midterm reels - grading

please start sending these in! I've received about 1 out of 35 so far.

I just wanted to give a quick review on how I grade.

• Participation
  In this, I include - posting and commenting on the blog. Commenting on fellow students work and participating in class (asking questions, etc.) For example, Nat and Sonia are the 2 most frequent posters and make the effort to critique their fellow students work, so they get extra blog points. Also, putting your work out their for critique counts.
• Following the assignment
  This seems obvious, but maybe not, so I'll give a breakdown of it.
  If the assignment is blocking of a walk cycle and the lecture included key poses and passing poses, I would expect there to be key poses and passing poses in the blocking. This has some gray area to it. For example, Joanna handed in a blocking animation without arm movements, but because the animation demonstrated an understanding of the main events that happen in a cycle, no points were taken off.
  On a more practical level, a cycle might be graded like so:
  blocking pass- C would be hitting the key poses of the scene. Contact, compression, passing pose, high pose, and contact. They could be crappy mistimed poses, but as long as there is an understanding of what's going on, it counts. A B would be going beyond the basics and putting some style and quality into it. So if it's a big character and you've animated him how a big character would move, points added. If it's a generic walk and lots of attention was paid to the arcs and how the arms swing, the rate of accelleration, etc. points added. B+ is going beyond the assignment a bit and making it shine. A- and A are if you really knock it out of the park.
• Attitude
  This is a nebulous area, but I factor in rate of improvement. I try to allow room for failure. So in the weight shift exercise, if it was terrible the first week, but you listened to the feedback and made it work, extra points added. Some teachers just have a fixed scale of quality level of the assignments. I try to factor in your hard work and willingness to learn and improve, and reward that in the grades. Conversely, if you have a lot of natural talent but half ass the assignments, I factor that in too. If you have no reference material (ever) and show no planning, that counts against you as well, especially on assignments that require it. You guys have been for the most part fantastic in this area, and it's really showed in the work!

if you have any questions about grades and grading, feel free to ask.