Long overdue update

Okay, so I'm not exactly the most dedicated blogger. But hey, better late then never. Anyway, I finished my first dialog shot at AM a few weeks ago and have started on my 2 character dialog shot. Anyway, I won't ramble on. Here they are.

Here's the 2 character shot just barely coming out of the blocking phase. Still lot's to do here but I think the core is all there. The shot is still in linear so the spacing is even. I'll move to spline next week.


Here is what I had originally but my mentor wanted me to simplify the first shot. I still like it but I can see why my mentor wanted the changes too I suppose. Anyway, for those of you with my email, let me know what you think.



And Here is the final single character shot I finished a couple weeks ago.

class 3 week 6 It's Bishop Time Baby!!!

HaHA!!! Yeah!!! Finally we get to start working on lip syncs with a full character (Bishop) here at AM. We will finish the pantomime and eye movements this quarter then next quarter we finish the lip sync and facial expressions. I can't wait to get started on this one! I have been tirelessly wading through hours and hours of movie dialog trying to find a really unique piece to do my lip sync to. There are two that I really, really want to do but they are too long for the frame limit in this assignment, so hopefully I will be able to do one of them next quarter. I'm already planning those out in my head and I haven't even started the first one yet. Anyway, you may be wondering what the dialog is for my shot. Well, you'll just have to wait and see ;) Hey gotta get that traffic to this blog somehow.

class 3 week 5 Fianlly done

Whew, Finally done! This one sure had it's fair share of headaches but I managed to not kill myself and worked through them. Anyhoo, not a lot to say this week so here it is in all of it's.....erm.....glory...?... ;)

Special thanks to Cesar Tafoya and everyone else that gave some much needed feedback last week.

class 3 week 4

Oh man, what a week. Work has been killin me, and along with all the work I have to put into my animation I think I'm about to go over the edge.

Still have not brought everything out of linear mode yet, working on my arcs before I worry to much about spacing.

I am working on some moving holds in the part where Stewie is looking around before jumping over the couch; but right now its just static holds. This has proved to be a difficult area for me because the moving holds look contrived. Not sure that I am really thrilled with the timing there either.

I am also having issues with the flip over the couch because the knees and elbows are flipping all over the place so I may end up doing that frame by frame. I'm to tired to figure it out in the graph editor right now. other then that most of my work this week has been in the first half of the animation. Looking forward to hearing what you have to say so on those areas so I can get moving on the rest this week.

I wish this was a little further along (still have done a lot) but I was struggling for hours with a broken rig after a particularly rough day at work and I just don't have it in me to do anymore tonight. I finally remembered that I had heard that you can transfer animations to a fresh rig, so after learning how to do that I transfered my animation but it was not a perfect transfer even though I am positive that I did it exactly right. I ended up having to tweak a lot of poses again. So I figure, get some sleep and hit it hard first thing Monday.

Anyway, all is not a loss. I changed up the middle a lot and got things reading much better there. I also added some better anticipation to the initial shocked reaction at the beginning. I have also added some more breakdowns throughout the animation so transitioning into my first polish pass next week shouldn't be a problem.

class 3 wk 2

Whooo! Been working on this all week. I was getting really frustrated with some of the transitions and the flip, but I finally worked through my headaches and started having fun with it again.

Here's a tip: if you make your character flip or turn 360 degrees then the foot twist and foot rock start acting crazy and not working properly when the values get cranked up to high. Having the values up to high on foot twist and foot rock also causes the foot roll to break. Make life easier on yourself and just use rotation to twist and rock the foot along with foot roll. If you do it this way foot roll wont break and you will have a lot less channels to deal with in your graph editor. HTH

Class 3 Week 1

Alright, Week1 of class 3 we begin planning our animation using Stewie. the objective is to do a pantomime animation that clearly conveys two different emotions. Anyway, my idea is to have Stewie lazily spread out on a couch flipping through the channels on the TV. He changes the channel and gets scared by the program, does a double take then looks around frantically before deciding to dive for cover behind the couch. He then pops his hand up from behind the couch and turns the TV off. After my initial stab at thumbnailing out my animation very close to my video ref, I decided that it was too close to the vid ref and not as entertaining as it could be. Per Don Kims suggestion I went in and studied the heck out of the ref and picked out the best beats in the ref and then went on to Thumb the poses out, paying close attention to exaggerating them to make the animation more entertaining. Now, it's time to get to work on the initial blocking pass.

Animation Mentor Rocks!!!

Hi everyone, My name is Paul Sewell and this blog is going to be used to document my experiences as a character animation student at www.animationmentor.com. Hands down the best animation school on earth. No other school even comes close!

I graduated from The Art Institute of Phoenix with honors in July of 2006 with a B.A. in Media arts and Animation. Shortly after graduation I went to the 2006 SIGGRAPH convention in Boston, Ma. It was there that I really started to notice the Animation Mentor program and the great education that it offered. After returning from Boston and realizing how much I still needed to learn, I enrolled in the winter 2007 quarter of animation mentor. Boy was I in for a delightful surprise!

My first Mentor was Kevin Koch who has made a name for himself working as an animator on such Hits as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, Shrek 2, Madagascar and Over the Hedge. Man alive what a great teacher. I literally learned more about the art of animation in the short 11 week quarter with him then in my entire time in college. It was amazing!!!

The following quarter I had Keith Sintay for my mentor. What an amazing guy!!! Keith has worked as an animator on Hunchback, Mulan, and Tarzan at Disney Feature; and Spirit, Sinbad and Sharktale at Dreamworks. He has most recently finished work as a Sr. Animator on Open Season, Monster House and Surf's Up at Sony Imageworks. Currently he is working on the hyper-real CG movie Beowulf.

This quarter was when I really started to feel that I was coming into my own. Keith and I have such a similar way of animating and he really helped me to better understand my style of animation. I learned so much from him!

This Quarter I start "Introduction to Acting" with Don Kim as my mentor. Man I can't wait!!! This is really when we get to start rolling up our sleeves and showing what we're made of. Because of Animation Mentor I have a confidence in my skills as an animator that I never had while I was in college. I absolutely can't wait to get out into the animation industry and bring the joy of my art to millions all while learning everything that I can from the amazing people that I will work with.