dealing with failure – fall down, get back up

september has been a crazy month. i started off the month thinking i didn’t even get into the semifinals of the nickelodeon writing fellowship, only to have them call me a few days later saying i did make it in, and that they were just running behind. then i had a phone interview and an in person interview, and found out i made it to the last round as a finalist. then after 3 crazy days of speed interviews, i found out yesterday that i didn’t make it in.

today, i feel pretty good. of course i’m sad that i was sooooo close and yet didn’t make it in, but i’m not as depressed as i thought i’d be. it’s not the inverse of how happy i would have been if i had made it in. so even though i was upset yesterday, i immediately went into planning mode to figure out what i needed to do to get in next year.

animation mentor 210:butterfly kick (final)

here is the final animation of the butterfly kick. it took a while to get those arcs nice and smooth. i tracked the hips, then the feet, arms, and head. i also made sure the pivot foot was planted during the rotations. in previous versions, the feet were kind of sliding around a bit.

this is the last animation of the term, with a possible revision next week.

animation mentor: 209 butterfly kick

here’s the animation so far for my butterfly kick.

i changed the first little skip he takes, and adjusted the timing to make the entire kick faster. i used the arc tracker a lot to make sure there were smooth arcs for his hips and his feet.

the final version is due next week. i want to pay attention to the overlap throughout, and fix the final pose he takes.

animation mentor: 208 butterfly kick (blocking)

here is the blocking pass on my butterfly kick.

animation mentor 207:butterfly kick

for the last animation of term 2, i was going to do a ballet sequence, but my mentor talked me out of it. he told the whole class we should do something simple and really nail it instead of trying to do something too complex. i looked at the video reference for the ballet move and thought yeah, it is a little complex with a lot of subtle weight changes. so instead, i decided to go with a butterfly kick.

i found 2 videos on youtube. the first one has a nice set up into the kick, where he really winds up his arms. the second video is a kick done with much more power, and has nice follow through upon landing.

animation mentor 207: parkour (final)

here’s my finished parkour animation.

my mentor gave me some notes for the revision:

1. make him accelerate into the run. right now, he gets to full speed instantly.
2. compress his upper body more when he jumps into the pole.
3. fix the arcs on his jump from the pole to the wall, mostly his head and his hips.

animation mentor 206: parkour (animating)

here’s my first pass at animating the parkour movement.

my writing group friend who’s an animator suggested really exaggerating the anticipation before the run, and my mentor suggested i have him jump off the wall instead of look back. i think it’s working much better now. the final polish is due next week.

animation mentor 205: parkour (blocking)

here’s the blocking pass on my parkour animation. we had to do walk cycles last term, but this is my first time animating a run.

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.