animation mentor:105 obstacle course planning

we were given a choice of 3 different obstacle courses to use for our animation this week. i picked this one because of the potential with the spinning platform in the middle. here’s my sketch.

animation mentor:105 devastation

this week we have to animate a ball going through an obstacle course, and we also have to do a pose showing devastation. here are the sketches so far. the ones in red are the ones i’m leaning towards.

animation mentor:103 excitement revision

one of the great things about animation mentor is the eCritiques. it’s a split screen video where one half is your mentor on the webcam, and the other half is your work that he is looking at while commenting. i think this kind of one on one attention every week would be difficult to come by in a real school.

so after getting notes from my mentor, i revised my excitement pose from last week. i made a few small changes, like straightening his right arm, making the legs follow the curve of the body, and twisting his left fist and tucking in that elbow a bit. i think the  changes really improve the original pose and make it more dynamic.

animation mentor:104 bouncing balls

this week’s assignment was to animate both a heavy ball and a light ball.

things to think about when writing a pilot script

i want to write a half hour comedy pilot to use as a writing sample.

here are some things i’ve been thinking about:

premise

i had several different ideas, but narrowed it down and decided on one after brainstorming and pitching to some friends.

the idea i picked is high concept, but i don’t think that’s necessarily an advantage. most sitcoms are not high concept at all. most are some variation of family show, but the specific characters and the execution are what sets them apart.

animation mentor:103 bouncing ball

the assignment was to animate a bouncing ball that had the weight of a basketball or soccerball.

next week, more bouncing balls. we have to animated 2 bouncing balls, one heavy and one light.

animation mentor:103 stu

based on feedback, i went with pose #2 for excitement.

runners up were poses 3, 4, and 6, but i had to go with 2 because it reminded me of street fighter.

finished my HIMYM spec (kinda), moving on to my pilot

last week, i set a deadline for myself to finish my spec script for HIMYM by today, and i did! well, kind of. it’s 42 pages which is just about the right length, and all the scenes and jokes are in there, but it’s not quite polished yet. i have my writers group meeting in a couple weeks, so i’m going to wait until then to get some feedback before i do the final polish.

meanwhile, i’m going to work on ideas for a pilot spec.

i saw this link on john august’s blog that has a bunch of pilot scripts, including some that never were “unsold, unmade or unaired”.

animation mentor:103 – excitement

this week we have several different homework assignments. we start animating in maya with the good ol’ bouncing ball, we have to draw a pose that shows excitement, and then pose stu in that same pose.

i thought i’d start with the drawing.

it’s hard to show excitement without relying on cliches, especially if you only have the gesture of the body to work with and no facial expressions. i’ll see what feedback my classmates leave before i choose a final pose. while i wait, i’m going to start animating the ball.

animation mentor:102 pose, issues with maya on macbook

i posed stu (the character rig that animation mentor provided) to match the sketch.

i moved the camera the tiniest bit to her right to get a better angle. i rendered in mental ray following a tutorial that one of the students had posted on the forums.