Sub-par...

If there's one thing I can say, it's that this school keeps me on my toes. But this week's special. For one thing, I'm passing in the final for the golf swing. That's unfortunate, because last week, Scott gave me some pretty extensive notes, which I couldn't possibly fit in. Not that his demands were unreasonable, no. See, we were moving t0 Massachusetts. WHAT?! You might say. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE SEMESTER?! You might continue.

Unfortunate as the timing may have been for school, it was perfect for most everything else, so we made it happen. Quite a few things fell into place for that to occur, not the least of those considerations was family, our daughter, the selling of our house, my wife's department getting widdled down to practically nothing, and her imminent resignation, but not hidden at the bottom of it, was the fact that I'd have more time to work on school work once the move was finished (about 10 days) and Siggraph will be in...you guessed it, BOSTON this year! Plus at least 10 other pros helped completely out weigh the cons, and we made the trip.

The bad news. My mid-term movie was a disaster. Yep. I tried like heck to get all of those changes in, but alas, in the end, I had to let it go. There was still half a semester to make up ground, so I wasn't feeling like I was done for, but boy, it was really tough to just let it slip. And Scott was really cool about it. He understood, and we worked out a plan to keep me in the loop for the ten days during the trip, and I even attended the live QnA from Arkadelphia, Arkansas via the internet at the friendly Hampton Inn! Those be good folk.

So, here it is in all it's unfinished-ness.

Click on the image, as usual...

In The Rough...

So here's the tricky part, especially if you've used IK arms (please see a couple posts ago for details). Going from stepped to spline*. Now, I do this in chunks, and I also go to flat** first, because true spline gives you too much junk to work out that early in the process. Going to flat and using the copied pairs method*** allows you to work a lot like you're still in stepped, maintaining your snappiness and timing and all that, but you can start working on your transitions from pose to pose and refine in a fairly orderly manner. A few things are evident when you have a look this week. You can definitely see what happens when you go from stepped to flat. Some things are definitely soupy. You can see that the golf club is not actually attatched to his hand! You can see in the take*** that the hands look separated from the body in what they're doing. Feet are sliding, motion is somewhat sloppy...all things that the animator needs to work out. That's not even getting into the more artistic decisions like, how do you get from pose to pose, you're breakdowns, as it were, offsetting parts of the body, easing or overshooting, acting...we're just talking about the mechanics and reality stuff that you don't want getting in the way of the performance. Now, you definitely are thinking about all of that stuff anyway, but you want to wait to actually execute the majority of it 'til you've locked down you're character. At least I do anyway...

Click on the image to see the movie for this week - blocking plus

* stepped to spline - refers to methods of data interpretation from one saved set of data to the next over time. Stepped method holds the value of a set of data until it reaches a new saved set of data. Spline will in one of a variety of ways try to interpret the best way to gradually become the next set of data from the first. Example: Timeline has 10 seconds. At second 1, value is 0. At second 10, value is 10. In stepped, very second from 1 to 9 has a value of 0. In spline, every second has an added value. Second 5 in spline would have 5, not 0.

** Flat - A method of spline mode, which arrives at saved sets of data by easing into them and out of them at equal amounts. Creating a wave look.

*** Copied Pairs - A computer animation technique that allows one to work in spline and still maintain holds by placing equivalent sets of saved data over the length of the hold.

Mulligan.

Ok, so that first pass wasn't exactly breathtaking. Agreed. But it gave me a jumping off point, which was exactly what it's purpose is. Scott gave me some really great tips. We changed the camera angle. Tried to build more of an arc into the set up for the swing. I pushed those poses more, and adjusted the timing to really build some tension before he swings through. We also added some time for him to follow the path of the ball before reacting, which I think really helped. I'm now up to about 225 frames, still manageable. I've decided that, given the other demands on my time, 200-250 frames is about what I can get in and really make it polished animation. We'll see!

Click on image to see latest pass...

Mechanics of a Golf Swing...

Last semester, I got a bug in my britches about trying a golf swing animation, but folks thought that, as a 4-emotion test, some of my other ideas had more potential. Well, this semester, I get a chance to do that golf swing! So I planned 'er out, did a whole bunch of video reference of myself getting out there and trying it (which I'll post soon, it's on the other conputer) and blocked out my first attempt at the golf swing shot! And it's not very impressive. But it's a start!

I am, however, starting to regret my use of IK (Inverse Kinematic) arms as a primary animation tool, as getting every thing to work properly is a hellish mess when it comes to arms, because I'm essentially reverse-animating the natural progression of arm movement. With IK arms, the arm position is dictated by the position of the upper and lower arm as they relate to the hand. Not as they relate to each other and the shoulder (which is called FK, or Forward Kinematic arms). IK arms can be thought of as like the muppets. You know how on Kermit, there are sticks attached to his hands? C'mon, I know you're not supposed to acknowledge that they are there, but we've all seen 'em. Well, what happens when you move the stick? The hand moves, and the arm, jointed in the middle at the elbow and connected to the shoulder, moves based on where that hand goes. That's inverse kinematics. Forward kinematics is like G.I. Joe arms. There's a stiff joint at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist. The position of the parts is relative to what you've done to move each section around. You move the shoulder, the whole arm will move too. You move the lower arm, the hand will move there too. The hand does not dictate the position of the arm, unless, of course, you grab the hand and force the arm into a position, but it's difficult to do that, because it's not designed for that. However, that would be a way of attempting to make that FK joint system IK. A really good use of IK arms, if when the hand DOES dictate the position of the arm, like when a character is hanging from his hands, or is resting his hand against a wall, or in some way is acted upon by an outside force. Whew. Anyway, my arms on this guy are IK. I won't discover the folly of my ways 'til the next project.

Click on the image to see the first blocking...

Wrapping Up A Good Lesson...

As term two came to a close, I found I'd bitten off a heck of a lot more than I could chew! The down side was that I didn't get a chance to finish this one. The bright side was that, even still, there was a lot I'd learned from the experience. What I have here, is a snippet of the shot showing the character as I started to try to refine him, and the little ball with the tail on it, even going so far as to rough in the later ball actions in something called a "grease pencil tool" that allows you to draw two demensionally in MAYA. It's really cool, and gave me a chance to work out some of the timing and action. And actually, if the length of this had been the entire length of the piece, I probably would have been fine, but the whole thing was better than twice this length, and just killed me. Especially since I was doing a lot of things over, had chosen some methods that were more time consuming because I didn't know any better and generally, was working harder, not smarter. Oh, the life of a student.

Click the top image for the pencil test, click the bottom version for the "final" piece I turned in.

Meet Scott Lemmer, Mentor, Class 3

My Mentor for Class 3 is Scott Lemmer! Really cool guy, actually graduate not too long ago from a rather prestigous animation program in Canada, and then went on to work for DNA Studios in Texas. DNA's just finished up production on 'Ant Bully', a feature that's coming out soon, and they're actually laying off a lot of their talent, I think including Scott, so I'm not sure what he's up to right now, since it's been about 3 months since I've really talked with him. But he's a great example of how quickly you get worked into this industry if you have talent. He's a fairly young guy, baby faced in fact, but has a wealth of knowledge. He was a pleasure to have as a Mentor, even though I'm sure I out age him by at least 5 years, probably more like 8! I feel old.
Looks like he's getting his portfolio site ready to look for a new job (another clear industry negative, the potential that, as an animator, you become ex[pendable once the work load slows) so his website professional website (www.scottlemmer.com) is down, but he does have a student site still up, you can find a link to that to the right of this article under my Mentors.