The Neck of Time

I once again have to make this one quick - due to the Thanksgiving holiday coming up I'm actually working Sunday-Wednesday so I can have all-day Thursday off. Woo hoo! Leaves lots more time for animation.

I also did something to my neck. I'm not sure what - probably slept wrong, but I haven't been able to turn it all night. It might be from an incredible amount of looking around that I did in a dream last night. I dreamt that I was meeting friends at a restaurant where all of the waiters and bus staff were apes in little tuxedos. So I kept looking around the room expecting them to throw feces at eachother. (Luckily they didn't. But I did find hair in my tea. That's why you never hire a monkey!)

So, here's the not-so-Final-Final of the jumping across posts shot. I'm not really completely happy with it yet - I don't think the nervousness is coming off as I had hoped. But, anywho, here it is:



Like I said, not completely happy with it. Hopefully my mentor gives me some good pointers on pulling off the nervousness for a revision. Until then, I move on to pushing a heavy box. Woo hoo!

Post Modern and a Tub of Lard

OK - just a quick update today, since I have lots of work to do this week.

First off, sorry I missed posting the past couple weeks. Things kinda got busy. But anyway, here's the final final version of the 180-degree turn:



The next assignment we moved on to involves a character with no arms jumping across a series of posts. Here's the initial blocking pass, which is in what's called "stepped" mode, which shows only the frames with the biggest change in motion:



And then this week, we added to that and refined the movement, and so, it became this:



So this week there will be further refinements on it, to hopefully clean up some of the ugly areas. It still needs a lot of work at the beginning and the end, and the first jump I'm not really happy with yet (he's supposed to look nervous. Instead he looks curious. NOT what I want. :-)

I also decided to contribute to the AM Weekly Sketches. See, every week on the Animation Mentor forums, a bunch of students decide to make little sketches based on a theme. So last week, the theme was "take a mundane scenario and spice it up a bit."

So, I decided to do the mundane scenario of Buttering Bread:
As always, click for a larger view.

A tub of lard buttering a slice of bread with its own innards. I have no idea where that came from, but I like it. :-)

So, there we have it. Halfway through Class 2. So now, we finish off the post jumping, and start planning "pushing a heavy object." This one's gonna be tough.