[ p l a c i d c h a o s / A M ]

This week we learned more about arcs and paths of action. Arcs are extremely important if you ever want to breath life into an object, due to the fact that organic creatures don't move linearly. In fact, the only things that usually move linearly are mechanical. That being said, the use of arcs really points out the difference between a true animator and someone who just moves things from point A to point B. It all comes back to constantly observing the world around you...

The assignment this week was to download another new character, "1-leg," and animate him from a side view doing a single jump, including the landing and settle. Sounds pretty easy, but you can see that we're starting to put it all together now; arcs, paths of action, squash and stretch, anticipation, and successive breaking of joints.

Here is my first attempt

I was trying to show the character jump, and then come down with his weight shifted too far back, thus having his momentum shoot him backwards where he finally catches himself and settles. It became obvious after receiving initial feedback that what I was trying to accomplish wasn't reading well.

Here is a revised final. Much better I think.

Overlapping Action: a pain in my butt. This weeks lesson was very good and I thought I understood it, however implementing what I thought I had learned has turned out to be more difficult than I expected. For this weeks assignment we were to download a new character, Tailor, who, as you've probably guessed, has a tail.

A ball with a tail...

Our assignment is to make Tailor bounce at least three times across the screen in a forward direction, from a side view. It didn't help that I had a busy week in my regular life, but this is by far the worst assignment I have turned in, in fact I didn't even get it finished. Bobby even talked to me about it... Not a good way to draw attention to yourself, let me assure you. Even though it's horribly incorrect and I am embarrased to show it, I swore the animation ninja plegde to lose the ego and show all my crappy work.

This first playblast is the version I turned in. It's obvious that it's not finished; the tail loses it's overlap after the first hop. It's sad too because I just started to understand how overlapping worked, and then I ran out of time.

This is my attempt to finish and tweak the assignment, and to the untrained eye it may look better, or even good, but trust me it's not.

Here is another revision, but I'm still not happy with it, and as you can see I kinda gave up at the end. What a quitter.

Eventually I will come back and practice more with Tailor. Maybe.

This week our lesson was on the principle of "anticipation," with an introduction to "squash and stretch."

Our assignment for the week was to animate a squishy ball that begins to bounce from a resting position, which means that we had to have the ball anticipate/squash before its leap to build up inertia to carry it upwards. The other obstacle is that while the ball has to have some personality to begin its jump, after it begins to move it had to retain the realistic presence of a rubber ball; in other words, it wasn't allowed to come alive and dance a little jig.

My first attempt

On this first revision I adjusted the spacing of the frames on the initial leap to make the ball look like it was shooting up with a lot of self propelled energy.

Here's the final.

In prior versions I had made a point to have the ball squash some at the apex of every bounce; thinking that momentum would continue to propel the bottom of the ball up even as the ball itself started to fall again. Jason said that while that was a correct way of thinking, the amount of squash I had at the top made the ball appear too malleable; more like a water balloon then a rubber ball. So I heeded his adivce and got rid of the squash at the top of the bounces and "poof" I had a rubber ball.

Along with animating the ball, we were also assigned a single pose of Stu appearing devastated. This was my initial attempt; looks more like a pose of subservience...

And here is the revised pose, much clearer, I think.

Doesn't he just break your heart?

The overachiever assignment for week 4 was to animate a heavy ball coming to rest next to the ball with s&s. I took it a step further and added the basketball as well. Does that make me an over-overachiever...?

Note the affect the heavy ball has on the other two balls when it hits the ground... Subtle, yet needed. I rock.

We received an introduction on the principle of "timing" during our lecture this week. Timing is easily one of the most important of the 12 principles, as it's responsible for giving movement both meaning and emotion.

The assignment for this week was to animate another ball, (orthographic side view again), but this time with squash & stretch applied to it.

Here is my first attempt

The ball is looking good, but is missing an extra hop at the end. Here is the first revision.

I've added the extra bounce that was needed, but now it stops rolling too soon. Here is the final.

Much better, wouldn't you say?!