AnimationMentor Class 3 Reel

Class 3 is done! Woo!!

My mentor this semester was Mike Gasaway, and boy I can’t thank this guy enough! He helped me overhaul my ENTIRE process, from concept to completion. While I was floundering in Class 2, scared without any direction, I’m now much more organized and conscious of the movements I make, and thinking specifically about why they happen.  A lot of it breaks down in the Blocking+ stage, and even into a Blocking++ level, and is more specific to building off of the “golden” poses, or poses that tell the story.

1. Story poses (8-12 only, no anticipations, just poses that tell the story. I treated these as if I was reading a comic strip or storyboard, so they were the most exaggerated.)
2. Supplemental story poses (More minor, but necessary poses)
3. Breakdowns & Timing Adjustment (Don’t be afraid to hit linear spline to test this!!)
4. Anticipations & Weight in the Hips, Torso, etc. (Complete focus on where weight is going or landing, etc)
5. Feet Lock (Making sure the feet are frikkin’ keyed where they need to stick to the ground. This always pissed me off when I forget and it’s go bonkers in spline)
6. Inbetweens (Going freaking nuts with the keys, I usually keyed almost every other frame at this point)
7. Arcs, arcs and more arcs! (Then almost every frame was keyed here)
8. Tweak time (Checking for wacky stuff, pretty much leans right into polish stage)

As you can tell from my reel, I still have a long ways to go. As my mentors and classmates have said, there are some foundation concepts that just aren’t being applied consistently and I still feel my sense of timing is just too far one way or another. I also fell off the boat as far as communication with my classmates through critiques and comments, but hey I’m going to test some morning routine tweaks to improve.

The feeling at the start of this term is different from all the others. I’m not stressed about being stressed. I’m not feeling like my work is at the bottom of the pile. I don’t have that feeling of failing before I’ve even begun.

Having a much tighter pipeline instills so much more confidence. It’s cut so much BS time out of the entire process for me. Having that, I feel determined to make my work look right and feel right. I’m halfway up this mountain, and I am starting to believe more and more that the summit will totally rock.

Thank you Mike and thank you to my classmates.

KB

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