Class 1, Week 5 - Squash and Stretch

Week 5- The Obstacle Course

The big challenge for me this week was staying inside the frame limit.
Also picking a course took some thought. We had 12 courses to choose from and they are all great. I met an AM Alumni Rene S. who told me they only had 3 or 4 courses when he was a student, doing this same assignment.

With the new character rigs becoming available to AM students this year, it's worth noting that AM is stil growing and continues to make large strides to provide every possible advantage to it's students.

I chose to keep my animation short and simple, demonstrating the squash and stretch involved with anticipation, impact, and bounces.

Thanks for dropping by, see you soon,
Max

PS I met Rene S. at a demo workshop of the new Sandi 3D/ hand drawn software. This is an amazing new product to keep an eye on for the future.

Here, watch a Sandde Demo. No 3D glasses provided, but believe me it works.

Class 1, Week 6 - Overlapping Action

Here's my pendulum swing from last week's assignment. 

I'm working on a revision based on my Mentor's feedback and that should be up early next week if not sooner.

Thanks for stopping by, come visit again soon. 

Max

PS I did this assignment while out of state at the American College Theater Festival (ACTF). There I participated in a production of Dog Sees God, workshops and saw many other shows.

Two very influential workshops were, the Art of Clown, and Mask as departure point. 

I learned many things that could be applied to animation and whould like to write some articles about them. Those will be seen here as soon as I can get them written. Lots of great info out there.

Happy Animating,

: D

Max

Class 1 Week 7 - computer crashes...

Computer Crash - Booo

Lost most of my past work in a computer crash about three weeks ago so my privious assignments will not reach this Blog.

Sad day.

However, with that behind me, I have more reason to post and make my work available so It has less chance of being totally lost.

The plan is to Post assignments at the same time, or shortly after, I submit them on the AM site.

Thank you for reading and talk to you soon,
Max

PS This week we're working with Tailor!

I'm Alive

Here's a quick update since I haven't added anything in a while.

I've finished Maya springboard and have started AM! I'm in week 3 of Class one and my Mentor is the Fabulous Don Kim.

We are currently working on our Ball bounce assignment and our first animation of the program.

Very excited, and hard at work.

I find I'm spending more time commenting on others work then on working on my own material. Just an observation since it is very important to learn to give and receive feedback.

Last week we were assigned to Go out and Draw people out in the world.

I went to the mall and drew Children playing in the Jungle Gym.

Here are my drawings:

And Here's my final Pose for AM's Stu character

I had difficulty getting Stu to read as a child or show what he was doing, (Sitting on a dome) So I sat him back into a reclining pose.

I'm currently working on the Ball Bounce and Excitement pose.

I'll leave you with my Maya Springboard Progress Reel.

Thnak you for reading (Yes, Thnak you) and talk to you soon. 

Max

Week 8, Session 9 - Robot Arm (Part 1)

Our first rigged character, this weeks assignment was to simply block out our animation. There was a major emphasis on workflow and the timing and spacing of our keys. The graph editor was also very important in doing this assignment well.

Check out the video:

 When deciding how to move this character I thought about what emotions I was feeling about this assignment. I related to the claw because he's given a simple task to do move this can over there and he just wants to do the minimum to make his overseer proud. However when I tried to do the very minimum in movements I kept hitting things with the robot arm. He became very clumsy and short sighted and like me when he goofed big time in knocking over the can he reactedin shock and horror at his own mistakes. I can be something of a perfectionist and get over focused on little details with a bit of foresight and planning I can avoid my own little mistakes.

 In fact, to make this assignment look better I animated the can to follow the crane in its movements, however this would be something to correct on our next assignment when we're introduced to... constraints.

 Thanks for reading and Happy Animating,
Max

Week 8, Session 8 - Bounce

Using the simple ball rig, this lesson focuses on adjusting timing for keys,  tangent angels and tweeking animation in the key and value boxes using *= and /= short cuts in the Graph editor, as well as importing animation from other files.

This is my final "Bounce2" animation for Maya Springboard.

Enjoy,
Max

Week 7 - Session 7 - Circle

Objective: Deepening our understanding of the graph editor as well as using motion paths.

How: Animate a ball rig moving in a perfect circle.

My method: I typed in respective translator data to key the ball in four extreme points of the circle using (5,0,0) (0,5,0) (-5,0,0) & (0,-5,0).
Spaced the keys,
Used clapped tangents
THEN, I created a nurbs curve Circle in the same size I wanted my motion path to be. Next, I put that circle in another layer which I made a reference layer.
From there I could refine my motion path with the circle curve as a guide.

I did hit a snag when I realized I hadn't imported the ball rig, andhad animated a plain sphere. The result would have been the same but I'm a perfectionist. So, I copied the keys and put them on a ball rig.
The trouble was the center/ pivot points were different so I had to move the new graph editor lines collectively for the center to be right where I wanted it.

Thumbs up for learning to fix problems!

Thanks for reading,
Max