Belle Rae

[She/Her] Animation student at AnimationMentor

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log - Revisions

AN01 - Week 2 - The Principles of Animation

Here is the revised assignment for Week 2 based on my mentor's feedback!

I've fixed the ball-ground contact on the first bounce, and extended the roll-out by about 10 frames. There's still a bit of sliding happening at the end, which is another revision point noted in my Week 3 "Heavy vs. Light Ball Bounce" as well. I'll be addressing both of them in my work for this current week.

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

AN01 - Week 3 - Introduction to Timing and Spacing

Hello again! A little bit delayed to post for this week, but here we are back with another application of the classic ball bounce exercise. This time we were studying the different effects of Timing and Spacing, and how applying these principles in varying ways can give moving objects different appearances of Weight. In this assignment, the objective was to show the difference in weight of a Heavy ball bouncing vs. a Light ball.

Even though the Timing of these movements is roughly the same, the difference in Spacing is what makes one ball seem to have more Weight than the other.

My mentor's revision notes for this week were pretty minor, but I'll be taking another look at the spacing of the Heavy ball's first bounce and also fixing some of the sliding that seems to occur as each ball rolls to a stop.

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No posing assignment for last week. Just going to follow up on these revisions and get started on the project for this week, until next time then!

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

AN01 - Week 2 - The Principles of Animation

Another week gone by! Last week we mainly covered the 12 Principles of Animation. The assignment was a classic ball bounce exercise, followed by yet another character model sketch-to-pose. This time, my mentor recommended trying to manually animate each of the breakdowns in between key poses rather than letting the graph editor and Maya fill everything in for you. A humbling process - you never really realize how much you don't actually know about timing until you go back and try it for yourself...

(Haven't we been here before? I feel like we've been here before...)

I've received some notes from my mentor on how this bounce could be improved and will be working on some touch-ups to submit next along with the current week's projects. The two main notes would be to double-check and make sure that the ball is making good contact with the ground and also adding a few extra frames of roll-out at the end. Pretty simple stuff, so that's nice! [Revised clip posted here.]

Next up, posing!

Excitement (We have themes for the poses now!)

This was a fun one to work on, though it was a little more difficult to come up with unique poses that didn't feel overly clichéd. I really like how this turned out (No reference this week, wow!) but I feel I could certainly benefit from beefing up my sketchbook with a few more variations in the future.

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That's it for last week's stuff, back to work now! 🏀

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

AN01 - Week 1 - Introduction to Animation

Happy New Year! (Okay, maybe a little belated...)

After a couple months' break, we're good and rested and ready to move onto the main event. For the next 12 weeks, I'll be taking the AN01 - Animation Basics course for AnimationMentor's Character Animation Program. We're already finished with week one, so here's what I've accomplished so far!

The first part of the assignment for week 1 was animating 3 cars demonstrating the animation principle of Fast In, Fast Out, Ease In, Ease Out -- basically a timing exercise. Alright, simple enough.

Neat.

After that, we worked on another character posing exercise like back in Week 4 of the Maya workshop. Part of this assignment was filling a sketchbook page with many different poses to choose from. Once again, @jookpubstock comes to the rescue! (Seriously, this site is SUCH a valuable tool. Fantastic, I love it!)

So here's what I came up with for sketches--

--and here's how the 3D pose turned out!

(I love this guy. Super fun rig to pose with.)

Seems like the next few weeks are going to have a lot of these posing assignments with different expression themes, so I'm really looking forward to that! That's it for last week's work. Onto the next project! ~

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The reference photograph I used for my pose is (once again) from the amazing @jookpubstock. Check out their huge gallery of reference photos here!

(Also today is my birthday! Nice! 🥳)

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

Maya Workshop - Week 5 - Character Animation Continued

This assignment was more challenging as it involved animating a longer sequence with more motion and acting. I found myself being slightly too ambitious with my initial idea and had to cut my scene quite a lot to account for time. I'm fairly pleased with the final result, though it isn't quite as polished as I would have liked it to be.

I can definitely see myself coming back to work on this one some more. I'd like to completely redo the squirrel's bouncing animation, and add some overlapping motion to the movement of the crane. When I was planning this shot originally, I had a whole bunch of rough storyboards drawn out for it that I would like to see animated eventually. Here I've lazily slapped together the storyboard frames in gif form with complete disregard for timing. It's good enough for an example, you get the point. ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

Needless to say, after this last strectch of the course I was pretty wiped out and decided to spend an entire month recovering as a couch potato. And then it was time for the holidays, so at that point you might as well potato the rest of the year, right? Right.

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Anyways. Now you're caught up. I'll be coming back to this sequence eventually. Regular weekly posting will resume tomorrow beginning with an overview of my first submitted assignment for week one of my new class AN01: Animation Basics. Fun stuff! Ciao ~

[bellerae]

Life Update

Took a little time off for the month of November (December too, turns out) to recharge and recoup after finishing the Maya workshop last October. Class started back up in January for the Animation Basics course, so I plan to get back into the regular swing of posting updates on assignments and personal projects this week.

In addition to regular class updates, I may also be revisiting work on some of my previous assignments. I'd also like to try exercising with some anatomy studies and casual art, schedule permitting.

I'm really enjoying class so far, but it's definitely keeping me busy. I'll have some more posts coming later this week about what I've been working on, so look forward to that!

Okay, bye!

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

Maya Workshop - Week 4 - Intro to Character Animation

Last week's assignment was all about how to manipulate a more complicated (but still relatively straightforward) character using rig controls and how to pose it following a real photo reference. The "real photo" aspect being crucial so that as a student you avoid the bad habit of creating a "caricature of a caricature" if you try to create your pose using another animated or illustrated example for reference. Have a look at my pose and silhouette for "Stewart"!

The important thing to remember here is that a reference is your guide, not a rule! It's okay to break the reality if the end result is a more clear shot. For example, my goal here was to ensure a nice clean-to-read silhouette of the final pose. I didn't like how the left elbow was a bit hidden in the original reference, so I pushed it out some more to get a better read.

Here's some additional shots from other angles!

There was an optional part of last week's assignment which involved animating a head-turn for this character. I have a reference I'd love to use, but unfortunately I ran out of time to complete it. I'll be working on that in addition to my assignment for this week so I'm hoping to have it ready in time for my next update! Back to work then! 💁‍♀️

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The reference photograph I used for my pose is from the wonderful @jookpubstock. Truly an invaluable resource, check out their huge gallery of amazing reference photos here!

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

Maya Workshop - Week 3 - Animation Concepts in Maya

This one proved to be a bit more challenging. It can be hard sometimes to find a balance between work, life, and study. Though I always see more room for polish, in the end I am pleased with the result I submitted for this assignment. I received some excellent feedback from my mentor on ways to improve this shot and I plan to return to this in my spare time and try to apply my mentor's feedback!

My initial vision was to create a set, ideally using an improved version of the scene from my Week 1 Assignment. Looking back, having now experienced the process I realize my first plan to have the character jump around the set, climb a tree and then shake it before jumping down and over the ledge to catch the acorn may have been a little too ambitious for a week-long deadline at my current level... 😅

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Hopefully with more practice and experience I will reach a level where I can complete this shot at my original vision in under a week with ease! Until then, on to the next project! 🐿

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

Maya Workshop - Week 2 - Intro to Animation in Maya

Just wrapped up last week's project yesterday. You wouldn't think it difficult to animate a bouncing ball, but it's trickier than it looks. Still, I think it turned out pretty great!

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And because I just can't help myself, I took things even further and added some squash/stretch deformities. And look, an acorn! :P

[bellerae]

AnimationMentor Log

Maya Workshop - Week 1 - Maya Interface Overview

Finished my first week at AnimationMentor! Fun stuff so far, looking forward to what's in store for next week. Here's some renders of my modeling assignment that I put together for the Introduction to Maya workshop taught by Jordan Brantner.

Even though the project is over, I might keep working on this. There's a lot of extra details I had planned originally but realistically didn't have time to include.

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I referenced these paintings by David Merritt as sources of inspiration for the composition. Lovely pieces. Check out the rest of his stuff here!