Goodbye, Old Friend

Today was an historic day. While wandering through the Glendale mall staring at people's legs, I decided to do something I hadn't done in 15 years: buy a new wallet. My current wallet, after a decade-and-a-half of wear, has so many rips and tears in it that it now resembles the rawhide from whence it came. They were on sale at Penney's (though, everything's always on sale at Penney's, so I don't know why they bother advertising sales that never stop,) so I figured, why not?

This also meant I got to clean out the old wallet, which was indeed an adventure. Among the things I found:

- Senior Pictures of eight of my High School friends (I graduated in 1998)
- The 2002 Michigan vehicle registration for my old 1991 Ford Tempo
- The 1997 AAA Proof of Insurance for my old 1991 Ford Tempo
- Calendars from my old credit union, dated 1995, 1996, and 1998
- An undated card from the Royal Oak, MI / Woodward Ave. & Catalpa Blockbuster Video store. The phone number on the back uses the 313 area code, which was changed in Oakland County in 1993.

So with this, I bid you adieu. Farewell, Wallet, my good friend. I shall drink Faygo in your honor. (If I can find any. These Californians don't know what they're missing.)

On The Ballie

This week we started playing with a new character - Ballie. Basically, a ball with legs. (Think Monsters, Inc's Mike Wazowski without the arms and giant eyeball.) We'll be using this character well into the next semester.

First on our list: the Walk Cycle. A walk cycle is an animated walk that can be looped to show a continuous walk for many steps forward, backward, what have you. (Cycles aren't just a computer-enabled trick - they were first developed by animators back in the 30's, and were used extensively in Hanna-Barbara cartoons like Scooby-Doo & The Flintstones [and weirder crap like Space Ghost and Dino-Boy, which I had to compress at work last week. Oi-vay.])

Needless to say, there's a lot more intricacy to the human walk than most people may think. It's not as simple as up-forward-down, as you can see:



You may notice that the motion is kinda stuttery - only one new frame per every three frames. This is just a first pass on the main poses of the walk, and this coming week, we refine the motion with inbetweens, which will add the constant motion that we all know and love.

And here's a revision to last week's Tailor animation:



We also had another Stu pose this week. To show a feeling of "strength." I couldn't really come up with anything that wasn't cliche:
As always, click for a larger view. To try to overcome the cliche a bit, I decided to add a bit of fictional fun to it:
Stu lifting the Giant Block of Doom. I also included a surprised Tailor, just because I was a little upset that Tailor was a one-assignment wonder. :-)

So, now I'm off to a public place to stare at people walking. I hope I don't get the crap beaten out of me.

Tailor-Made

So, this week at AM we got our hands on a brand new character to play with - Tailor. Tailor is quite simply a ball with a tail attached. The basic idea is to treat him in a manner similar to a squirrel, though any long-tailed animal could be the source of inspiration. For me, I decided to stick to the squirrel idea, but toss in a little Sonic The Hedgehog as well. Here's what I came up with:



I'm still gonna play with the character some more - I've got some really twisted ideas - but this is what was turned in for review. Additionally, a revision to last week's Pendulum assignment:



And the final revision to the Devastation pose:
And that does it for this week. Now it's off to see how many ways I can kill a squirrel. Mwahahahahahaha!

6 Weeks Later...

I'm really not very good at the regular blog posting stuff, am I?

So, I'm now halfway through Animation Mentor Class 1, and let me tell ya, its been an interesting six weeks. I'm gonna avoid babbling on about the nature of self and the Id, and all those new-age ritualistic enema cures, because, honestly, who cares? There's animating to be done! So, here we go:

This'll be a long post - but don't worry. There's lots of pictures. :-)

Class 102: The first session I talked about last time, so let's skip on the the second class. Our assignment this week was to do quick sketches of people going about their daily lives in public places, and then mimic these sketches using Stu, who you met last time. For the sketches, its encouraged to be very rough - even using simple stick figures - which is cool by me.

Sketches: I discovered rather quickly how little I knew about the proportions of the human body, and how exactly to draw it. But hey, since they're stick figures...

As always, click the image for a larger view. The one circled is the one I chose as my pose for Stu. Incidentally, the circled figure is none other than Writer/Quasi-SoSo Michigan Actor Lad, Fox Valade.

And here's how it turned out in the computer-
As you can see, changes were made to make it more appealing, and to try to sell the emotion a bit better and clearer.

Of course, whenever possible, I also continue to work on drawing, in an attempt, vain as it may be, to get a bit better at it. This particular week, I spotted an old lady at Ralphs, staring rather curiously and, oddly enough, seductively, at the cold cuts. So, when I got back to the car, I did a quick, slightly-worse-than-a-fourth-grader sketch I call "Grandma Eyes the Meat:"
Yeah, I'm sick. ;-)

Class 103: Here we go! The first animation assignment. Since we're starting from the beginning with the basic principles of animation, the first few assignments may seem silly to some - but they are crucial discoveries that will aid in achieving that elusive "Illusion of Life...." which I'll get into later.

Anywho - the assignment is to animate a bouncing ball with the approximate weight of a basketball or soccer ball. Sooo.... Click the below to play.



We also had another Stu pose assignment - this time, the character had to express "Excitement." So, here's the not-so exciting sketches. I'm slowly getting a bit better at representing the human form, thanks tremendously to the book "Simplified Drawing for Planning Animation" by Wayne Gilbert.
And the resulting pose:
Additionally, my mentor gave me some excellent suggestions on how to improve last week's Stu as Fox Valade pose, and thus, a revision:

Class 104: The suspense is terrible! I hope it'll last. This week, the bouncing ball gets more complex - two balls expressing different weights. Sound easy? It ain't, believe you me. But hey, that's the fun in it, right?


This week also corresponded to a trip back to Michigan. Naturally, I brought my little sketchbook with me, and did all this stuff:
This dude was standing in the middle of a busy corridor at LAX for no apparent reason. Just standing there, staring at nothing, forcing all the people to go around him, for about 20 minutes solid. This also might be my favorite drawing to date.
A young couple sleeping next to each other at LAX airport. It's good when people sleep so they don't notice you're staring at them and drawing their hands. The wedding bands were a creative liberty (they weren't married.)
This one sucks, but I'll put it up anyway. Creepy Wine Lady at Motor City Casino. I sketched this on top of a slot machine while trying to convince my mom to leave because I was broke.
This trip back to "The D" as the kids say these days, was also coupled with my first trip to Comerica Park - partly for my mom's work function, partly for my Grandma's 93rd birthday (she's a bigger Tigers fan than the Tigers themselves.) This sketch is of an odd batting stance by the Kansas City Royals' Tony Pena. The first sketch was an on-the-spot, long distance quickie - the second is the corrected sketch based on a photo I took at the game.

Additionally, when at Detroit Metro Airport on the way back to LA, I did an extensive study of the male and female walk, and discovered some interesting idiosyncrasies. Did you know that most men walk with a bit of a side-to-side swagger, whereas women tend to walk nearly perfectly straight forward with a vertical bobbing up-and-down? The reason seems to be that most men walk with their feet angled outward from the body 25-30 degrees, taking wider strides, whereas women's feet are angled outward only about 10-15 degrees. The only reason I could come up with for this difference was because men have... well, for lack of a better term... "Dangly Parts."

Class 105: Another week, another animation assignment, and another pose for Stu. This week, we get into the classical animation staple of "Squash and Stretch." There's plenty of info out there as to what exactly Squash & Stretch is, so I won't bore you with details here. Anyway - we were to animate a ball bouncing through an obstacle course utilizing the things we had learned about the basic principles of animation. So...



As for Stu, we now needed him to express the emotion "Devastation." Here's the sketches:
This is also a rare opportunity to witness me acting. I acted out these poses on video and then drew them. As for Stu:
He's had a rough day. I changed it quite a bit from the original sketch, and added the gun for a bit of subtext. Who did he kill? Or is he about to? There's a story in there somewhere.

Also, more revisions based on mentor critiques - of last week's weighted bouncing balls:


And of the excited Stu pose:
A little drop shadow goes a long way!

Class 106: And here we arrive at this past week. Our assignment? Animate a multi-jointed pendulum. Again, sounds easy, right? That's what I thought. I had all these wild and crazy plans for this pendulum, but in the end I had to pare it down to something simple. It's a lot trickier than it looks, friends....



Also, more revisions based on mentor critiques - on the Obstacle Course:


And Stu's Devastation:
Finally, this week also yielded more adventures with a pencil. While bored to death waiting at the doctor's office, I sketched this, my new favorite drawing.
Meet The Broken Arm Guy. I named him that because I accidentally drew his left hand backwards. This was sketched, refined, and shaded all within about an hour-and-a-half at the doctor's office. This drawing is about 90% imagination. I only referred to the other people in the waiting room for his leg angles on the chair. I really like that kinda "Charlie Brown" quality to it. Keep in mind I still have no idea what I'm doing, so that's completely accidental. I just wish I hadn't drawn it so close to the edges of the paper.

Well, that does it for me. Are you exhausted reading all this crap yet?

Again, I'll try to post again next week, but I can't guarantee that I'll have time. Especially this week - you ever try to animate a ball with a tail?