AM week12: Studying Walks with Different Weights

No assignment last week :P

AM week11: In-Depth Look at Hips

Balance Pose

AM week10: Introduction to Walks with Character

Exhausted Pose

AM week09: Exaggeration and Weight

Vanilla Walk


Concerned Pose

The assignment of this week is clean up and polish the Vanilla Walk.
I tried out the new way to do it, and found it really fast and helpful, BUT, I think my walk still not work pretty well.
After fixing the knees, it somehow became too rigid and unnatural.
I'm crazy busy at a project this week and don't have time to make the walk go any further.
I need more time to study about the balance between weight and poping knees.
Time is alway what I'm lack of...

As the Concerned pose, that might be the hardest pose to express so far lol , especially if I have to keep the silhouette readable since Stu got no face expressions.
I drew out few poses then incidentally put them together, hope them works :P

AM week08: Introduction to Walks

Vanilla Walk Blocking


Strength Pose

Finally, here comes the Vanilla Walk...
One of the hardest thing to animate...
The Lecture of this week was really really helpful, it helped me to figure out many things I confused before.
The problem I got the most would be the process of clean up, I always get lost in graph editor, should I change and rearrange the keypose, or remain it by just adjusting the curve...?
I think I got some answers from the lecture, and I'll try it out in next week.

AM week07: Arcs and Path of Action

Tailor

This is my most expected character-Tailor.
The motion of tail is the main point, it might determines how lovely Tailor is, but I still got problems to make it as flowy as I want it to be.
I guess I need more practice about this subject :P

AM week06: Overlapping Action

Pendulum Overlapping Test


Pendulum Figure 8 Movement

This is the first time for me to focus on overlaping and follow through.
WHOLLY SHOOT!! That's the HARDEST practice I've ever had!! lol

I tried many different ways to animate it, layered with copy paste, pose to pose, straight ahead... and crazy combination method... O_o" but still not work very well...
At last I just did the basic Figure 8 scene without sudden drop or stop stuff...
Hope I can learn some lessons from this assignment and bring it to the next one, my most expected character - Tailor!

AM week05: Anticipation and Squash & Stretch

Obstacle Scene


Obstacle Scene Zoom In


Devastation Poses Revision

Obstacle scene,
I didn't start to do this assignment until Thursday because I can't bring up any idea of it, there're tons of works already been done before, finally, I decided to bring the point of last assignment into this one-two different weight balls, and the cartoony bouncingball at the first part compares to realistic behave at the rest. Of course, that got myself into huge trouble to do this assignment... :P

As Stu pose, I can't decide which one's the best to read as Devastation, so I submitted them all at last.

AM week04: Intro to Timing

Different Weight Bouncing Ball

The assignment I got for this week was, study about the timing and space then make an animation to show two different weight bouncing balls.

The first problem I got was: I don't have a bowling ball...
I even considered about going to play bowling, then pretend I drop the ball not in purpose and my friend will shot the ref for me -_-+
Actually, I just studied the ref of a bowling ball drops down which I found from the internet at last.

The most time I spent on was story and planning. How would I want it to be happened in this animation? And I got huge problem with deciding the timing without testing in maya first or by a ref.
And then here comes another problem:
Man... I need somebody to take care of my art history class which always discusses about Philosophy to let me have more time with the assignments...

I added the rotations at last which also took me a lot of time. The collisions and rotations looks simple but really hard to make it right. I still got tons of things to learn...

AM week03: Planning & Blocking Methods

Basic Bouncing Ball


Excitement Pose Revision

This week we have to do a basic bouncing ball with the weight and bounce of basketball/soccer ball. And an excitement pose.

I went to the park at the back of my place to take a reference of basketball. Then studied the ref and planed it out. The same problem, again, keep it real or exaggerative? But the responses I got from the fellow students and mentor were: it's too light that looks more like a beach ball...

lol

AM week02: Principles of Animation

Pose Training

I'm enrolling in AnimationMentor this summer, finally. I was desirous of attending it since the first time I saw the info in a post by Carlos Baena on CG Talk's Forum. Although I once thought about giving up due ot my summer schedule, but this might be my only chance to take it, because the classes and schedule I have in the future before midpoint review will be heavier and heavier...

And this is the first assignment I have: Do quick sketch of what you see in the public space to get some poses, then recreate the pose by using the character STU.
And here's the pose - throwing a frisbee !
The only problem I have is, should I keep it close to the original pose? or how much should I exaggerate it? :P

I choose to keep the original pose and just do a little exaggeration at last, and finally the response I got from mentor is:

Exaggerate it! lol

Reel Spring 2006

Final Reel for Anim. Mechanics Class
contributions: story, animation, lighting
completion date: May 2006
running time: 28 sec
movie size: 1.65 mb

This is the final reel of my Animation Mechanics Class of spring semester at AAU, all the clips were assignments form this class.

It was my first semester, and also the first fundamental animation class, I thought we might start from a boucing ball and learn the principles, but we didn't... The 1st animation assignment was "Fishing ", then the "Walkcycle", "Wu-Shu"-find a clip that people do loop kick or flips and animate it out in maya, and the last one is "Lip-sync". When the lip-sync assignment were announced, there's only 2 weeks left... that was really a nightmare to finish it and edit the reel before the last class.

The sound clip for lip-sync was from the movie called "Animal House". And the music was an opening of another great movie ""Office Space", I saw it been used for animation reels many times that has almost become a cliche, but it's really in the right mood and totally matches the tempo, so I use it for a demo reel, again.

What I thought about the scene at first was: one insane commander, or maybe sort of old man who can't forget the past like World War II, is making a speech to the soldiers intensely. But later I found there's a similar work at The 10 Sec Club on that month, so I tried to think another idea. I wished to make it funny, and the funniest element of this clip would be the person who's talking is insane, then the characteristic and the reaction of the person he's talking to must be a contrast, so what situation would make people strogly think the talking one's crazy and the scene is interesting?

Then here comes the current version - a crazy cab driver and an innocent,scared passenger who's life is under a threaten :D

NINJA KAZE!!

NINJA KAZE Presentation
contributions: story, modeling, animation, texturing, lighting
completion date: Sep 2005
running time: 1 min 46 sec
movie size: 5.93 mb

This was supposed to be my final project of AIC and also prepared for applying for Graduate School in USA. But I accidentally know that it's still available to apply Spring semester 2006 of AAU(Academy of Art University) before Oct. last year, so I collected the parts I've done before for the Ninja project and edited it into a presentation reel right away in Sep. It's not a finished short film yet, but luckly I got the permission from AAU few days later and came to SF in Jan. this year.

I never had time to complete this short film, and honestly, I have become more interested in Character Animation which I would spend all my time on rather then doing a whole project that including modeling or texturing...etc. Now the files of it were all storaged in the deepest chamber of my hardisk, maybe I'll keep working on and finish it someday...

First Short

Chasing
contributions: story, modeling, animation, texturing, lighting
completion date: Apr 2005
running time: 36 sec
movie size: 4 mb

This is kind of my first short film, more like a trailer though.

It was an assignment for practicing path-animation, and I was really fascinated by a car racing anime from japan named "Initial D" at that time, so I just came up this idea - two high-speed chasing fish with familiar camera angles and scenes which were often seen in a car race or flying jet, and of course the theme song of Initial D!

This short might be looks a little stupid, but I even drew out the storyboard, did a lot of technic tests to figure out how to do the scenes , and stayed up every night to make it done within one week before the next class. And it's the one which made me fell in love with animation from then on.

SPEEDO! My very first character

Crying Lip-sync
contributions: story, modeling, animation, texturing, lighting
completion date: Apr 2005
running time: 12 sec
movie size: 1.10 mb

This fish character named "Speedo"(which is cliche...:P) was my first animated 3D character when I was enrolled in AIC in Taiwan for learning animation, and this clip was my first rendered animation, too. The assignment was: do a lip-sync from the movie "Kung Fu Hustle" by your own fish character. The fist image came up my mind was him - an unlucky-mudskipper-looking fish with cute big eyes :D