The End of the Term is Nigh

I had a minor interruption last week but was able to get all my assignments in on time. This is the last week of the first term at Animation Mentor, and it's an opportunity to do revisions on past assignments with what we have learned. Also, we have to make a progress reel at the end of each term so other students can see it, and so they can get archived. I've been having a fair bit of fun with the progress reel part of it, and now that the template is laid out, all I have to do is make some minor polishes to past work and replace the footage. As well as render out some of my past poses just to add some more aesthetic appeal; I would really like to include ambient occlusion into these shots to give it more of a clay-y look, it does wonders. This is the meat and bones of it, the final version, will be nicer, but I'm quite happy with my progress so far. Bring on the second term! I can't wait to start fun-filled yet devastating weeks of body mechanics.

The LHC has NOT destroyed the world, so the work must continue...

This last week's assignment incorporated a stylized walk. I went through many ideas from a moonwalk (an astronaut on the moon) to a classic Charlie Chaplin. I also contemplated a war of the worlds three legged walk, but it was suggested I stick with bipedals. So after much deliberation, I decided that I wanted to do something I hadn't seen before, so I chose to do a ballerina, not quite knowing what I was getting into. This turned out to be quite a challenge and long, intense study of reference, plus multiple changes throughout the blocking stage. So far not so bad, my review went better than expected. I lost perspective on it, that's fair enough to be said.


Also, with last nite's failed destruction of Earth due to CERN's LHC working in accordance to scientific postulations, it seems as I will have to continue polishing this walk and do the current week's assignment. :) The other part of the assignment was to research and do a pose that represents exhaustion well. This was the weaker part of my work, it was hard for me, but it worked satisfactorily, I received some fantastic feedback as how to really push it and add appeal. Thus it will be tweaked for revision.

The ponderings of a kidult

This last assignment was to polish up the vanilla walk and find some pose that really captured the feeling of "concerned". As far as the walk goes, I was fairly happy with it, learning the hardway how subtle tweaks and fixes here can grossly affect another control in the body there. But I finally got something decent, my critique went well, although I will have some definate changes to submit this week and get looking good, the feedback was incredible and hard for me to see; tho there was some varying in opinions, which is something I'm also learning. There isn't always such a thing as solidly right or not right; it can be wrong, but if it works, then wrong is right. Pretty cathartic lol.



As for my concerned pose I drew out many ideas and found one that just spoke to me. It worked well as far as composition and portraying a mood went, so I'm quite exceptionally happy with it. It was hard to avoid crashing in places, especially with the characters' gargantuinely huge heads, but it did work out in the end. Again some minor changes to boost the look even more.