Apparently I've Learned Something!

Like many of my AnimationMentor classmates I often find it a challenge to get homework done by deadline. Doing that freelance job last week did not help, and that was a little too challenging with everything else going on. There's a reason I try to spread out freelance jobs. So sometimes it seems like I'm not progressing as much as I would hope.

Class 2 on body dynamics is winding down and having completed in last week's assignment on time I looked forward to not having any assignment due for this final week. This gave me a chance to revisit my 4 Emotions assignment which I had delivered partly polished. I could have just left well enough alone, since it doesn't affect my grade at this point, but it's a matter of principle. Plus, I hadn't put anything in my Revision slot (in my workspace on AM) in weeks because the main assignment was taking all the time I had, and I wanted something in there for Charles, my mentor, this week.

So I spent several hours last night into early this morning, working on the arms, which I hadn't even animated in one section, counter animating problematic stuff (I had a knee control that was going nuts for some unexplained reason. It was NOT the dreaded "gimbal", this was something esle.), and fine tuning stuff. While it's still what I'd call "In Progress", it's looking much better. I'd post it here except that I ran out of ftp space.

The big thing I discovered from this morning's session is that, apparently, I've learned something during the past 6 months!

I noticed a bit of "overshoot" on Stewie's foot that caused it to go through the floor as it moved from one key to the next. I had Maya's Graph Editor open and amidst the tangle of splines running every which direction I immediately spotted the problem. I could see that the spline for the foot's xRotation "bubbled" up instead of staying flat like it should. Not only that, my first instinct on how to fix it was correct; change the first key tangent to "Flat" instead of "Smooth". Problem solved. 3 or 4 months ago I know I wouldn't have spotted such a problem quite as quickly. Kinda exciting and fun to realize I'm learning, despite the fact that much of it seems to just whiz by. Cool!