Monkeys On An Island

Okay, geez, I haven't had a chance to blog anything lately! We've had home visits from IHSS case workers, nurses and other professionals checking on my mom because of her recent hospital stay. I've taken my mom to two medical appointments in the past 8 days. The landlord has finally acted on my request from 4 months ago to have the tile and tub in my parent's bathroom repaired, so there's been workers here 8 or 9 every morning since last Wednesday. I almost didn't have time to finish my AM assignments the past two weeks, but somehow got 'em turned in. It's been crazy 'round here lately and I'm backed up on a lot of stuff. Gotta find the time!

New Animation Shot. A few weeks ago we chose brand new audio clips for another assignment at Animation Mentor. Basically, it's the same assignment again using what we learned from the first one and new lessons from our latest lectures. I had narrowed my choices down to a coupla Jack Black lines from Shallow Hal, Sean William Scott arguing with The Rock from The Rundown, a Christopher Walken line from the same movie, and a few selections of Ross and Rachel's famous fight from season 4 of Friends. Most of my classmates seemed to like the two Shallow Hal lines best, and in the end Bill recommended I go with the first of the two. Happily, he picked the one that was my favorite.

I had edited all my clips back to back into a single sound file, looped it and acted them all out over and over about a million times. It was kinda fun. Once the final selection was made, I looped that one a thousand more times, so by then I had some decent ideas about how I wanted to act out the line. I filmed myself for reference and got good stuff on takes 7 and 15. The rest was crap. I sat on the reference for a coupla days, and with so much going on around home I didn't have time to do anything else but think about it, anyway. I started feeling like I was running out of time to get the first blocking pass done by deadline. Then I finally got a chance and spent nearly two and a half hours drawing thumbnails. By then it was early Saturday or Sunday morning--I can't remember which, result of a fried brain--so I made the decision to turn my sketches into a pencil test. Rather than take all the time to do it in 3D, this is what I turned in for rough blocking:

Week 07 Rough Blocking (1.4MB, QT MPEG4)

Blocking in 2D has become a common practice among classmates, especially using Jason Schleifer's Grease Pencil Tool, because it's much faster than posing a character in 3D. I messed around with GP once before, but need learn how to use it better before I can put it to good use.

Got great feedback on the pencil test from classmates and mentor, and after a bit of a bumpy start the following week I turned in this shot for first 3D "blocking plus" with some breakdowns and a few changes.

Week 08 Blocking (1.9MB, QT MPEG4)

Bill had liked how I'd sketched the shot full-body and was a little hesitant when I told him my intention of shooting the scene in a medium shot. Fortunately, we seem to be on the same page with this shot, and he didn't mind the tighter framing once he saw where I'm going with it. He also gave me some great ideas which I'm sure a thousand monkeys on an island animating this same exact scene would never have come up with. Me either, for that matter, so I'm glad he thought of them. Obviously, some parts need lots of help. The biggest note from both mentor and classmates is that I could really push the poses much more. On this pass the camera is locked down, but knowing the poses would be pretty broad, I planned from the beginning to have the camera follow the action a bit, like a live action shot would. I'll probably start making tweaks right away, pushing the poses and gestures as much as possible, not worrrying much about camera framing until I get the motion just right. I need to be out of "stepped" mode by the next deadline, and that usually requires a lot of finessing switching over to "linear" and then "spline". The sooner I get the next pass done the sooner I can start getting feedback from other students.