I have to say - I've never really been a fan of ballet, but when I started scrubbing frame-by-frame through some reference footage of Baryshinikov I was stunned.
Every single frame stands alone as a brilliant pose.
My job of blocking was definitely made a lot easier by taking my reference from a bona fide genius.
In fact, my biggest concern was that if I rendered it too similar to the performance it wouldn't look "real" because what the dancer achieves is truly spectacular.
I don't know if I'd called this "final", but I'm happy to say that at least some of the ideas are coming together and this is starting to look decent.
Animation (like art) is not finished, merely abandonned. And I think I'm happy to abandon this where it is.
Great stuff planned for next week. Stay tuned.
Got some great feedback from fellow students and my mentor who suggested some massive changes - most of which required re-blocking and big acting changes.
Fortunately the physical stuff, like the hips and spine are probably okay - but the biggest problems with this piece are the ideas.
Clearly I need to spend more time planning, before getting into the animation.
The idea with this assignment is to experiment with a full torso.
I was drawing on my experience in my recent trip to Tasmania and climbing Cradle Mountain here.
I really want to convey the exhaustion of almost being at the summit - but still being so far away.
With each new character and aspect we get to work with makes me so glad I didn't just jump in the deep end and start animating dialog tests with full character rigs with eyes, mouth, fingers etc.
It would have been a nightmare.
After many hours, here it is. The final rendered shot.
Spent most of the last few hours tweaking the jump timing, and smoothing out all the arcs and getting some overlap in the feet.
Didn't get time to animate a smashing Ming Dynasty vase - but at least the simple ball prop doesn't draw too much attention to itself and away from the animation.
Got lots of great feedback from fellow students and my mentor Jon on this shot.
The best advice was to change the weight shift in the hips and the rotations. Plus there are some timing tweaks to get more of a backwards sneak feel.
First assignment of the year - and this time we have a bit more scope to be creative and add some character to our shots.
In this shot, the only compulsory portion was for the character to perform a 180 degree jump. I added the backward sneak just for character and practice - plus I can get some free feedback from my mentor on the walk as well as the jump.
It's only in the planning/blocking stages, but it's here that I wanted to get the timing right.
Still have a lot of work to do, but I think all the basic ideas are being communicated.
