Blocking pass on your weight shift exercise.
The rules/parameter of this assignment:
- Static camera, framing the action well.
- start from a standing pose, have the character turn 180 and start to walk/run in the opposite direction.
- There is room to put a little pantomime acting in this, but you will be graded harder if there's a lot of acting and poor weight. The goal of this is to really nail weight mechanics.
- The assigned rig will be Hogan. I have a version of Hogan with a modified facial UI, or use whatever Hogan is handy.
- NO rendering. NO motion blur. No props on the character. NO texturing. You can construct a simple set using cubes, spheres, and cylinders, but the focus is all on the weight shift
- We'll spend 2 class sessions on this. For next week, focus on Key poses, breakdowns, and timing. .Stepped is fine, but not mandatory.
Hi Jeff! Can we please use Norman (with the constraint to keep it default/gray and no modding) instead of Hogan. It's just so that if the animation turns out good, we could later (after this class) do some modding over the reference and make it a demoreel piece!?
ReplyDeleteSorry Sonia. My rationale is that for this piece, keeping the rig the same will level the playing field and take the focus and pressure off of making a perfect demo reel piece. In all honesty, a 2 week exercise on basic weight mechanics shouldn't really be intended to be a demo reel piece. That being said, it might be if the animation is really solid.
ReplyDeleteIn this past cycle exercise, I opened it up to any Norman, and I felt that people spent more focus on modding than they did on animating.
My feeling about rigs and animation and learning animation is that if you treat everything as a demo reel piece, you start to pressure yourself and make timid decisions. It happens to me and I've seen it happen to tons of students over the years. I would say be bold, push your decision making ability, and really have fun with these pieces. A Demo reel piece may happen where you least suspect it. But sometimes an exercise needs to be just that.
Also. Norman is giving people a lot of trouble, and this next exercise will be as much an exercise in workflow and planning animation as it is a study in basic weight, and I'd rather use a simpler rig.
Also, one thing I've learned out in the animating world is simpler rig=more time for animation quality.
I understand Jeff. I'm probably the closest to Final Review in this class, and so the pressure of getting demoreel pieces is pretty high at this point. I'm finding it hard to work on my reel outside of class (time wise), and though I'm not overconfident that I can deal with complex rigs and get demoreel-worthy animation right away, but I wanted to give it a try.
ReplyDeleteNonetheless I understand what you mean by focusing on animation more than the rig. I'll take your advise and follow the brief.
http://noahbordner.com/reel.html
ReplyDeleteHogan holds up here :)