Class 2 - Session 201

This week's we had an easy start: I had to take a shot of my self doing one of the three tasks:
1) Taking a big step to the side
2) kicking a ball
3) doing a 180 degrees turn (which is the hardest to get, and that is what I decided to do eventually).

Anyway, I took a few shots (about 20 or so), and chose the one which looks as it has been taking from a horror comedy feature, with a slow double take turn to the back and a quick turn.
Next we had to make a minimum of at least two pages of sketches - taken from the video reference which later on the week to come next, will be the thumnails I will use to block my Ballie figure.

Second Semester - Body Mechanics

Hey guys, did you miss me?
Finally, I've began my second semester on AM and this one will be all about BODY MECHANICS.
I also got a new mentor, and she seems great - Gini Santos.
Gini is currently working in Pixar (it's a small place but I believe you may heard about it :), and worked on feature films such as Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles and more!
I hope I will enjoy this semester as I did in my last one and ofcourse as always, your humble servant will keep you posted on his blog.

Class 1 - Session 12

This is the last class for this semester.
It's a little sad to finish the semester and I feel I learnt SOOOO much during it.
Sure, there are many things I would have done differently if I to begin it all over again, and I'll be doing it better, and faster, but this is PROGRESS :)
Here is a playblast (the animation parts) of my entire first semester - hope you will like it.





My first semester progress reel from Ziv Ariely and Vimeo.

Class 1 - Session 11

This week we had to go into perspective view (3/4) and start blocking our personality walk.
I chose a happy walk with a double bounce which made my life really difficult, especially due to the reason I've done the vanilla walk wrong: I used only the X-rotation on the legs instead of using it while operation the Leg rotate and as I understood this problem (ofcourse I needed to make about 5 times from scratch the personality walk and each time it looked different but also was quicker for me to do), everything became easier to pose.
Also we had to pose Stu in an Inbalance situation. I'm not sure I picked the best pose for the assignment, but I think it went pretty good though.

Class 1 - Session 10

Finally! A personality walk! Isn't that great? Isn't it wonderful?
NO!!
I must admit that the entire walk cycles issue had not yet came to settle upon my squishy brain and when you see a good walk cycle and think to yourself: "that's a cool looking walk, I could do it" think twice if you know how - plan ahead!
As I'm typing these words I'm in the last day of the second week to have the personality walk (that means I'm two weeks after my first attempt to make something which to look somehow similar to my video reference).
It's very difficult to catch things and every little thing you do changes everything - Especially the tempo of the walk (24 FPS or 36 like I did = A second and a half per cycle).
It's easy to get confused what to do, when to do it, choose the right angle for the hips (next week we'll get deeper into the hips subject) and how to get it done as it should.
This week we had to curve our walk only in stepped mode - next week SPLINE!!!
We also had to give Stu an exhausted pose.






Happy Walk Reference from Ziv Ariely on Vimeo







Personality walk - stepped mode from Ziv Ariely on Vimeo

Class 1 - Session 9

Well, this week we had to take our vanilla walk and make it in spline mode.
It sounds easy, and it even looks easy but it's hard as hell to try and work each problem that you come up with in every giving moment!
Knee popping that my entire class had to deal with (I think I was the only one who didn't had any knee popping and it disturb me :) a week later I understood I worked wrong - not only use the Rotate x on the leg but also use the Leg ROll (A combination of the two actually as my mentor suggested).
We also had to give Stu a concerned looking pose.






Vanilla walk and Concerned pose - Revision from Ziv Ariely on Vimeo

Class 1 - Session 8

This week we had to start making a vanilla walk.
It's looking much easier than it is.
I think I've managed to do a pretty good job though.
The first week was only to have in stepped mode - the blocking of the walk cycle.
The week after that I'll need to change the stepped mode of the walk into splines.







Vanilla walk - Ballie (week 1 - blocking in stepped mode) from Ziv Ariely on Vimeo