got a little time to shape the head more, it’s coming along! I thought I’d also take a shot at trying to pop some eyes in there and see how they would react. since I didn’t learn anything about animating …
Well… Several things came up in my regular day to day life… so I wasn’t able to get to modeling… Now I’ve gotten a little time to start the process… I spent a little time this week trying to troubleshoot …
last night proved to not be a very restful night of sleep… I had several dreams, and some of which had a recurring theme… Here’s the details of one that I’m still able to recall… I was at work, as …
I was able to get some more information our of my teacher for the 3rd module of my class… over the last several months he kept referring to a “Project Brief” and that I needed to reference it, telling me …
Feb
06
got a little time to shape the head more, it’s coming along! I thought I’d also take a shot at trying to pop some eyes in there and see how they would react. since I didn’t learn anything about animating features like this in class, I’m kinda on my own… Check it out… it IS a work in progress… I’m sure I’ll find a much better way to do this, I’m not a fan at all… just thought I’d share it so far.
I made a couple of quick changes… here’s the result of that…
Feb
04
Well… Several things came up in my regular day to day life… so I wasn’t able to get to modeling…
Now I’ve gotten a little time to start the process… I spent a little time this week trying to troubleshoot how I’m going to be able to animate the eyes on an anime head… since they are so large. I think I’ve come up with an idea, but I’ve got to get the head fairly built to test it all out…
So… here’s the first image of he process… I’ve still got a lot of work to do… I roughed it out, now I’m starting to smooth the cheeks and work on the eyes and nose. I’m happy with the little time I was able to put into it so far… hopefully I’ll have more time this evening!
Jan
24
last night proved to not be a very restful night of sleep… I had several dreams, and some of which had a recurring theme… Here’s the details of one that I’m still able to recall…
I was at work, as you can find me during normal working hours… The phone on my desk started ringing, I answered the phone with a “Hello.” The person on the other line wasn’t coming through too clearly, he tried saying his name and where I was to remember him from. Several moments later the line was disconnected… I didn’t know what to make of it, I couldn’t remember the name, and didn’t understand what he was talking about… something about soup or something.
The phone rang again, and being the dutiful employee I am, I answered. ”Hey, this is (can’t remember this detail) again, can you hear me now?” I could, and so he continued. ”Great, so, about this Soup Movie you said you were going to be in…” Uh-What?” I replied, I didn’t know anything about a soup movie, or that I was going to even be in a movie for that matter. ”Yeah, a few months ago I spoke with you about being in this movie, it’s about a guy who travels from Minnesota to Iowa, consuming nothing but soup.” He went into some other details about it that I cannot remember, but I was concerned about how much of my time this was going to take, and the monetary compensation… since I was sure I wouldn’t be able to maintain my normal job during this film project. I do not recall what the payment was going to be, but I believe it was better than what I was getting, and if the movie was successful, I would get more. I was also inquisitive as to what this role called me to do… after some more conversation with the man on the other line… Not a whole lot, I was chosen because I looked like who they envisioned for the movie as well as being pretty humble in my mannerisms, they thought that the role would be easy for me to pull off. I asked how much soup I was going to have to consume during the course of making the movie, the answer was more than I could have expected… over 6000 bowls of soup… This was a bit of a concern, considering that it’s probably all I would consume for the next few months. I looked around for my wife, but she wasn’t there… what was I going to do?
I’m pretty sure I thought about asking for some time to think about it, but it also feels as if I had already signed on to do this… this call was more of a “when should we be expecting you” call than a “will you still be doing it”. I agreed to meeting up with the guy, and that’s when this phase of sleeping ended…
I think I should stop eating Goldfish Crackers right before going to sleep… seems to have an adverse effect on me 
Jan
18
I was able to get some more information our of my teacher for the 3rd module of my class… over the last several months he kept referring to a “Project Brief” and that I needed to reference it, telling me it was on this particular page… well I would always respond stating that I didn’t see it, scrolled through everything and so on… but I wasn’t given any more information about it…
I would ask “so all I need to do it this, this and this and I’m done?” and I would receive a response telling me that I needed to review the brief, and this, this and this needed to be done… so I would do those things, and mention that I still couldn’t find the brief… eventually I did everything I was told to do, and had all of that submitted… the reason why I got a poor grade… I didn’t submit everything the Project Brief said I needed to…
I asked again where it was because I couldn’t find it anywhere, and asked that if I submit the missing pieces if it will improve my grade… I FINALLY find out that if I click back to the 1st lesson, it’s there, at the top of the lesson, not where I had been told the rest of the time. I was also told that the grade was final…
Kinda sucks to find this stuff out afterwards, each lesson should have the required elements listed in it rather than a few reference to a file that is easily overlooked or possibly forgotten at the very beginning of the class.
I’m glad to know that my grade wasn’t low due to bad work, just to the lack of other materials… like an essay explaining why I wrote the backstory this way and what references I used. It’s kind of like doing a math problem, understanding all the steps thoroughly in your head, getting the answer right but graded low because not all the work was shown (which has also happened to me)
Since there’s no chance of increasing my grade, I’ll be spending my time working on new projects then focusing on this old one.
Jan
13
Took a few weeks to get my grade, which was quite a bit lower than I expected… not exactly sure why… got a C. Based on the statement he made on the work previously it sounded like he only had an issue with 1 of the videos and noted that the 12 principles were not as polished as the final ones… which I would have thought would be the case for anyone…
Whatever the case, it’s all complete now… Perhaps he’s more critical than others… My wife says that she’s noticed several of my professors and teachers being rougher and harsher on grading me due to the quality of the work I’ve done. If this isn’t the case, I feel bad for other students taking the course who’s stuff isn’t nearly as well done as mine.
Oh well… Now that I’m all completed, I can start working up my Resume’ and shoot that out places and start working on perfecting my skillz!
Jan
11
Here’s the 1st attempt at the Ads I needed to create for SVS’s Final 40th Anniversary, this will be Reebok.
Jan
11
I emailed my teacher on Monday to inquire about my grade for the final course, he’s hoping to have it all updated by the end of the week. A quick look a minute ago still shows that I still have not gotten the grade yet. *Fingers Crossed*
Jan
05
I plan on this character having functional eyes and a mouth, so it’s going to take a while. Provided I’m able to get this done I’ll work on lip-syncing and really bringing this character to life!
Jan
03
Well… it’s been a week… still have not received my final grade for the course… don’t know if that’s a good or bad thing
I’ve drawn up an idea of the character that I’ll be modelling next… it’s a bit funny looking at it, it has elements of the last 2 characters I’ve created, but should hopefully end up being very cute, and I should be able to replicate it for multiple people.
I’m going to use this character to further my education and give the character a working jaw and movable eyes, both of which I didn’t learn in my course. hopefully over the next month you’ll be seeing lots of progression of the character and some quality work!
Dec
28
I heard back from my teacher, here’s the latest update to my class:
“I like the walk; there’s a lot of hip movement. That’s missing from the secondary action animation. Push off and landing are great in the jump, but the part where she’s airborne could use more work. The run looks like a walk, the way the legs move, but its a great start.
Her legs would bend more to absorb the landing impact, and that would show more squash and stretch. Arcs are almost always present in human or animal movement, so there should be no need to use a prop. But then that’s true for pretty much all of the principles. The principles animations are noticably less tuned than the final animations.
I’ll grade everything uploaded and in the thread below. “
I intentionally didn’t spend a lot of time fine tuning the 12 principles animations, since technically they were supposed to be completed a while before the final animations, But since I was racing through to get it all completed I did what I needed to show the principle, but ensure that the final 4 videos were well done. I checked several times last night and again this morning… no grade as of yet…
