Weight lifting

First assignment in class 3 of Animation Mentor, and we pretty much have a free rein to animate any three physical shots we'd like to do.

My emphasis this class will be to come up with three physical shots that cover some of the more advance body mechanics concepts: lifting a heavy weight, running, pulling and pushing a heavy object.

The toughest part this week was coming up with the technical rigging in Maya to bind the character's hands to the bar and have them rotate with the weight in a believable way.

Animation Mentor Class 2 Progress Reel

Phil Willis Animation Mentor Class 2 Progress Reel March 2009

Well - this is it! My progress reel after just six months studying at Animation Mentor.

I'm so happy to see how far I've come in such a relatively short amount of time.

Class 3 is just around the corner, so no rest for the wicked - I have to keep at it and on to "Advanced Body Mechanics".

Ballet dance - part 1

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.

Steep climb - polishing

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.

Stair climb - part 2

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.

Steep climb part 1

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.

Museum Blunder Final

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.