Will Kistler’s AnimationMentor.com Experience

I promised a smoother version of the assignment, and here it is. This is still a work in progress, with this coming week’s goal being to finish it up.

Heavy push. Smooth, yet unfinished.

The posts here have been getting shorter and shorter, as there is not as much explanation required each week for long projects. I’d just like to say that halfway through my second quarter, I’m still immensely satisfied with my Animation Mentor experience. It may just be in my head, but I think that I’m starting to improve. Animation is certainly beginning to come faster and easier to me. Animation Mentor, with their emphasis in planning, is a major part of that.

So…It’s still rockin’. Look for something even better next week (I hope)

For this week, I refined the blocking and tried to nail down some of the timing. You can see some breakdowns have been added and the motion is a little more easy to read. Not much else to say.

Here is the revised blocking.

Next week I’m gonna be starting the smoothing.

Time for a heavy push up an incline. Here’s the sketches and the blocking.

Heavy Push: First Blocking

Short entry this week. The coming week is for refining this blocking.

Gavin gave us a link to his showreel. It doesn’t have anything from Spiderman 2 or Open Season on it, since those were made with Sony and he’s still with them. No need for another reel if there’s no need for another job, I guess. Anyhow, it’s impressive.

http://www.animationrigs.com/gavin.mov

Ok, I have a lot of catching up to do. I was in chicago interviewing for (non-animation) jobs for the end of week 2, and so I am just now getting around to posting my work.

I last left you with a walk, sans arms. It was a jaunty affair, even in stepped mode. For week 2, we had to add arms, as well as some sort of cool anticipation to get into the walk. First things first, I shot some reference of what I wanted to do:

Me, dancin’!

Then I sketched some arms for ol’ stewie (the rig’s name) and some more thumbs for the initial action:

And finally blocked it out:

Week 2’s Blocking

Gavin liked it allright, but wanted more, so I ended up adding some boppin’ while ol’ Stewie got into things. Turns out, with this rig, it’s a technical nightmare to switch between IK hands and FK hands. I worked around it, though, cause that’s how I roll. That’s right, rig. I run the show here. Here’s the final product. I still think it could use some work, but this is the end of week 3.

Dancing and Walking, all smoothed out.

Next time…heavy push.