Class 1 Week 5

Hey it's week 5!!!

I'm going to keep this week a little short (unless I ramble...)

So, I just found out I'm not the first Peer Trooper. But I'm going to keep it alive!

Anders Ancker (an AM alumni) is the original Peer Trooper and he has some wonderful weekly tips.

Here's is Anders' Week 5 tips, it's some graph editor tips:

I recommend checking out his week 1-4 tips as well.

So what do you have this week? It's the obstacle course!!! SUPER FUN! Now remember:

KEEP. IT. SIMPLE.

Download all the course and open them each up to see what looks the best for you.

DRAW DRAW DRAW. This week planning is SUPER critical. If you don't spend enough time planning this shot, it's going to be hard to animate.

Here's how I approached it:

--Pick out the course: I looked at each and every single course and visually imagined a ball moving thru it. I thought, How would the ball react to this environment?

--Open the course up and set your time slider to the frame limit: I then hit PLAY and watched the timeline move for 120-200 frames (or whatever the limit is). I memorized the “feeling” of how long it would take.

--Imagine the ball: After I got the timing down I visualized how I wanted the ball to move. When does it anticipate, when does it squash, rotate, stretch, etc.

--Draw: I did this in photoshop. I took a screen capture of the course, and drew in the PATH of the ball. Just the path. I didn't yet focus on the timing or anticipation.

--Draw more: after I figured out the path and got the arcs all nice and round, I drew in the ball. I drew more keys close together where the ball was slower, and kept a good distance in between where it was faster.

--Block it out. Pretty straight forward. I brought the ball into maya and very roughly keyed where the ball would go.

--Spline and refine! This takes the longest. You just gotta keep on working at it.

Keep some of my last week's physics tips in mind. Momentum, gravity, etc.

Have fun with this! It was my favorite project last term. Feel free to check out my progress reel, or other students' progress reels for example.

Oh and here's a cool website with pinball machine gameplay!

Happy Animating,

~Peer Trooper Bsly

Class 1 Week 4

Yay It's week 4! This week you'll be revising your bouncing ball based on your mentor's e-critique.

You will also get to animate..not one...but TWO bouncing balls! Next week it's three...not. :)

Before I give you the most important advice of your life (well...most important advice of the day? Hour? Well it's advice anyway...), here's a fun little video from Bill Nye:

We're gonna talk physics this week. I love physics. I almost became an engineer because I love physics. However, I stink at calculus...so yeah engineering didn't work out. But Physics still helps with animation!!!

So Bill Nye talked about momentum and gave a great visual image. A ping pong ball is simply too light to knock down blowing pins! So what does this mean for you this week? Well a lot of things!

I want to state one major thing about gravity next. There are a lot of misconceptions about gravity (and momentum too). First off I want to pose you this question:

If you drop a basketball ball and a medicine ball from the same height at the same time, which one will hit the ground first? A basketball weighs about 22 ounces. A medicine ball of the same size likely weighs around 8-15 lbs. Got your answer?

-Will the Basketball hit first because it's....lighter and uh, maybe gravity affects it differently?

-Or will the medicine ball hit the ground first because it's heavier?

It's gotta be the medicine ball right? I mean it's WAY heavier! Let's watch this video and find out:

Oh no! They hit the ground at the same time?! What does this mean? Well I'll do my best to explain.

Yes the medicine ball is much heavier. And because of that, the gravitational pull is greater on it. That doesn't mean it hits the ground first, it just means it hits the ground harder and loses more energy each bounce compared to the basketball.

However! The acceleration due to gravity is the same for ALL objects! Of course there is wind resistance, human error, drag, blah blah blah, so many things that can cause things to not hit the ground at the same time. In a perfect condition, everything hits at the same time (Would you believe me if I even told you in a perfect vacuum a feather and a bowling ball would hit at the same time? It's true!).

So what does this mean for animation? Well it means a few things.

1. Make sure you don't: drop the two balls from the same height, but then have the heavier one hit the ground a lot sooner.
2. There's a problem also...It just doesn't look right if the two object hit at the exact same moment.

“So Brandon, you're telling me that they have to hit at the same time, but if I do that it will look wrong?”

Kind of :) Unless you really nail the energy loss in the two balls, it will look wrong.

So here are some suggestions:

-Drop each ball from a different height and cheat that fall time just ever so slightly to trick the eyes into seeing the heavy ball drop faster. (Just a litte!)

-You could also drop each ball at a different time. Like maybe drop the light ball and have it come to a rest, then drop the heavy ball, which could cause the light ball to jump up a little bit from the shock of the heavy ball.

There are a bunch of ways you could go about it.

Lastly, I'll leave you with some film reference I put together. It's a 9 pound medicine ball vs a regular golf ball:

Now go have fun!

Happy Animating,

~Brandon

Class 1 Week 3

Hello again! I'm back with some tips and tricks. But first let's start off with some serious advice:

Ok.... so you shouldn't blame your parents if you don't succeed..but hey I tried.

Onward! This week you finally start animating! The bouncing ball is so simple yet so important.

You will see throughout this entire class that it's used as a base for so many things. For now... it's just a ball... bouncing :P

First off, please please go film some reference! Here's some I filmed:

But you really should film your own for practice. There are a lot of tips that you'll get from other students as well as your mentor about a bouncing ball, so I won't dwell on it this week. Just make sure that your curves look real nice in the graph editor. This animation will be great or not so great based on the curves.

Now what I REALLY wanted to spend time on today is the pose assignment!

I want to talk a little bit about the evolution of a pose, and most importantly what “EXCITEMENT” really means.

You have already done one posing assignment; however this time you have to fit a mood. So what exactly IS excitement?

EX-CITE-MENT:

A feeling of great enthusiasm and eagerness.

Something that arouses such a feeling; an exciting incident

(Google dictionary).

How do we as humans portray excitement? There are SO many ways. I highly recommend giving your pose a background story.

-Did Stu just get a Nintendo 64 for Christmas?

-Did he win he lottery?

-Is he getting married?

There are an infinite amount of stories you can come up with. Next is how you portray it:

-Is Stu jumping thru the air because he can't hold in his emotion?

-Is he stretched out and reaching for the sky?

-Maybe Stud is a bit more timid, so he holds that excitement in close to his body.

Think about these things.

Now here's the evolution of my own personal excitement pose. It's a bit cliché, but we all have to start somewhere.

So we start out with our sketches of course. Draw a lot. Just because you fill up one page doesn't mean you have to stop. It's good practice anyway:

Next you pick out your favorite and define it:

The pose I chose was circled and I drew it again in Photoshop  I defined the line of action and in my head I gave him a story: He's at a sporting event and his team just scored. I can relate since I'm a huge Blazers (Basketball) fan.

I finally get in to Maya, and I pose Stu out and post it on my public review:

I wasn't sure how to improve it, which is why I posted it. A fresh set of eyes can always help you fix your problems.

My peer buddy gave me a draw-over, explaining that I should carry the line of action all the way to the back leg:

I took the feedback and reposed it:

After posting it to my Public review again, I got feedback about the back leg being difficult to read, and that the spine looked a little broken...so I refined yet again! This is what I turned in to my mentor:

I felt pretty good about the pose overall, but was eager to receive feedback from my mentor so I could improve it.

Here's what my mentor suggested: He told me I should rotate the hips back to help the back leg be even more clear. He also suggested I make the front leg more straight so the line of action flows thru it better. Add in a few minor tweaks for polish

And voila! Here's the final product:

Now is it perfect? Of course not. But it was week 3 or 4 and I had a final product work showing. Eventually you will improve and be able to look back at your old work and realize how far you have come.

Good luck this week and have fun with that bouncing ball and the pose!

Message me if you have any questions!

~Bsly

Class 1 Week 2

What's that? Week 2? And you have an actual assignment?!!? That's right! Woohoo for poses!

You'll undoubtedly get some great feedback from a lot of fellow students...well here's what I've learned:

Keep it simple. “But Brandon, everyone has already told me this.” Yeah yeah I'm beating a dead platypus...(Don't worry it's not Perry the Platypus...ok I'm not beating anything). Seriously though. When I started doing poses last term, I wanted to be different. I wanted to be special (ha special ed...) anyway... Go for. Be unique, but don't be complicated. I was always complicated with my poses and that hurt me in the long run because it took so much more to polish.

Here's Anders Ancker reminding you to keep it simple:

Check out my reel: 

Progress Reel

Skip ahead to the end and check out my poses. Some of them are pretty cool...But some of them are simply too complicated and don't portray the mood strongly. I learned from this and you can too!

-Silhouettes are king! Long Live Silhouettes! Ok. Here's a nice trick. When you have your character all posed and want to check out it's silhouette, hit 7 on your keyboard. This won't work if you've place lights in your scene, so put lights in afterward. All you will see is your character's silhouette. Ask yourself:

-Does this pose make sense? Ask a friend or family member if they can figure out what is going on. Afterall, ultimately the audience is who will see your finished product when you're the best animator at Pixar (someday, right :) ?)

-Can you tell where the limbs are going and coming from? Sometimes if you check your silhouette, an arm might look like it's growing from the head!!! THE HORROR!

--Is there any twinning? “What's twinning Brandon?” Well...when a mama Spline and a papa Spline love each other very much...I mean uh... never mind. Twinning basically means symmetrical. You want the pose to be interesting. For more on some definitions check this out:

Animation Dictionary

-cliché or not cliché? That is the question. I told you this last week, but I'll say it again. Clichés are not the end of the world. Sure you don't want your pose to look like everything else. But clichés are what DEFINE a mood. So find a way to integrate cliché while still making it your own.

-Oh and Line of action..how did I almost forget? If you can draw a nice smooth curve thru your pose and it makes sense, you're on track. Here's an example:

I'm sure I missed about 100000000 things that you'll need to know...but hey I'm still learning too.

-Have fun! And draw A LOT! Check out the Pratt Twins's blog, they have a great posting about poses.

Message me if you have any questions! I have my own projects, but If I can help I will :)

~Brandon

Class 1 Week 1

Welcome to Animation Mentor! This is going to be one heck of a journey! Class one is full of fun and challenges, and at times things may seem too easy, other times it may seem too hard. But the best hing to keep in mind is that you are here to learn and improve everyday! 

You'll get a lot of advice in class 1, so be sure to take notes. 

Here are some tips from me:

-Keep it simple! Let's say you have to do your devastated pose in a few weeks. And you want to do this crazy complex pose that no one has ever seen before. Well that can work...but for now try and simplify your poses and animations. It will give you less of a headache.

-Stay away from cliches...or don't! This may sound silly, so let me explain. You'll hear in news items, or in lectures to stay away from cliches. For animation, this rule is much easier to follow, but for your poses, I urge you not to completely ignore cliches. Why? Well each pose you do is based on a mood. And that mood is defined by it's cliches. I made the mistake of ignoring cliches for my poses at times, and because of that some of them were hard to understand. So be original, but make sure your poses show that emotion.

-Listen to your Mentor! Your mentor is your director. If your mentor gives to advice on how to fix your project, follow that instruction. Now you may disagree with your mentor. And that's great! Bring it up in your Q&As! Your mentor is a human too and can make mistakes. So discuss what's going thru your mind.

-Take notes! I have a handy composite notebook that I take notes on. I take notes from the lectures, from advice I get from other students, my peer buddy, and obviously my mentor. I also write down questions I have throughout the week which leads me into the next point...

-Ask questions! You will only learn by asking questions. If you never challenge what is taught, or never ask for clarification about something you don't understand, then you will struggle. I would recommend that you have at least three questions each week for your mentor that you can ask during your Q&A's. It helps a lot!

-Get involved! Watch every video on the site you can find. Watch as much student work you can. ALWAYS watch your classmates' work. And...

Give feedback! If you GIVE feedback, you will GET feedback. Not only that, but you will be training your eyes and improving your skills.

-Read! Make sure to check out, “The Illusion of Life” by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson. Also “the animator's Survival Kit” by Richard Williams. I also recommend checking this page for other resources:

Academic Support

Especially the book you can buy on Anamie by Wayne Gilbert. It's a great drawing book.

-HAVE FUN! Make sure you have fun when you work. Sure it may be hard at times, but if you have fun, you can work through it. If you aren't having any fun, discuss it with your mentor. Get ideas from them.

-Finally, work hard. Take pride your work, but don't be prideful. There is a difference. Taking pride in your work means that you do your best and don't give up. You work hard and accept criticism. Take that criticism and make your work better.

If you have ANY questions, send me a message! I may not know the answer but I'll do my best :)

Good luck here at AM, and happy Animating!

~Bsly