NEW SHOT - Inhaler

I've decided to start a new shot. It will be a pantomime, essentially combining a mundane task with important object.

Teenage girl (determined, loves soccer, hates the fact that she has asthma) approach her soccer bag, rummaging through (slightly frantic), finding her inhaler, shakes it as she takes a puff. (she REALLY needed it - she was previously having trouble breathing) Once the medicine takes action she gets back into soccer badass mode!

Here is my reference:

I'm aware of this shot being well over 15 seconds in my reference but I'm planning on reducing/combining actions as I get into layout/blocking. 

Here's some of my thumbnail drawings for it:

Reaction/listening Polish

Sprucing up the last 10% of the shot to give the extra bit of spice! I'm leaving the elbow as the last thing I'm doing since it's fussy and changes anytime I move the hand/elbow.

Moving forward I'll be focusing on my new shot and always coming back here and there to polish.

 

New Shot Ideas

DIANA SHOT IDEAS (Narrowed down!!)

1. Shopping for shampoo and seeing all different kinds. Questioning which one is best.
Verbs: (to) Examine, Ponder, Question, Search, Decide
(Adj. Puzzled or Perplexed) --- Examine ----- Question ----- Search ---- Finally Decide. (Confident? Annoyed? “fuck it this is the one”? Successful? Close her eyes and pick one? Playing a game and mocking the ridiculousness of it?)

2. Disorganized girl, late for an important interview, running out the door and finishing dressing. Stakes are high for her.
Verbs: (to) impress, organize, prepare, leave

3. Soccer player rummaging through her bag frantically, finds her inhaler uses it (embarrassed but desperate), can breathe and is determined to get back on the field.

Or maybe some other situation with an inhaler? – Totally something I can relate to!! (because I always need my inhaler) Mother giving her daughter an inhaler and the sense of relief and care she has.

Reaction Shot - Entering Polish!

Been working on this shot a lot. Overall it's getting closer and closer to what I want. I recently went back and saw a much earlier version of this and it's cool to see how much progress has been made. I'm entering polish on this one but there are still a few things that are bugging me.

Here are notes to address:

- Frame by frame the elbow when it contacts/stays on the arm rest. (Note to self - Elbow pins suck!)

- Adjust the timing of the smile (scoot it later and add ease in)

- Add some time to the pull down of the mouth

- After f93, the head hits so add more ease in and keep-alive. Specifically rx and rz to push the expression

- For the take, Give the head more orient (make it more straight) again make sure nothing hits a wall

- For the take, as the hands translates in a more tense pose, make sure that tension is felt through the rest of the arm - This is something I should make sure throughout the shot to avoid IK feeling hands

- For the take add shoulders going slightly down. (almost like they're staying in the same position. It will help with breaking up the movement.)

- Also when he slumps into the seat, try and make his line of his torso more in a C shape to create a better silhouette and push the expression.

Reaction Shot Moving forward!

(whoops this post was suppose to have been posted a couple weeks earlier)

I had a hiccup with my workflow. After working in a more layered approach, going back to pose to pose was a bit tricky. I had a hard time comprehending the transitions and their timing/spacing relationship. Going from stepped blocking to spline was a huge brain-blah moment. I had a hard time understanding what to do and where to go, but luckily I have an amazing class and Victor and everyone gave me lots of encouragement!

Notes:
- Spine too stiff
- Fix physicality action of scoot back - not entirely believable.
- reaction at the end too large and needs love
- Adjust eyes to make sure he's looking at the same place (which is the girl sitting in front of him)
- Move coffee mug around

Listening and Reaction shot

I'm working on this listening shot for Victor's class. Trying to focus on the character thinking. THOUGHT before ACTION. I have a little post-it note of that phrase on my computer to remind me to always put that in my work. :)

The shot is the audio of an over-dramatic girl confessing her love for her guy-friend. I am focusing on his reaction and the fact that he is NOT expecting this and NOT interested!

This is my first pass of blocking:

Notes: sR arm/hand pose to be more reflective of his relaxed attitude in the beginning. Also, adjust the eye direction in the beginning to seem a little more distracted by the other people in the coffee shop.

Movie Theater - Continued

I'm moving into polish for this. There's some things that I love about this shot and things that needed to be added like the smush of the face as she sinks into her hand.

 I'm ready to move onto something else. For a slight change of pace, working a bit more on the Jump from Jim's summer class. I only want to work on this for a week or so before moving on to something else. Then maybe a short dialogue.

New Shot... LAYOUT

I had this idea before settling on my "Ferris Bueller" head turn idea. I thought to see if it's something I'd want to do. I love running and use to do track & field in High School so I wanted to do a determined BADASS runner in the starting blocks.

Here's some inspiration images I found for this:

Here is my layout pass to see if it's possible. I'm still not sold on this but maybe I'll work on this another week, see how far I can take it then start something else. Maybe a short 4ish second dialogue or something.... stay tooned!

Fred Expression Test

In Victor's class we were tasked to do an expression test of Fred from Big Hero 6 using the Malcom 2.0 Rig since he looks very similar in design.

It was really challenging trying to match the super appealing drawings. It was a great way to get to know a rig quickly, trying out different controls to get the essence of the drawing. I learned a lot from this and still have notes to address. I'll get to that sometime this week. :)

Movie Theater Continuation.... Entering IP

I forgot to publish the work I did from last week. This shot is beginning to take form. I need to now flesh out the movements, fix spacing issues and track the arcs before I enter polish. I'll probably work a little more on it this week then put it aside to start something new - maybe another short head turn or under 5 second dialogue.

Head Turn

This was a head turn I worked on in Victor's class - I was tasked animate a head turn and go as far as I could within a week. Conveying personality and attitude in under 3 seconds.

Head Turn Test from Diana Martinez on Vimeo.

Something I learned from this shot is how amazing it is to work on short shots. It's so motivating to be able to get to polish so quickly and feel capable of finishing something.

I'm going to try and work on more smaller shots like this. Maybe even another head turn for BFA class since I have the freedom to create my own shots. 

Moving forward, I really want to try and capture "thought before action" and specificity in gestures throughout this next year. 

Movie Theater continued...

This is a deceptive shot for sure. Trying to make the hand/head relationship believable and authentic is confusing along with selling that she's falling asleep. There are a million ways someone could fall asleep with their hand resting on their face - it's a matter of finding the right one for her.

Earlier in the week - I lost my decisiveness when animating which caused me to slightly derail. (the above image is a representation of me this week) While I could add a snore, spit falling out of her mouth - it's not needed and is muddying up my intent and creating more questions than answers.

When this happened to me (yes, I admit - this shot is based from experience) - it was a lot more simple. My eye lids were heavy, REALLY heavy (which I need to sell more) and I didn't go into a full blown sleep, it was more of me catching myself and realizing someone had just walked by.

 Here's the shot as it stands right now:

Today, I'll do a "fuck shit up" pass (as Jim called it) where I'll spend an hour playing with my curves and seeing where I could add more interesting elements. :)

Movie Theater Take In Progress

Here's were I was last week:

Throughout this week, I've been addressing a variety of notes I've gotten on this shot to make it read clearer. It's deceptively hard trying to sell that my character is ACTUALLY falling asleep. I'm also struggling with my shot set-up relationship between the Left hand and her head.

After genuinely struggling, I'm finding myself going back to the drawing board, (something I learned from Jim's class - the importance to step away from Maya and draw out shot) 

Below is some process drawings where I'm trying to figure the progression of the shot from asleep to awake. I'm trying to elevate the entertainment and push the thought process.

Below I'm trying to understand logically how the head will move around the hand (thinking of the hand as just a box):

I also decided to reshoot reference - this version really starts to capture some elements I'm going for:

Quick Recap

It's been a while since I've posted on this blog. This blog will be seeing a lot more action from me as I'll be dedicating this blog for the purpose of showcasing my animation process both for my BFA class and my own enrichment as an animator.:)

I noticed the last time I posted was in Spring and a lot has happened since then. Throughout Spring semester at SJSU, I took "Intro to Acting" with Michal Makarewicz at Animation Collaborative. It was incredibly eye-opening, learning about all the thinking involved when approaching (and animating) a shot. That class was a great motivator, showing me all that I didn't know and giving me a close look at all the hard work/dedication needed to pursue animation.

Once Mike's class was over, I decided to enroll in another AnimC class. Mike suggested Jim Brown's Body Mechanics class for me since I was struggling with moving my character and showcasing weight. It was such a great experience! The class was formatted where each week we covered a principle of animation and doing a shot per-week. The idea was to get as far as you possibly could on a new shot, which REALLY tested my planning, execution and overall time management since I work part-time at Camera 12 (movie theater in downtown SJ). Jim was super helpful and even offered draw-overs mid-week!

Below is a compilation of some of my work starting from week 1. It's cool to see the progress from the first week to the final week (which was a mock- 3D stop motion test, where we took a shot we've already done and start over working in a straight-ahead method)

Here's my 3D stop motion test from the final week - it was the most challenging test, posing the character one frame at a time:

Jim even took us over to Pixar in celebration of the last class!

Once Jim's class was ended, I wanted to keep that momentum going and couldn't imagine stopping. So, I enrolled in Mike's 8 week polish class which ends next week. I decided to fix up my Dive (since I've enjoyed working on it so much) and continue working on my "Get To Know You" shot from my previous class.

I still have some adjustments for my Dive I hope to address, but it's pretty close:

Dive from Diana Martinez on Vimeo.

My "Get To Know You" shot is becoming a headache since I was in a different point when I started than now. I've been fighting earlier Diana more than ever.

Here's where it is so far (without the bg and guy character she's talking to):

Facial Pose Studies

Below are some mainly facial pose studies that I've done in my SJSU animation class. Doing these have been incredibly helpful in learning about the rig.

Unfinished Ballet Dance

Over winter break, I started animating a ballet dance, it's still in progress but I'm hoping to get back to it someday. My thought was to practice a little more before my Animation Collaborative class started as well as live vicariously through my rig. I've always admired dancers and wish I could be as graceful and flexible as a ballerina. Maybe I'll take a dance class one day... but until then... I'll dance through my animation. :)

Using the Jill Rig from Body Mechanics Rig Pack by Joe Daniels

Unfinished Ballet Dance from Diana Martinez on Vimeo.

Studies from Last Semester

While each week, progress on shots were due, these smaller assignments were used to exercise good animation habits and/or try out new work flows. These studies are meant to be quick and I gave myself an hour time limit for each. I love these studies because, while they were assignments, they also gave me the liberty to test myself on areas where I could use improvement.

Poses

Below is a pose depicting "Feeling Small"

Below is a pose of someone acting like a monkey.

Below is a pose of someone accusing someone else of something bad. 

Quick Studies

Below is a study of overlapping action of a head turn, which I attempted a layered approach.

Quick Study - Look up from Diana Martinez on Vimeo.