Week 1 of class 2, which focuses on Psychology of Body Mechanics. The cool thing about this class is its really only 3 projects broken up into 4 weeks each, for each stage of the animation, Planning, Blocking, Refining (blocking +) and Final.

My new Mentor is Mike Walling, who has sort of been all over the place and worked at a lot of different studios, PDI, DNA, Blue Sky, and now Sony Imageworks, which to me, means exposure to several studio environments. While a lot will be similar from studio to studio I know even from studio tours for MAXON and such that each studio can differ a fair bit in how they work, and having a mentor who isn’t just saying this is how I do it because that’s how our studio does it, Mike can really say what it is like all over the place, and he’s had the chance to work with a lot of different animators too. I’m pretty excited to soak up as much as possible from him

So far the styles between Mike and Paul are quite different, Paul was a tougher marker and Mike says he has a similar reputations which is good I like a mark that really indicates how I am doing. But Mike doesn’t seem to provide a big email list of notes like Paul did after QA, but as I just noticed about 15 minutes ago, Mike likes to provide an overall class critique on his workspace which is just kick ass. Its good for a general note on what he is noticing a lot of people do and the importance of why certain things are assigned the way they are and what the purpose of things like sketching etc are for. I know I’ll be looking forward to these each week.

Anyways, I went out on the patio and recorded almost 40 minutes of reference trying each of the various options we had to work from for the assignment and chose to work with the large step assignment.

Well I’m already done the first class, and I seriously can’t believe 3 months has already flown by, two jobs and school sure helps me pass the time. No real assignment this week other than combining all my assignments into one reel, so here it is:

Tomorrow we find out who our new mentor and classmates are, its kind of cool that every three months we get new classmates and mentors. It really helps to build a community and friends and contacts. A big thank you however to Paul Allen for being such a fantastic mentor with great notes and advice. I’ll definitely make sure to pester him for another critique here and there down the road.

Wow the last assignment in for this term, now its just refining and making a progress reel of all my assignments for this term. Its nice to have a little more time this week as I’m currently crunching on a freelance job as well, and will be heading to San Francisco Thursday and Friday for GDC as mentioned in my last posting.

So for Next week look forward to a compilation of all my Class 1 assignments. For now Here is the finished character walk.

And Stu just practicing some Balance.

GDC is this week, and while MAXON does not have a booth again this year, Kris Orpilla from EA Sims Division will be doing a session sponsored by MAXON. I will be there as well to help Kris out and pay a visit to the EA Redwood Studio. If your going to be At GDC or in the area on Friday March 27th, I highly recommend getting a pass for this session. I know I’m excited to see how they are using BodyPaint 3D.

Real World Texture Painting Tips for Game Developers
Kris Orpilla (Character Artist, Electronic Arts)
10:30am – 11:30am Friday, March 27, 2009
Room 2000, West Hall, Moscone Center, San Francisco
Session Sponsored by MAXON Computer Inc

Session Description
Kris will reveal inhouse workflow from EA’s Sims Division, demonstrating how to create custom 3D textures – from reference material to hand-painted detail for next- and current-gen games. Using MAXON BodyPaint 3D he will reveal workflows used in house to quickly generate in-game assets such as those deployed on Sims Animals and other leading game titles, attendees will also learn how BodyPaint 3D easily integrates into current Photoshop, Maya, Softimage and/or 3dsmax workflows.

First thing I did in working on my Character walk was film myself doing all sorts of walks good and bad. Initially I tried using the PlayStation Eye create software so I could just click the controller each time I walked to film a new clip instead of recording one long video, and the whole time I was doing it Moka sat on his chair off to one side being angry and hissing, I have no clue why. After recording several clips i put them on a flash drive and took them over to my PC to discover the Sony writes some messed up mp4 that Quicktime doesn’t read. Anyone know how to fix that and read Eye Create movies on the computer?

Anyways, this of course meant I’d need to do the whole process again (okay I wasn’t that disappointed, I do love walking like a goof in my house) Well after 6 walks I guess Moka got a little fed up with the whole process. Watch him in the lower right corner, you can’t see but he jumped off a chair off screen right, then over the coffee table and you can see him come under the chair as I’m walking away. The funny part is his swing misses so he decides to hiss at me in frustration of his utter failure.

Anyways Enjoy