AM.3.10A

I didn't really get a chance to work in all the suggestions people had last week and this still needs a ton of work. I think I did manage to smooth out the first arm movements a bit though so they're less whippy. Hmmm, maybe it's still too whippy. I can't tell anymore. I haven't caught the lecture yet either since the site was down for a bit last week and we've restarted week 10. Though, it's certainly nice to get an extra week to work on this stuff. Plus, it gave me the chance to head home really late on Friday for a short weekend in MD ^.^

Lego Hair

Hmmm, the more I look at it, the more I hope it doesn't look like a butt. I really can't tell how this looks anymore though ~ what do you guys think? I have no modeling skills, so figuring out how to make Lego hair was fun. I took the basic geometry off the free model on the right over here and then pounded it till looked like a bob that would fit on Bishop's head. Oooh, and I stole the ears off Aja's hairmet from the AM props repository. And huge thanks to everyone who worked on and contributed to that! I'll be uploading this one as soon as this it's showable (whenever I can figure out how to mend the giant deformities and holes that are currently in the back of her hair...or maybe this will just be a front-only hairdo).

Otanjoubi Omedetou!

I just like the way that sounds :) Thanks for all the bday wishes! I'm so horrible at remembering others' bdays that I feel bad (though very happy too) when you all remember mine.

AM.3.09 Animals and Creatures

Whew, I actually finished! I was freaking out yesterday around noon when I hadn't started anything yet (it's been one of them weeks). Better planning certainly does pay off ~ splining this assignment went far more smoothly than doing anything with that psychopath one. I'm feeling better this week as I can start to see where I'm trying to take this with each step rather than just moving keys and curves around blindly. There's still a ton of work to be done, but in the meantime, I'd certainly love any crits and suggestions.



Oh, and here's another revision of dirt. I think I'm just butchering that which doesn't work even more...sigh. Any crits and comments here are always welcome as well. Oh, by the way, you'll need to upgrade to the latest Quicktime to view this one as I'm trying one of the new codecs.



Hmmm, now I'd better go watch this past week's lecture (yeaa...I'm really behind...one of them weeks). It's a session led by Rick O'Connor on animating quadrapeds. His lectures are always awesome.

Google 411

Whoa...so wishing my cell phone plan came with messaging....

http://www.google.com/sms/index.html

AM.3.08 Eyes and Blinks

I actually finished *early* this week! Yay! ...early being 1.5 hrs before the deadline.... Anyways, I have decided to reward myself by going ice skating instead of the usual grocery shopping (uhhh, yea, nothing else is really open on Sundays by the time I get outside). But no one wants to go with me! Boo!



I think I'm finally starting to get this whole acting thing, though I still feel far from grasping the whole thing. Hmmmm, my acting choices from 105 through 202 feel awkward...egad...suggestions? Well, at least this blocking pass is way better than my equivalent blocking pass on the last project. Speaking of which, here's another revision on that one.



This week's lecture, led by Jason Ryan, was on eyes and blinks. His walkthroughs are always super coherent and it's fun how his style really shows through. I'm really loving the guest lecturer approach this semester ~ it's awesome to watch so many different approaches to animation. Especially constrasted against Delio's more realistic style from the last two lectures, Jason's cartoony style this week really showed its own personality. Hmmm, I think my Bishop here might have overblinking syndrome. I was trying to make it seem like she was trying to blink back tears/thoughts circa 112, but the timing doesn't make sense. Maybe if I let her hold that pose (and made that pose more interesting) and didn't turn her back around till she actually started talking again, the sequence could read more clearly. Anyways, let's see what Pete says.

Gahhh, does anyone want to go ice skating????

Google Knows More Than my Dermatologist

Or rather, google can give me more info than my dermatologist. But YAY! I'm NOT allergic to the sun! I can go to the beach again now!!!!!!

*throws confetti*
(Oh, if anyone out there is allergic to the sun, I'm really sorry.)

If any of you used to read this blog waaaaay back, I think I posted something once about an annoying allergic reaction to sunlight I couldn't understand, especially given the fact that I was on the swim team once-upon-a-time before people knew about sunscreen and never once so much as burned.

So anyways, fat lot of good my dermatologist was during my icky summer. She never offered any answers....

[cue flashback]
Me: So, what is it?
Her: Could be anything.
Me: Could I be allergic to the sun?
Her: Could be.
Me: Or could it be my sunscreen?
Her: Could be.
Me: Uhhh, I've been using super lotion, hydocortisone, and benadryl to alleviate the allergy. What would you suggest?
Her: You can keep doing that if you want.

What is that supposed to mean?! I stopped going to her real quick. After about the fifth time of unhappy allergic reactions in the past couple months, I think I'd played detective enough with my poor skin to narrow things down. Sunlight or sunscreen alone without the other never did it ~ it was only when I had even the teeniest dose of both at the same time that it'd explode. Another weirdo thing that helped narrow it down was that it also happened indoors if I was sitting in a sunny spot ~ turns out UVB doesn't travel through glass, but UVA does. So anyways, after poring through research papers and studies via google and figuring things out, I now know that I'm prone to chemically-induced photoallergies, specifically to benzophenone-based products. Sounds weird, doesn't it? Yay.

Uhh, oops, I'm not saying go google yourself to health. I'm saying that in case there's anyone else out there who's been shirking from the beach for similar reasons, try a sunscreen like Neutrogena Sensitive with a titanium dioxide base and zero ingredients that end in "benzone." Actually, I think it's safe to say that staying away from benzophenone probably helps regardless of whether or not your skin freaks out from it. Titanium dioxide is apparently so much better for you anyways. It's not chemically-based (whatever that means...sounds like a chemical to me...something about it being physically-based...maybe some of the bio majors out there can explain that one) and it's broad-spectrum (blocks both UVB and UVA). Sorry, this is probably more than you ever needed to know about sunscreen, but it's been my little project the past couple weeks to nail this. Coppertone is evil. Go for the titanium dioxide! Ironically, I think I dealt more damage to my skin this summer just from using sunscreen a couple times than whatever collective sun damage I could've possibly gotten from never using sunscreen the whole rest of my life.

AM.3.07 Intro to Dialogue II

Oops, I've been meaning to post these, but whenever I sit down in front of the comp I get sidetracked by sudoku and lose my original purpose.


Psychopath Revision 1


Planning/Blocking

I need to work on better ideas for the second part! I have so much trouble coming up with good ideas. After coming up with one idea and thumbing it out, I think, "ok, I'll shoot some video reference" with the thought that I'll start from there and just keep shooting and acting out the line in different ways till I come up with a whole bunch of ideas I can look at as a springboard for more. Yay! Unfortunately I'm such a crappy actor that I end up just shooting a bajillion different horrible takes of me trying to act out the same one idea and never doing a good job of it. So then I've got tons of bad reference and still just the one idea in my head. Soooo uhhhh, I need to come up with better approaches to brainstorming great acting choices. Actually, there's a thread in the AM forums this week where a bunch of people have posted some excellent pointers on ways to approach this. I need to comb over it again and just really try working at them till I find a way that works for me.

Oh yea, interesting note from Delio's walkthroughs these past two weeks: he uses IK arms! A lot of the AM students have been using IK ~ though most have stuck with FK ~ but I'd yet to find a mentor who used IK arms. Mark, my mentor last semester, was absolutely adamant about using FK since it just flows more naturally and you have greater control over the overlaps prevalent in arm movement. Even on our box push he recommended sticking to FK, though I can't recall the explanation behind that one. I asked Pete about the IK/FK question in our QA just now and his opinion was to stick to FK as well unless the situation really needed the benefits of IK (such as leaning against an unbudging object or throwing hard jab). He reiterated the important point that the way FK works is the way real arms work. It is impossible to animate FK without already dealing directly with lead-and-follow and overlap. With IK, you'd almost have to really fake it out.