Will Kistler’s AnimationMentor.com Experience

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.

Allright, so now it’s time for quarter two. I’m already a week into it, so there a lot of things to catch up on.

First of all, I had a great time in the first quarter, but I felt like we were going over things that I already had learned, at least somewhat. So, it effectively drove home some points, but the thing I’m getting at is that pretty much ALL of my knowledge has been covered, so this term I will be stepping out into uncharted territory. Exciting.

To help me along on that journey is my new mentor: Gavin Moran

Gavin has been a character animator for 10 years. He was born in the Republic of Ireland where he attended college till he didn’t. He came to the United States in 1994 to pursue his dream of animating or at least finding some other way of not working for a living. He has worked in various different studios including Disney , Wildbrain, Sony Imageworks and Dreamworks on projects such as Dinosaur, Hubert’s Brain, Stuart Little 2, Spiderman 2 and Shark Tale. Currently he is working on Dreamworks and Aardman’s latest movie ‘Flushed Away’. He talks about himself in the third person and only owns 2 pairs of shoes.

That’s what the site had to say about him. That info is a little outdated, as he told us that now he is working on Open Season with Sony Imageworks. I’ve had a Q&A with him, so far, and gotten my first critique back from him. In general, he seems like an animation badass, and someone who’s not afraid to let you know when he spots a problem with what you’re doing. It’s tough love, but love none-the-less, and he really seems to enjoy what he’s doing.

That brings me to my first assignment. Another personality walk, this time with a torso and head. Of course sketches were required, so here’s some sketches, followed by a video of this walk.

Personality Walk with Torso and Head

So that’s all for this week, and it was a lot. I’ll be back next week with more.

This week I had to make the walk work in 3d, so I had to work with the x-axis as well as the z and y that I had done for the first walk. Luckily, I had a good idea of what I wanted and was able to quickly thumbnail out and get it going in 3d. Here’s the planning sketch, and the 3/4 view shot required for this week. I also threw up a version where you can see the orthographic views, just for help critiquing.

3/4 view walk

Orthographic view walk

And, of course, a pose. This week, the theme was balance. Here’s the planning sketches and final version of that.

Yo, and that’s it. This is the last week of the first quarter. One last revision aside, this may be it. Second quarter looks very worthwhile, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Wow…Quarter’s almost over. The week 10 assignment was for a walk with personality, which was lots of fun. I decided to do a walk that conveyed a feeling of tiredness and depressiong. Here’s the planning as well as the final animation.

The Depressed-Tired Walk

Once again we had to come up with a character pose. This week’s pose: Exhaustion. Here’s the sketches and the final image. I actually put a shadow in this one, so the character’s orientation to the ground plane could be clearly seen.

Finally, revisions from last week’s assignment, as per Scott’s suggestions. The feedback I’ve been getting from him is solid gold! Critiques have been getting longer and longer as the quarter goes on and the assignments get more complicated. He’s been getting really detailed with things that need correction and advice for improving what we already have. So thanks, Scott. Here’s the stuff.

Smooth Vanilla Walk, Revised

And the revised concerned pose:

And that’s it till next week.

As promised, this week there’s a fully animated version of last weeks walk. The poses aren’t quite the same, due to Scott’s sage wisdom and adjustments that had to be made during the animation process. So without further delay…

Ballie’s Smooth Walk

Also, a new pose for this week. This time, the pose is concern. This one was a little trickier, since everyway I could immediately think of to show concern were in the face. So this one’s a little more subtle than usual, but I may have done it allright. Here are some thumbnails along with the finished pose.

And finally, adjustments to last weeks pose. Nothing huge, but Scott pointed out a good way to add a little more interest with an arc through the arms.

I’ve been slacking on this blog this week, on account of taking a test for a company. Who knows what will come of it, but I figured I’d post the clips I generated, for posterity if nothing else. So here they are:

Test 01: Locomotion

Test 02: Demonstrate knowledge of the principals of animation

I realize these could be better, but it was a timed test, and time goes quickly. I probably won’t work on them any more, but I’d still like feedback from anyone who feels like giving it, so I know what to do (or not) next time I’m working.

Here’s week 8. This week we had a couple things. First was to block a walk in stepped mode, using the character “Ballie.” The instructions were that the walk was supposed to be “vanilla,” and devoid of personality. Here’s the planning, as well as the clip, in all it’s jerky glory.

Ballie’s blocked walk.

Next week, that will be smoothed out.

Also, we had the pose. This week’s pose was supposed to communicate “strong.”

Finally, revision of last week’s clip. Scott challenged me to make the jump much more cartoony, so I pushed it as far as I could, perhaps too far. You judge.
One leg jumps again.

I finally got around to throwing something up on threadless. This is for the Beyondthepit.net contest. I understood it to be vaguely rock-themed, so I came up with the Stance Power-O-Meter

Register and vote for it, and I will be thankful!

Oh, and this weeks AM stuff will be posted soon, but I’m in the middle of an animation test for a company, and I’m focusing on that. New post with last weeks stuff, soon.

Keep Rocking