Serendipity (When Destiny has a Sense of Humor)
Well, Class 1 hast ended. Our final assignment was to upload a compilation of our assignments for school back-up purposes. So, here's everything - including a preliminary revision of the character walk. Turns out there was a LOT wrong with it!
I still have some adjustments to make, but it's gettin' there - slow but sure.
The local art store was having a storewide sale on everything this week, so I managed to pick up a copy of The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams (he was the director of animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit), which is oft referred to as the "other" animation Bible. (The first "bible" was The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston - two of Disney's Nine Old Men - which I've also been reading.) At least in my humble opinion, both of these books qualify as the "bible," with Illusion being the Old Testament (lots of interesting stories, but with a lot of fluff and tedium), and Survival Kit being the New Testament (solid application of specific information and how it all works.)
What's interesting, though, is in reading Survival Kit I've been finding all sorts of stuff that I've been slowly figuring out on my own. i.e. - remember the walk analysis from many weeks ago (see post "6 Weeks Later" under the heading "Class 104")? Well, turns out the observation of the wider steps in men than women is actually illustrated on pages 105-106 of The Animator's Survival Kit, specifically citing the "equipment" as the cause of the wider stance. HA! Just yet another of those serendipitous moments that makes this whole Animation thing seem like exactly what I should be doing!
So, we were advised to relax and take a much deserved week off from animation. But after a couple days not touching Maya, I said... Screw this! And spent the weekend finishing up an alternate Tailor animation that I had started several weeks ago, but never finished. I also decided to try it in a perspective view, so I could play with another angle of rotation on his tail. So...
Yup - snuck the pendulum in there, too. That little brown nub that he's looking at is supposed to be an acorn. My modeling skills in Maya aren't exactly that good yet, as you can tell. :-)
This week I'm also going to work on a new walk - not sure what it'll be yet, but I want to get as much practice under my belt as possible. Also this week, I went through my lecture notes from the quarter, highlighting important parts and such, and I said to myself, "Self.... There's a lot of pages here." So, out of curiosity, I counted them. On the twelve lectures from the twelve weeks of AM Class 1, I took 114 pages of notes. Yup, that's right - 114 pages. That's longer than the last screenplay I wrote! The notes from this first class filled a 3-subject notebook, cover-to-cover.
Needless to say, I bought more notebooks today. ;-)
I still have some adjustments to make, but it's gettin' there - slow but sure.
The local art store was having a storewide sale on everything this week, so I managed to pick up a copy of The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams (he was the director of animation on Who Framed Roger Rabbit), which is oft referred to as the "other" animation Bible. (The first "bible" was The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston - two of Disney's Nine Old Men - which I've also been reading.) At least in my humble opinion, both of these books qualify as the "bible," with Illusion being the Old Testament (lots of interesting stories, but with a lot of fluff and tedium), and Survival Kit being the New Testament (solid application of specific information and how it all works.)
What's interesting, though, is in reading Survival Kit I've been finding all sorts of stuff that I've been slowly figuring out on my own. i.e. - remember the walk analysis from many weeks ago (see post "6 Weeks Later" under the heading "Class 104")? Well, turns out the observation of the wider steps in men than women is actually illustrated on pages 105-106 of The Animator's Survival Kit, specifically citing the "equipment" as the cause of the wider stance. HA! Just yet another of those serendipitous moments that makes this whole Animation thing seem like exactly what I should be doing!
So, we were advised to relax and take a much deserved week off from animation. But after a couple days not touching Maya, I said... Screw this! And spent the weekend finishing up an alternate Tailor animation that I had started several weeks ago, but never finished. I also decided to try it in a perspective view, so I could play with another angle of rotation on his tail. So...
Yup - snuck the pendulum in there, too. That little brown nub that he's looking at is supposed to be an acorn. My modeling skills in Maya aren't exactly that good yet, as you can tell. :-)
This week I'm also going to work on a new walk - not sure what it'll be yet, but I want to get as much practice under my belt as possible. Also this week, I went through my lecture notes from the quarter, highlighting important parts and such, and I said to myself, "Self.... There's a lot of pages here." So, out of curiosity, I counted them. On the twelve lectures from the twelve weeks of AM Class 1, I took 114 pages of notes. Yup, that's right - 114 pages. That's longer than the last screenplay I wrote! The notes from this first class filled a 3-subject notebook, cover-to-cover.
Needless to say, I bought more notebooks today. ;-)
posted by Rich at
1:07 PM
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