Updated Work!

Did some more work on Tennis, Weight Lift and Jump. Jury is on the 14th of this month and time is running fast!

Work Updates!

The Final Jury has been postponed until the 14th of June, 2008. So we have got some more time to improvise on our animation and maybe to add an extra piece too. These are my updates for the Jump and Dialogue test. They still are W.I.P's. The Jump needs overlaps and some cleaning and the Dialogue needs to be cleaned too. I have to work on the part where he wipes off the sweat on his forehead. Manu has given some corrections and I am working on them.

Jump

Dialogue

A row of juries!

This week was full of exams and juries at Takshaa. Tuesday, we had Communication Skills finals, Presentation on how will you pitch your demo reel to a studio. It went fine. Today we had our Art Jury, the jury member being Sumana Chowdhury, a well known artist. She liked my storyboard but said that I needed to make more Life Studies. Then, in the afternoon Raj interviewed us one by one for Professional Practices Jury. It was great, we learnt a lot of things and Raj is a great artist, a very professional person and he also sent a wave of motivation into the class when he addressed us at the end of the interview.
So now we have a weeks time left for our Animation Jury. Have to work really hard, really hard! Will post some updated works by Monday evening if possible.

AA 102

It is 9 full weeks since AA102 begun. We started off with a Ballman Pantomime and a Ballman Dialogue in which we learnt to hit accents. Now the Character Dialogue is halfway through, still lot more work to do. We have to make a 250 frames storyboard for any story in Art this semester. I have been able to do only 10 till now. This means that I have to make more 240 frames in just months time. Which means around 8 -10 frames a day. Pretty tough job and a punishment for being lazy. Jury in also approaching fast and I have to get my older works polished and there is also one more Dialogue coming. Hope everything goes well.

Finally Done!

We are done with the short films finally. Was a great pain to finish it. Faced a lot of problems in file management and some shots were lit with the blocking animation and weren't rectified. So when time came for render, all was in a mess and we had to render the files as they were. Couldn't help. No more excuses, we learnt what mistakes not to make from next time.

More on The Shortfilm Workshop

The first 3 days were terrible, but absolute fun. Planning was a pain in the neck. When we reached the 2d Animatic stage, things started getting clearer. We distributed the work amongst ourselves and worked pretty hard. Manu and Vaibhav kept visiting us in regular intervals and gave us comments and inputs on improving cameras, compositions, and the story of course. We kept falling behind schedule, but managed to make it upto a certain extent by working the whole night and having very less sleep or no sleep for a day. It was a wonderful experience as we learnt about working under pressure. We had to keep progressing and keep updating the animatics to check the flow of the story constantly. Finally by the end of the week, Vaibhav had to leave and we had animation, lighting and rendering to be done. We had a short break after the week which has made it difficult for us to comeback with the same vigour and enthusiasm. We have to somehow find time to finish it well. It is a long awaited projected now, which has made it even more important for us to complete it. We hope to do it by February end.

Vaibhav Kumaresh's Shortfilm Workshop

So finally I got something to post. Yesterday morning, the 3rd Semester Animation and Modeling students, here at Takshaa had their Jury evaluation. We were also allowed to attend the presentation. All were pretty okay. They wrapped it up somehow at 1:45 pm and after a short lunch break, we pitched our ideas for stories to Manu and Vaibhav. We were told about the workshop quite in advance, but because of the assignments, we couldn't think of a concrete idea.

After pitching our ideas, 2 stories were selected and the teams were divided into 5 and 4 members. I am in Sunpreet's team. The other teammates are Biju, Deepak and Supreeth. Sunpreet's and Kasana's stories got selected. So the person whose idea is being worked on is the Director. Our story is about how a fan gets beaten up by a Star Celebrity he adores, and later goes on to become a Star himself one day. We started to prepare the storyboards at around 4:00 pm and because of not being clear with the idea, lot of confusion acted as an obstacle in our progress. We were to show the detailed storyboard at evening 6:00. But we couldn't show a detailed one, instead we showed some thumbnail sketches. Manu and Vaibhav gave us some ideas how the story should start, what elements should be kept in mind and how the camera angles should be visualized and locked in the beginning itself. They also told us how they wanted a detailed storyboard with almost all components that we are going to put in the actual short film.
* The workshop will continue for 6 days and there is no binding on how much time you can spend on your short film. We need to be more planned and efficient in order not to disturb our sleeps. The schedule for the 6 days is as follows:

Monday - Ideas, Storyboards, Reference Materials, Props and Set Modeling
Tuesday - Review boards, 2d Animatics, Color Designs, Character Designs
Wednesday - 3d Animatics, Final 3d Animatics
Thursday - Animation, Animation (Blocking)
Friday - Animation, Animation (First and Second Pass)
Saturday - Final Animation

Vaibhav will be with us till Saturday. We have time for post production on Saturday and Sunday. The Final Movie has to be ready by Monday morning i.e. 12th Feb, 2008.

The Teams with Manu and Vaibhav

The Final Assignment!

At last Manu came for the class after a break of two weeks. He had come on Wednesday and saw our reference videos for the Final Assignment for this semester which would be any outdoor sport. The assignment was delayed by two weeks. So we got some more time to fix the Weight Lift. He said that a sport with sudden and undecided actions, shifting places and quite a lot of body movement would be preferred as it would be a good exercise. So nobody is doing Chess! Ha Ha Ha! Oh sorry! Chess is a game! So I am doing Lawn Tennis. I have already started with the planning for the same. Sketched a few poses and am trying to figure out different body movements in the game. The weight lift was kind of okay. Some technical problems, like box sliding and moving before lifting. The illusion of weight was also okay. The problem is that everything is just "okay". I have to still work a lot on it to make it "good". Here is the W.I.P at the end of the second pass (my level of second pass):

I have already started doing a fresh Weight Lift as the old one is in a mess in some parts and will take a lot of time to rectify. So doing a new one is a very good idea and this time I am doing it faster than the first time.

A not so Freaky Friday!

Today's class was O.K. A not so Freaky Friday . I was tensed before the class because of the average quality or work I could pull in the previous week. Fortunately or unfortunately, Manu couldn't take our class today. This is the third week since we our working on the Weight Lift assignment. I am quite satisfied with my work as I got good comments from Dhanamjaya today and some notes too. I should finish working on the notes given by him and finish it well so that I can show it to Manu in the Monday's class.

Dhanu's class was fun today, lots of jokes cracked, lots of nice points covered. He talked on weight shifts and moving holds. He also explained how the animation varies from character to character, the right proportion of antics, overshoots and settles to be applied wherever necessary and as the scene or style demands. Actually it was our Pre-Final Assessment, but it didn't seem to be like one. May be we will be judged and marked on Monday. Here is the W.I.P of the work:

Another Freaky Friday!

It was a good class again! We had to show our Weight Lift assignment progress. I don't know about other classmates, but I am always tensed when it comes to attending Manu's class. Only because I am not satisfied with my work. This is the reason why every Friday is freaky for me, and so was this Friday too. Manu was there and picked my playblast first! He asked me which stage of animation was it it in. I said first pass. He gave me lot of corrections regarding every action having a reason, weight shifts, naturalism and timing. He also said that just because the rig can reach any limit, it doesn't mean that you should use it to the fullest. Have some reason for every action. In one of my poses where the character was in maximum stretch position but the pose wasn't open where it had to be and the head was looking up too much, which would be impossible in reality. And in certain parts, there wasn't weight shift where I had to take a step back. Sunpreet was the one whose work was at its best that day. Manu like it very much and we all felt the same. He gave him some polishing notes. Good work Sunpreet.

Next week we got to show the corrected Weight Shift and the reference material for our sports assignment. We have to choose a sport which has change of place of the character, quite a lot body movements, dodging, and more. I am thinking of taking up Floor Exercise, an Olympics event. It has got run, jump, twisting the body in mid air, landing and coming back to normal (kind of spring action). Lets see what Manu says, whether I can proceed with it or not.

An Old Memory!

10 months old. This is my final project I did for the Intro to CG course. I named it Spiderman's Nightmare. Just felt like putting it up here. They say the work is nice.

The size is smaller than that of what I rendered. Even the lighting is not fully seen as the resolution has gone down after uploading it here. The animation is not all that nice, please bear with me.

C&C Welcome!

Weight Lift!

Huh! Long time since I posted something! Started with the Weight Lift assignment on Monday! Last Friday's Class was about the same thing. Manu gave us some points on what is necessarily needed in the assignment. Those points are:

1.Considering - How does the character consider the weight before lifting?

2.Approach - How he reaches for the heavy box?

3.Settle - How he holds the box and gets ready to lift?

4.Lift - How he lifts the box? The effort and strain to be shown.

5.Climax - Finally its our choice about what to do after lifting, either put it down, keep it somewhere or fall down with it.

Further he told about the poses that should be included to make it appealing, like the pyramid pose. The slight swing before lifting gives a good illusion of weight.
Here is the image of some poses he drew on the white board in class:


The class was as usual great! He cracks beautiful jokes in the middle of the class which makes the whole atmosphere light and also makes the class more interesting! Thanks to Manu!
So, we have to show him the blocking on Friday, 14th Dec, 07.

The Run assignment is also coming well now, hadn't worked on it for long. Dhanu gave some corrections on posing and timing. Will work on that. Trying to finish all assignments by the 31st of December, so that we have at least a month for the final sports assignment. Lets see how far and well it goes.

Still Jumping!

Day before yesterday's class was amazing! Dhanamjaya started the class as usual and then Manu joined later. The Jump assignment is almost done, except for the final touches. It is this stage that takes up a lot of time. Blocking takes less time and can be finished fast, but polishing takes more time. The Run assignment is also being done simultaneously. So we have the Jump to be finished, the Run (at least first pass) and the Weight Lift Blocking to be done by coming Friday. Manu's classes are fun for the reason that he tells both good and bad things in the assignment. His words are inspiring, and after a weeks work and tiresomeness, his class is what we really need to boost our energy levels to keep pushing and working hard.

I will post the Jump after I make it look presentable.

Today's Class!

Some more new lessons learnt today! Manu couldn't come today, maybe because of some other commitment. No doubt about anybody substituting Manu, but Dhanamjaya is a good teacher and I like his classes too. He teaches well and explains everything in detail and from a production point of view. But as usual Bharath and Mykel were sleeping in the class, he he he he.....! Anyways, coming back to the class, we showed our Jumps and he said, "If you would have shown this to Manu, I don't know what would have happened". Again a lot of corrections to be done with the Poses, Weight shifts, Silhouettes, Overlaps and so on. Here are some points he emphasized on today:

1. First of all, before jumping into animation directly, one should plan the shot properly using thumbnails, video references and also by acting it out on ones own.

2. The poses must be strong and appealing with clear silhouettes.

3. The first step is blocking. One can or must also add breakdowns and other important poses apart from the main i.e. key poses in the blocking stage it self.

4. Though not compulsory, depending on ones convenience and personal taste of workflow, the overlaps and weight shifts are also to be added in the blocking itself. Especially the physics part (body mechanics) of it must be added in the blocking part as it is inseparable from the natural movements of the human body. The overlaps can be added in the second stage also.

5. Then comes the polishing stage where attention is paid to small small details like animating the fingers, and smoothness of animation, slow ins and slow outs, settles and more.

All the above points are to be followed keeping in mind the below points (in random order):

Breaking symmetry in poses and animation
Carrying the emotion throughout the animation
Offsetting the animation
Overlaps to be done with the right proportions
Antics and Anticipation

Further he said it is very important for an Animator to explore him/herself and be observant all the time. Hard work and Smart work is the key to success. In his words, "A success guy doesn't need to say anything as his work speaks for him, whereas the failure guy is the one who gives all kinds of excuses". So it is upto you to decide, which side to be on?

Ball and Ballman Interaction.

This is a short idea that I started off with for one of my assignments in my Ist Semester. It is an interaction between a Ball and The Ballman. It is still in the blocking stage, maybe there is a need in changing the idea a bit here and there. I am working on planning it properly and will start all over again.



Comments and critics are welcome.

Blocking Ok!

ah! The class was nice and Manu liked everyone's work. He told me that my blocking was fine and that I have to open it up and show it in the next class. Now comes the tough part, the actual animation, I have to add overlaps and stuff. I haven't started working on it yet, no reasons for this, sorry! I will start working now. This is the blocking of my jump assignment:

Johnny and Billy!

This is an assignment I did for my mid-semester assessment when I was in Animation Sem-I. It is a Ball and Box interaction assignment. I named the Box as Johnny and the Ball as Billy! According to me, this is my best work in Sem-I. I know that still there are some corrections to be done, but then.....