Well with SIGGRAPH and then a hectic month building up to release of 11.5 and of course doing my AM assignments I’ve really slacked on getting them over to the Blog, so we are back again with Week 10, and I’ll try and get the prior weeks up as back articles tomorrow.

The site has been growing quite a bit now that I”m posting some articles related to CINEMA 4D, which is great as starting with next term I’ll now be focusing on animating my assignments in C4D. I feel pretty comfortable animating in Maya and am now more than ever able to quickly jump back and fourth between the two interfaces so now its time to get used to the weekly grind of assignments in C4D as well to make sure I’m equally capable and fluent at animating in both interfaces.

Anyways here is Stewie throwing his snowball, we are in the final refining stages theres some great things and some awkward things going on in there, I chose to do the arms FK the whole way but now I’m wishing I had bothered with IK/FK switching as the interacting in the snow at the start would be much much better with IK.

What a crazy week, finishing one assignment and starting the next, getting into the FXPHD groove which is also helping me get back into CineMan, Cinema 4D’s RenderMan connection. Why spend all this time getting back into RenderMan with all this other stuff going on you ask? It is because Pixar has asked us to present at their booth again this year, and despite having barely touched it in 8 months there is just no way one can turn down an opportunity like that. SO that means reviewing everything to make sure I’m up to snuff on it all again.

So that means SIGGRAPH is a week away, and a lot of preparation still left for me to do. I’m not doing any demonstrations myself at the Maxon booth, just the Pixar demo so I’ll be a little more free than typical trade shows which is nice. It’s extra nice as it also means we have some really kick ass artists demoing at the MAXON booth again, just like at NAB, and I have to say I really like this approach to getting more studios involved in the main theatre presentations instead of mostly feature demos.

And Just like NAB MAXON and Kai the Stuff Guy will both be trying to keep everyone a little more in the loop via twitter so make sure to follow both of us.

Anyways here is Stewie shoveling

Okay I’ve been pretty bad the last Month, I went to New York for Promax BDA and haven’t gotten back into the Blogging groove since. My apologies, I will get the last few weeks posts up late tonight most likely, and I’ll have some more interesting news as well this week so keep an eye out for that.

This class we have the choice for 3 separate assignments or an animjam where all three assignments link together to with a single theme, hopefully telling some sort of story. I’m already at the refining stage of part 1 in which Stewie is shoveling snow and a snowball is on due course.

Anyways I”m off on a little Adventure for the day, need to get out of the house and away form the computers and TV, Crunching at work for Siggrpah and other projects along with trying to really shift over into being a manager and not a peer for my staff, along with Animation Mentor and now FXPHD (more on that in a later post) and I’ve just been killing myself. Time for a little relaxation.

Anyways here is Stewie Enjoy.

I’m grateful to have a mentor who’s is very prompt about getting our E-critiques done quickly, and offers not only a lot of comments about what is currently there, but direction about where you can take it. Mike liked the poop but took the idea a totally different direction where instead of just having the feeling something is there and being startled by it Stewie would smell something and then look around and when he see what it is, and scurry to get away.

So Monday night I had a choice to make either I take it this new direction drastically changing what I had and meaning a whole lot of new work or I keep polishing what I have. So I pulled an a late night till 4 AM reblocking the first half of the animation and boy am I glad I did. After our Awesome Q&A where mike did a walkthrough of how he animates, he took a quick look and offered me a little more guidance and This is what I got:

Now the concerning thing is that by this point in the assignment we should be at a semi finished state and the last week is supposed to be polishing, that final 10%, but for me it will be a lot more work, I’m way behind but I think the assignment will be much better for it.

Another week done, payments in for the next term it is hard to believe that I’m almost through the first third already. This assignment has been a tough one, first if you look at last weeks I had the legs all wrong int he sitting pose they have to be the other way around for it to work, and as I got into adding more poses and then into the starts of splining things I had to pretty much go frame by frame to make sure the legs never intersect or criss-cross and make sure the knees follow nice arcs. I spent way to much time on those damn knees that I kind of wish I was animating a Stewie no knees instead of a Stewie no arms.

I cut out a lot based on feedback and critique, the breathing at the end, the over blinking and especially the over exaggerated double take. I think everything feels tighter now. The other thing I really learned through all my feedback is a question I’d asked Mike regarding needing more poses between the steps as he moves back. To me it was clear that each pose in last weeks assignment were the poses where his feet were planted I wasn’t doing any pose where feet were in transition, but no one saw it that way Mike even commented that it still looked like the back foot was in passing rather than being planted. So yes clearly needed more poses in my blocking last week.

Oh and if you are wondering where Tailor went, i got lazy and didn’t want to animate him so I’ve replaced him with the pile of poop from my last assignment in Class 1. Might make an interesting trend of always appearing in final assignments for each class, I don’t know. Honestly though I may put him back in if I have time, I do have his his entrance blocked but nothing on the tail, and I just don’t know if I’ll want to put time into that tail when Stewie is the focus. I think it still works as it is now, I mean who wants to meditate next to that?