animation mentor 204: parkour

for the next assignment, i was trying to decide between doing parkour and doing a dance move.

i went with this little bit of parkour, where a guy runs, and jumps off a tree onto a wall.

the dance move is a little more complicated, so i’ll save that for the next assignment.

animation mentor 203:kicking a ball (refining)

originally i wanted the ballie character kicking another ballie, but having him kick a ball on a chain is good practice on animating that pendulum with overlapping action.

last week i worked out the basic blocking, and posted the animation with linear tangents. i made some adjustments based on my mentor’s feedback and this is where it’s at now.

i changed the balance and weight on his initial step forward, made him pivot more on his right toes when he throws the roundhouse kick, and some other small tweaks here and there. i also worked on the splines of the pendulum to fix the timing of the swinging, and give it a sense of weight.

we also have to pick a motion for our next animation. my top 2 choices are parkour, or a dance move.

working on my sitcom pilot

i had a short break in between term 1 and term 2 of animation mentor, and i spent that time focusing on writing again. i pitched my pilot idea to my writer’s group last month and got good feedback.

here’s what i have so far:

• the main premise of the show. my idea is a high concept one, but i don’t know if that’s necessarily an advantage for tv.
• the 2 main characters. this took a while because the characters and their relationship with each other defines the entire premise. i had to make sure i picked the right characters with the right motivations to really exploit the concept.
• some ideas for supporting characters, and how they relate to the 2 main characters.
• the main locations. i have to figure out how much i want focused on home compared to work though. right now i’m leaning much more towards focusing it at home. i have to decide if i’m going to write it as a single camera show or a multi camera show. i think it would work as either, but i prefer both the visual aesthetic of single camera, and the script formatting which is closer to feature script format.
• a bunch of ideas for other episodes.

animation mentor 202:kicking a ball

one of the choices of movements we had to pick from was kicking a ball, so i wanted to have ballie kicking another ballie. it was going to look something like this:

however, my mentor said i can’t do that, because he’s kicking another character, not a ball, even though he’s a ball with legs. not only was i not allowed to do it, i was given a very low grade for the assignment. to make a long story short, i compromised and changed it to a ball hanging from the ceiling like a punching bag, which is definitely not as cool as my original idea.

mid year creative review 2009

it’s already july (a week in actually), which means the year is half over! i like to keep track of goals and such, so here’s my status report.

ACCOMPLISHED:

• wrote my first tv spec. i wrote one for The Office.
• then i wrote a spec for How I Met Your Mother.
• developed an idea for a sitcom pilot, which i’m working on now.
• applied to a bunch of writing fellowships with my Office script.
• started learning character animation through Animation Mentor. finished term 1 of 6.

animation mentor:201 kicking (blocking phase)

i decided to go with ballie kicking, but instead of having him just kick a ball, i’m going to have him throwing 2 kicks to another character.

there’s a lot of shifting of weight going on as he throws the kicks with each leg. i want to make sure he looks balanced, and i want to sell the power of the kick.

i shot reference video of myself kicking a bag, but i won’t be posting that.

animation mentor:201

my short break is over, and the second term – psychology of mody mechanics – started this week.

here’s a reel of the animation homework i did from last term. now that i upgraded from my white plastic macbook to the new 13″ macbook pro, maya renders things correctly.

the first project lasts 4 weeks! we start by picking a movement for the ballie character to perform. over the next several weeks, we sketch the shot, block it out, and animate it.

we have a list of 10 movements to choose from, ranging in difficulty from 1 easy – 3 hard. i want to do one of kicking a ball, but that’s considered easy. i might add a little complexity to it to make it more interesting.

you need something postmarked today, but it’s too late and the post office is closed

the disney abc writing fellowship deadline was today. unfortunately, i procrastinated and arrived at post office after it closed. this has happened before with other applications and film festival submissions. in the past, i’d go down to kinko’s and fill out the fedex ground shipping label, and it would be postmarked with the day’s date. once i got in at 11:45pm, filled out the form and finished everything before midnight, no problems.

today was different. i filled out the form and paid. the clerk hands me my receipt and i start to walk away, but turn around to double check the date. the clerk attaches the label to the envelope and is about to throw it in the bin, but i ask to double check. good thing i did! it had tomorrow’s date on it. he tells me it’s after 6, so it’ll go out tomorrow. he tells me this while the fedex guy is hauling off boxes and envelopes. i say ok, it’ll go out tomorrow, but the postmark date should say today because guess what, it’s today. he says no, it’s after 6, so it has tomorrow’s date on it. this is the same fedex location i always go to. it’s even the same clerk! he tells me don’t worry, it’ll get there tomorrow. i tell him i don’t care when it gets there, but this application MUST be postmarked by today. he wouldn’t budge. i canceled the transaction and left. it was 7:30pm.