In that process, I have to focus on all of those ease-in/out poses anyways. Having blocked more tightly for this last assignment, I feel like I'll still have to alter nearly all the keys I added last week once I go to splines. But then again, this probably just indicates that I still don't understand the process all that well. Boo.
Another side-effect of going out of town this week was that I didn't find the time (not to mention computing power) to work on stuff as much as I wanted to. Well ok so that's just a silly complaint. The bigger problem was that I just had sheer animator's block or something. I tried changing that accidental smash with the head into a conscious push with the head since everyone's reading it that way anyways (and apparently I can't get good video reference of myself smashing my head into the wall full force since I flinch a lot), but that part is still off! I must've thumbnailed and reblocked that bit from scratch seven times and I just can't get it right. On an up note, the other students over at AnimationMentor.com have been incredible with critiques and suggestions on the rest of the clip. Jazz and a few others mentioned adding more hip and spline rotations so it's not so limited to one axis. I didn't even realize I was doing that! That was definitely was one of those lightbulb moments :) Thanks guys! The community there is just awesome and contributes vastly to what makes the place so great. Yea, I know I say that a lot (at least on the forums over there), but I just get reminded of it all the time. So I'm looking forward to adding in more stuff this week rather than feeling stuck trying to figure out what I need. Lala ~
Ok, back to work. It's a short week and I'm taking off for CA on Saturday! Yay!!!!! First Siggraph and I get to meet a bunch of cool people!
*sigh*
College was so much more fun than real life. I should go back to school! If I had the funds, I wouldn't mind just collecting degrees. Hahaa, it'd be like fulfilling the undecided major's dream of majoring in everything. Whee! Ok, enough sweet tea for the day. Hmm, though now that I think about it, I suppose none of the same people would be there and that's half the experience.
Anyways, FL was awesome and the people there are so mellow. John lives in the panhandle so we all met down there for the weekend, using two former roomies' bdays as an annual excuse to force a get-together. We did all the bbq, crab trapping (or attempt thereof), go-karting, sushi-going, and touristy things we could. The highlight was taking a boat out to the Gulf for a day, parking it in a shallow area, and just running around in the bay. Unfortunately for me, I now apparently have to admit that I've somehow developed a massive allergy to the sun (GARH!!! OF ALL THINGS TO RANDOMLY MANIFEST?!?!) that's been slowly creeping up on me this whole summer. So erh yea, five minutes out there even under a hat and SPF50 and I'm a griping ball of itchy toast for a week...ewww.... But anyways, it was simply great to see old friends and meet new ones. It feels so different now that we all have to make a concerted effort to visit each other. Hmmm, I'm suddenly jealous of people who didn't go to school in the middle of nowhere and hence have a higher chance of sticking around the same general area near all their old friends. Anyways, thanks John for an awesome vacation!!
Oh, and here's the extended blocking I turned in last Sunday. Sorry, I was too preoccupied frolicking in the ocean or something to post this earlier. Wow, I really need to stop drinking sweet tea on days that I have to get up earlier than usual. It just gives me weird verbiage.
Last week we had a short but informative lecture from Rick O'Connor on the dynamics of weight. Then, remaining in stepped mode, we went ahead and added more breakdowns to our push animations from the week before to determine all the ease ins and ease outs we'd like to control. I found this particularly tough since my personal mantra from the previous assignments was to set as few keys as possible such that going from blocking to splining would be simpler. My initial reaction to last week's assignment was that it nullified this workflow I had been living by and left me at a complete loss of understanding for quite a bit. But after finally resisting the urge to go ahead and spline things, but rather force myself to add more breakdowns, I do have to admit that I see the point of blocking more tightly to make conscious choices of intermediate poses rather than leaving it to the computer. Hmmm, though I think I still like my prior workflow better. It's inarguable that it's nice to see how your animation is flowing outside of blocked mode. More importantly, switching to splines always introduces so many things that I inevitably end up deleting keys and moving things around. In that process, I have to focus on all of those ease-in/out poses anyways. Having blocked more tightly for this last assignment, I feel like I'll still have to alter nearly all the keys I added last week once I go to splines. But then again, this probably just indicates that I still don't understand the process all that well. Boo.
Another side-effect of going out of town this week was that I didn't find the time (not to mention computing power) to work on stuff as much as I wanted to. Well ok so that's just a silly complaint. The bigger problem was that I just had sheer animator's block or something. I tried changing that accidental smash with the head into a conscious push with the head since everyone's reading it that way anyways (and apparently I can't get good video reference of myself smashing my head into the wall full force since I flinch a lot), but that part is still off! I must've thumbnailed and reblocked that bit from scratch seven times and I just can't get it right. On an up note, the other students over at AnimationMentor.com have been incredible with critiques and suggestions on the rest of the clip. Jazz and a few others mentioned adding more hip and spline rotations so it's not so limited to one axis. I didn't even realize I was doing that! That was definitely was one of those lightbulb moments :) Thanks guys! The community there is just awesome and contributes vastly to what makes the place so great. Yea, I know I say that a lot (at least on the forums over there), but I just get reminded of it all the time. So I'm looking forward to adding in more stuff this week rather than feeling stuck trying to figure out what I need. Lala ~
Ok, back to work. It's a short week and I'm taking off for CA on Saturday! Yay!!!!! First Siggraph and I get to meet a bunch of cool people!
posted by eneries at
2:31:00 PM
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