Show and tell, feedback, guest-speaker and a video.

Today was show and tell and I showed previews on both the "song & dance" and the "presenter"-task. Was a bit nervous about showing it since I got some nice comments on the blocking on the "song & dance" last week and I feared that linear might had taken some of the personality or timing away from it. (I tend to struggle a bit on the transition from stepped to linear)
But, I got some really nice comments on the pieces, so I must say I felt pretty good after showing them.

Here's the Song & Dance I showed in today's show and tell:



And here is the piece after I did some changes accordin to the feedback I got:



The feedback on the song and dance was that I could ease off a bit on the gestures in the beginning, since it's a slow song and all the gestures was a bit too much. So, I've taken one of them out and I also finished the end of the animation. Instead of two hand movements in the end for "hitting the music beat" as I planned, I made it into one so his hand hits one beat on the way down and the oter on the way up. (Hope that made sense..)

This is still in linear mode, but I will be moving into spline next, I think I have to if I'm going to have a chance to hit the deadline. Had a quick word with Penny about this today too, and as she said; You can always move back and forth if something isn't quite working out.

Oh, and it's about time I uploaded this one, so here is the block for "the presenter":




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There was also a guest-speaker at Uni today,

James Finlay is his name and his a Character Animator who has worked in the business for about 15 years. He's worked in both games, advertisements and films. It was a really good talk, more a tutorial-like setting. He actually showed us how he goes about to animate a jump, and took us through the process step-by-step in the software. Really interesting to see how he works and the best part was that he did a lot of the same things as I do when it comes to keying, so it made me think that I might be doing something right at least.. Hehe.

I stayed and talked a bit with him after the actual talk, seems like a really nice and "down to earth" kind of guy. I asked him about keying, especially when you move from stepped to linear. He called it he "beauty pass", where you start adding details and interesting moves, because he said he keyed every part of the rig on every frame. But as he said, in that process he could for instance move one arm without keying the entire rig, so that was helpful since I've always been a bit unsure about this. But he also said he knew animators that animated on ones and NEVER gave the computer the chance to do anything.




I got his card as well, so I might send him an e-mail in the future if I have any work I want him to look at.
(I also got his permission to post this on the blog..)

Oh, before I forget:

Came over this clip on youtube, it's a look behind the scenes at PIXAR studios. I can understand why you hear about animators that say that they love working at PIXAR when you look at the set-up they have over there. Really a fantastic work-environment.

The animators talking about Toy Story 3 in this clip do talk to an audience that knows little to nothing about how animation works, but interesting to see non the less. Especially the part where they show the software they use to animate, it's actually been developed at PIXAR.

Here is the video: