FM AM Blog

Class 6, Week 11 Assignment.

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-06-13T17:43:50+02:00

And so this is it... the final stuff. Still feel surreal that just 18 months ago I could barely animate. Didn’t even know what the 12 principles was.

Class 6, Week 10 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-06-08T20:33:53+02:00

Didn’t have much time this week to work on my assignment. :-(

I did have the time to create the DVD Cover:

Class 6, Week 9 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-06-08T20:31:59+02:00

Sorry about the delayed posting. Since my posting for Week 8 I have gotten myself a contract animation job over at Triggerfish in Cape Town and had to move down and get settled. Without further delay, here’s my assignments:

Class 6, Week 8 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-05-24T08:29:22+02:00

The end is near! And I still have so much polishing to do. :-/

Class 6, Week 7 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-05-17T00:28:25+02:00

Another week just zipped by. Here’s the polishing of the shots I done so far.

Class 6, Week 6 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-05-09T18:56:14+02:00

Damn, can’t believe I’m halfway through my final term at AM. Feels like yesterday when I started with the Springboard. Anyways, here it is, my assignment for this week. The keymaker shot is slowly nearing completion. There’s a few very subtle things I would be tweaking and adjusting, shaving a few pixels off here and there. Starting to focus my attention on the other assignments so that I can at least have a few different shots on my demoreel.

Alright, that’s it for this week. Have a good one! :-)

Class 6, Week 5 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-05-03T17:42:02+02:00

Yup, it’s getting there, slowly but surely.

Class 6, Week 4 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-04-26T17:40:57+02:00

Class 6, Week 3 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-04-19T10:00:25+02:00

And some more polishing done.

Class 6, Week 2 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-04-13T12:32:00+02:00

We have reached the final stretch here at AM. I’ve compiled all the assignments my mentor wants me to work on during the upcoming weeks. I will start by polishing up the most important shot first and then work my way back. Here’s the compilation:

And for the week gone by, I have worked some on 2 of the keymaker shots. There’s still some polishing to do to them which I’ll work on this coming week.

So many things to work on, so I’m gonna get back to it. Have a good week. :-)

First Q&A of Class 6 over.

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-03-31T21:46:14+02:00

Well, I just had my first Q&A session with my last mentor here at AM and he’s such a cool guy. I’m really looking forward to having him guide me through this polishing stage and getting my demo reel ready. This is gonna be a fun ride and I’m looking forward to it.

Class 6 already!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-03-30T21:44:23+02:00

Wow, it feels like yesterday when I started with the Maya Springboard class over at AnimationMentor, and now it’s class 6 already... the final stretch.

So my new mentor is Jason Taylor. He’s a freelancer now but worked at studios like Blur, Blue Sky, ReelFX just to name a few. We will have our first Live Q&A session tomorrow night. Looking forward to it and cannot wait to get started on really polishing up my shots and getting a demo reel together.

Class 5, Week 11 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-03-22T08:50:27+02:00

So this is my final assignment for class 5. It’s not nearly finished but it’s getting there. Been reworking a few pieces and still got to smooth and polish it. Luckily that’s what the next class is for. :-)

Class 5, Week 10 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-03-15T13:34:30+02:00

Another week gone by, this is starting to look like something. Still got to work on some minor stuff but from here on it’s mostly polishing. :-)

Class 5, Week 9 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-03-07T21:52:25+02:00

Class 5, Week 8 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-03-01T18:53:39+02:00

Been struggling this past week with the character’s personality but I finally got the go-ahead from my mentor, so here we go!

Class 5, Week 7 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-02-23T11:27:21+02:00

Struggling a bit with getting this assignment to work. :-(

Class 5, Week 6 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-02-14T22:06:33+02:00

Booya! Another week is gone. Damn, more than halfway through this second last term. Anyways, here’s this week’s assignment:

And the facial expression

Have a great week! :-)

Tips on getting better ideas

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-02-08T08:55:28+02:00

Found this little video clip over at Victor Navone’s blog. Thought I’d share it. Very well done.

Tips for Better Ideas from Andrew 'Big Show' Blodgett on Vimeo.

Class 5, Week 5 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-02-07T22:44:00+02:00

Well, what can I say? This was one of the more hectic weeks when it’s coming to my assignment. Lots of planning to do, but I managed to get it all done in time. So here it is:

The video reference...

the camera layout...

... and the planning thumbnails.

Well, time to take a day off and then dive right back in. Have a super week. :-D

Class 5, Week 4 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-02-01T14:14:57+02:00

For this week we had to select 3 audio clips, between 12 and 15 seconds, of a 2-person dialogue with two emotional beats, so here’s mine:

And we also had to think about costumes for all the clips:

Class 5, Week 3 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-01-25T12:22:55+02:00

Woohoo!! Finally reached the end of this assignment. I cannot say I’m sorry that this one is over. I really need a break from it. :-)

And some more facial expressions

Class 5, Week 2 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-01-18T11:43:30+02:00

Ok, for this week we had to polish the lip-sync. I’m still not happy with it and will tweak it some more this week. I think the expression change on the “... look at me!” is a bit slow and late. Need to fix that.

And we also had to take two photographs and recreate the facial expressions

Time for another kickass week. :-)

Class 5, Week 1 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-01-10T16:31:01+02:00

Alright. So we started doing lip-syncing now. And I got to say, initially it can be quite scary, but you learn to get the hang of it. This is my blocking pass at lip-sync for my assignment I finished in Class 4 with.

Here’s some video reference of me acting and saying the shot. Helps to determine the amount of jaw movement, and some blinks, brow shapes and eye darts.

And the thumbnails I made for this:

Off to the next week! :-D

Class 5 here we go!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2010-01-05T15:02:10+02:00

So this is it. I cannot believe it’s been a year since I started AnimationMentor. It’s the Advanced Acting class and my mentor is Dana Boadway. Looking forward to what I can learn from her.

Class 4, Week 11 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-12-13T22:13:59+02:00

So this is the final version of my animation for Class 4. We’re off to a well-deserved 2 week break at the end of next week. I see it more as a 3 week break because during this week we would only work on addressing our mentor’s critiques and then compile a progress reel. So in class 5 we will start by working on the facial expressions of this assignment. The current rig has a very basic rig and we replace the head with a more complex rig then.

As for the posters there won’t be any. AM made a change to the student workspaces which hinders me in posting the posters. Pity, I was having so much fun thinking them out. :-(

Class 4, Week 10 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-12-06T18:59:52+02:00

I’m a bit early this week, I know. :) So here we go.

This week we had to do a surprised hand pose:

And then there’s this week’s motivational poster, the second last one:

Have an awesome week! :-)

Class 4, Week 9 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-11-29T22:06:14+02:00

Yup, another week is over. So here we go, the assignment’s progress for this week:

The hand pose for this week was relaxed:

And the poster this week, the sound engineer:

Have a kickass week! :-D

Class 4, Week 8 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-11-24T01:01:48+02:00

Sweet, off to the next week. The assignment:

And for this week we also got the requirement to show a hand pose depicting anger. Here’s mine:

And my poster for this week:

Marching on in the new week. :-)

Class 4, Week 7 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-11-16T10:41:31+02:00

So here’s my first pass at blocking. Unfortunately my mentor got to his email I sent him last week a bit late and got told that we were not supposed to use a camera cut. So next week you won’t see it. :-(

And here’s this week’s poster:

Have a great week.

Class 4, Week 6 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-11-09T11:05:38+02:00

So we started a new assignment. And here’s all my planning stuff.

We had to select 3 audio clips between 5 and 10 seconds that had 2 emotional beats in it. Here’s mine:

Then we had to act out two of our favorite clips (it’s tough trying to act all female when you’re as big as I am):

And then we had to explore a bit with our thumbnails the two clips:

Then, this is the revision of my previous assignment:

And finally, the poster for this week.

Have a great week!

Class 4, Week 5 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-11-02T10:02:17+02:00

Alright, this is the final version of this assignment. Obviously there’s always some minor things I would like to improve on.

And this week’s poster:

Have a good week people. :-)

Class 4, Week 4 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-10-25T08:32:22+02:00

This week’s assignment:

Sadly, no posters were done this week due to the sad news of my Granny passing away on Saturday. :-(

Class 4, Week 3 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-10-18T22:22:54+02:00

These weeks are just flying by too damn quickly. Anyways, here’s this week’s assignment and poster.

Class 4, Week 2 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-10-12T08:09:52+02:00

Alright! We’ve begun blocking in our idea. I’ve also used the IK/FK Snapping tool for the first time and it’s such a cool tool. Can’t believe we only got it now. :-)

And this week we have the Layout Artist.

Have an awesome week guys. :-)

Class 4, Week 1 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-10-04T21:02:11+02:00

Ok, so for my first Class 4 assignment I have the following idea:
Stewie takes two slices of bread and put it in the toaster. He then pushes the lever down and after a second realize the lever didn’t click in place. So he presses the lever again, and again it pops up. He then starts to slam the lever down in a few quick successions. As the anger’s built up by now he turns away from camera, and brings flamethrower into view. He then proceeds to toast the toaster.

Here’s my video reference. I have taken the bread-smelling out under advisement from my mentor:

And this is the poster for this week:

Have a great week. :-)

Class 4 is going to rock!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-09-29T00:16:32+02:00

So we just started with Class 4, Introduction to acting. This is the part I’ve been waiting for. Now we really get to add to small things that brings a character to life on the screen and give it personality. :)

My mentor for this term is Marek Kouchot. He’s such an awesomely cool guy. Works at Dreamworks and is currently the Supervising Animator on Shrek 4.

And here’s the new poster for this Class:

Class 3, Week 11 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-09-13T00:13:08+02:00

So this is the final version of my final assignment of this class. This upcoming break is very welcome.

And this is the final poster for this week:

Class 3, Week 10 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-09-06T18:58:22+02:00

Well, we’re getting close to the end of Class 3. I can’t believe how fast time’s gone by. Anyways, here’s this week’s assignment...

... and the poster:

Have a great week! :-)

Class 3, Week 9 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-08-30T23:51:31+02:00

Man what a hectic week. I’m struggling a bit with this assignment to show the weight in the sledge hammer.

And here’s this week’s poster for Class 3:

Till next week. :-)

Class 3, Week 8 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-08-23T22:25:52+02:00

Well here’s the assignment for this week.

And the poster for this week:

Have a good week. :-)

Class 3, Week 7 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-08-16T20:53:24+02:00

Well, it seems like there were some action the past 24 hours at the AM Servers. A malformed file was uploaded and had all the encoding servers chip in to try and resolve it, which in turn, queued all the other videos up behind it. It got resolved but I fear that some students might not know that some of their assignments didn’t upload properly. I can foresee a bit of an upheaval about it this coming week.

Anyways, this is the end of Assignment 2 for Class 3. This is my final version. It feels slightly too fast, might rework that.

And for my last assignment for this class, here’s my thumbnails...

... and the video reference I shot of me acting it out...

Last but not least is this week’s poster, the Brandenburg Gate.

Have a great week. :-)

Class 3, Week 6 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-08-10T23:23:06+02:00

Another week just hit me. Did somebody get the license plate number?

Anyways, here’s my blocking plus assignment.

And the poster this week, we’re in Australia. Had to put something up to compensate for the fact that we beat them in the rugby. ;-)

Have a superb week!

Class 3, Week 5 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-08-03T10:08:51+02:00

Here we go, another week gone by.

And the poster for this week

Class 3, Week 4 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-07-27T10:17:19+02:00

Right, this is the final version of my first assignment for this semester. I am considering taking this afterwards and increasing the amount of frames on it because some bits still feels too fast. But for the assignment I was limited to 200 frames.

For the next assignment, I had to reshoot some reference video. Here is what I got:

And the relevant thumbnails:

And finally the poster for this week:

Have a great week guys!

Class 3, Week 3 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-07-19T22:03:59+02:00

The blocking plus of this week’s assignment:

And the poster for this week is good ‘ol London. :-)

Have a fun week!

Class 3, Week 2 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-07-13T07:37:58+02:00

Time seems to be flying pretty fast. Here, what I got for my blocking pass on my assignment:

And this week’s poster:

Have an awesome week! :-)

Class 3, Week 1 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-07-06T13:08:44+02:00

Damn, this has been a hectic week. Apart from the flu I also have some family over. Here we go. For my assignment of class 3 I decided to go with the AnimJam option. I am going to have Stewie walk past a couple of boxes with a plank on top of them, take a karate chop at the plank. The plank will not break and Stewie looks around to find something bigger to break the plank with. He sees a hammer and drags it closer. Takes a swing and the plank still doesn’t break. Then as he rests with his hand on the plank it will snap in half and Stewie falls onto the ground.

My planning thumbnails:

And some video reference I shot:

And finally, my Where in The World Is Stewie poster for this week:

Have a great week. :-)

Class 3 here we go!!!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-06-30T20:00:26+02:00

So the campus opened almost 24 hours ago for the start of the summer term. Class 3 for myself and I got to say I am stoked to be back. My mentor for this term is Morgan Kelly. Found out he is a character animator at Dreamworks and he worked on titles such as Shrek 2, Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Bee Movie, just finished animating on Monsters Vs Aliens, and he’s currently on a new film, How to Train Your Dragon - directed by Chris and Dean from Lilo and Stitch. How damn awesome is that and lucy am I!!!

It’s so great to see the old familiar faces and the new ones. Keep an eye here to see what shenanigans we come up with. :-D

Class 2, Week 11 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-06-14T20:36:34+02:00

And so we’ve come to the end of Class 2 already! Well when it comes to the assignment anyways. All that is left for this week is to compile all our assignments for Class 2 into one Progress Reel movie clip! I can’t believe that just 6 months ago I was about to start Class 1, having finished the Springboard. So here’s what I have as my final for the assignment:

And the last motivational poster with the final principle, that being Appeal.

Time to crack open the video compositing software and slap all the movie clips into one. Might go back and tweak some assignments and re-render but it won’t be earth shattering changes. Rock on! :-)

Class 2, Week 10 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-06-07T17:53:15+02:00

Ok, we are getting very close to the final of Class 2. This week has been flying past at an alarming rate. Here is what I’ve got so far for this final assignment:

I’m feeling quite happy with this.

And this week’s motivational poster. Have a rockin’ week. :-)

Class 2, Week 9 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-05-31T23:52:00+02:00

Wow, week 10 already. Damn time’s been flying that’s for sure. Well, here’s this week’s results.

It’s getting there. :-)

And this week’s poster. Have an awesome week! :-D

Class 2, Week 8 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-05-26T21:29:20+02:00

So this week I’m feeling quite happy with the way my blocking turned out. And with the awesome feedback I received from my fellow students I’m quite stoked about it. Here it is:

Not bad eh? I will still work on the head shaking and maybe tweak some hand shapes. But first I want to see what feedback Steve gives me.

And the motivational poster for this week. Have an awesome week. :-)

Class 2, Week 7 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-05-18T15:05:49+02:00

Damn, these weeks are just flying by so fast!

Here’s my final version of the second assignment:

And my reference video for the last assignment for this class. I decided to go with the back flip off a box option, but I am going to have the box slip out from under Stewie as he jumps and have him fall flat on his face.

And for my planning thumbnails I created this animatic that would have the key poses, and some rough timing:

And finally, the motivational poster for this week for Class 2.

Have a kickass week. :-)

Class 2, Week 6 Assignment... Woops! Sorry it's late.

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-05-14T13:42:13+02:00

Wow, time just went... *swish!* Sorry about that. Here’s my work I handed in Last week:

Having a bit of troubles with this assignment, and Restarted it from scratch. Blocked everything in again but did my keys better this time after the great Q&A we had with our mentor, Steve Cady.

And the motivational poster. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time to put in the other stuff, like grass, trees, park benches etc.

Ok, off to get the next week’s stuff ready. :-)

Class 2, Week 5 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-05-02T15:15:31+02:00

Ok, so we have come to the end of the 5th week already. Can’t believe we’re almost halfway through! :-)

Ok, so my revision of my first assignment:

And the blocked version of my second assignment. Had a tough time finding a camera angle that works but I think this one is good. :-)

And the motivational poster for next week is coming up! :-D

Class 2, Week 4 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-04-27T14:08:00+02:00

And so the first assignment for class 2 is over. Here it is:

For the next assignment I went with the parkour option. Here’s the video reference I gathered and will use:

And here’s my planning thumbnails:

And finally, this week’s motivational poster for the class 2 students:

Well, I sure had lots of fun with this assignment and poster. :-)

Class 2, Week 3 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-04-19T19:32:25+02:00

Wow, this week flew by very fast! Anyways, here’s the assignment we’ve been working on for the past 3 weeks. It’s just about finished, just some minor fine-tuning to be done.

I must admit I learned quite a bit about CoG (Centre of Gravity) and timing. Having tons of fun! :-)

Ah yes, another one of the 12 principles of animation. In less than 90 minutes I will start uploading these to my fellow students. Have an awesome week! :-D

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-04-14T23:23:22+02:00

I created this after a fellow Peer Buddy (Chloe Do) suggested she is good and I must be evil. She got to that assumption based on our avatar photos. Silly girl. ;-)

Class 2, Week 2 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-04-11T16:05:19+02:00

My first blocking pass at the 180 degree turn. The above version is actually my second version. Here is the first version, also a good lesson to show you how NOT to block in that 180 degree turn:

This week’s motivational poster for the class 2 students. The principle for this week being staging.

Have a rocking week! :-)

Class 2, Week 1 Assignment

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-04-06T15:50:10+02:00

For this first assignment of Class 2, we had to choose from a few different options in a pick list. I decided to go for the 180 degree turn. We had to shoot video reference of ourselves and also do some thumbnail sketches for planning.

The reference video.

And the thumbnail sketches.

And the motivational poster for week 2 for my classmates. :-)

Class 2 here we go!!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-03-31T11:13:32+02:00

Yeeeaaahh!!! Class 2 here we go! It’s been a bumpy start with my crappy internet connection but things are going a bit better now. I’m in the same class as Leigh-Ann but the rest of my class are all new people, mostly from the US. This is going to be so much fun.

I decided to continue my motivational posters due to it being in high demand. :-) So here we go, week 1 of class 2’s poster. I’m having some problems with the student site so it’s not rolled out there yet. Hope they will fix that problem soon.

Now, for all you class 1 students reading this, here’s some hints & tips:

Eat all your vegetables ;-)
You should have finished reading The Illusion of Life by now.
The Animator’s Survival Kit should be lying below The Illusion of Life on your desk right next to you.
Try to watch the lecture just as it’s released (Sunday night for me but yeah, as close after 12PM PST on a Sunday as you can.
Try and get something up by Monday night. The earlier in the week you can knock the planning stuff out and have it on your PR for feedback, the better.
Leave comments on your fellow classmates’ workspaces/PR’s at least once a week. Also remember to visit other people that commented on your workspace and leave them some comments as well. Even if they’re in a higher class than you doesn’t mean you cannot say something positive about their work.
When you leave comments, start off by saying something positive first, and then give them critique. It softens the blow. :-)
Remember to wear sunscreen.
Don’t take any of the critiques as an attack on you as person, we are all here to learn and there’s no better way to learn than accepting critique gracefully.
If you’re unsure about something in your assignment, always go with what your mentor say/recommend. He is after all the person that will mark your work at the end of each week.
And that is it guys and gals. Remember to ALWAYS HAVE FUN!!! :-D

Class 1, the end is here.

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-03-24T11:23:16+02:00

And so we’ve come to the end of Class 1. This is been an awesome ride so far and I simply cannot wait to get into Class 2 next week. I will have my Peer Buddies to help guide and support. I am also scheming something up for replacing the Stu Motivational Posters I did during Class 1. No idea what exactly yet but I got a few ideas. Going to let them brew and simmer for a couple of days. Keep an eye on this space. :-)

Class 1, Week 11, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-03-22T15:39:45+02:00

So we’ve come to the end of the first semester at AM. Man what a blast it’s been so far. :-) Cannot wait to get into class 2 and dig deeper into this world of animation. So, without further ado, here’s this week’s assignment work I handed in.

My thumbnails for the balance pose we had to depict this week.

Final render of the balance pose.

Thumbnails sketches for the walk cycle with personality.

The render of the walk cycle with personality. Ended this semester with our first 3/4 view of our animation assignment. Had to keep all 3 axis into consideration for this week’s assignment.

Revision of last week’s pose. Rotated Stu’s right leg towards the camera a bit.

And the final motivational poster! Man I love AM!!! :-D

Class 1 starts tomorrow!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-04T19:04:40+02:00

Ah yes. The silence before the storm. After having gotten my feet wet by attending the AnimationMentor Springboard class, I feel so much better prepared for the full course. I have gotten some hands-on experience with the website tools. To me, that is golden. Now I know if my system and internet connection is ready for what I can only explain as the most incredible 18-month learning experience I have ever attempted. I will also update my gallery weekly showing my progress and final submission for the weekly assignment. I might even post some blog comments about my thought process.

The Support Staff (Yes Jay, that's you) at AnimationMentor rocks!!!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-06T21:19:22+02:00

So the campus opened up and the thundering noise of the students rushing in could be felt over the internet (and Facebook for that matter). Having done the Springboard semester end of last year I felt comfortable immediately. However, a few (and that is quite a few) new content was added. We gotten access to Stu, which is the basic biped character. And then there are some more Tools that got added (like the custom AM shelf for Maya) and also some more training videos.

And almost immediately messages from fellow classmates and other students in higher semesters started pouring into my AM Inbox. And with me being notified of every incoming messages, so did my GMail Inbox also start to fill up with notification emails. However, there was a problem. For every one message received in my AM Inbox, I got two notification emails in my GMail Inbox. Also in my workspace the notification box for messages showed every message notification twice. But the actual messages was only appearing once in my AM Inbox. So I quickly hopped onto the Technical Support page and logged a ticket. It was not even an hour when I received a reply from Jay thanking me for informing them of the problem, and that they will investigate it. As the day progressed I started noticing that I only receive one notification email and after a few hours, my student workspace notification area also only showed the messages once.

As I was busy trying to watch my pre-recorded video lesson for the week stream to my PC, it would stop every 30 seconds or so and wait for the streaming buffer to catch up before it would continue to play (thanks for the telephone line Telkom that I cannot get because the area I live in is not in your planning for this bookyear or the next bookyear to get a telephone line, even though we are surrounded by houses that does have your monopoly-telephone lines and there is an exchange less than a kilometer down the road!)
So anyways, again I logged a support ticket explaining my problem to the support guys and lo & behold... two hours later Jay responded saying that they have disabled the no streaming option for my account and that I can buffer up the video first for a while and then hit play to watch smooth, uninterrupted video! Isn't that just the best? I am so stoked about the support guys. And the rest of the school are the same kind of people that doesn't have the word "cannot" in their vocabulary.

That's it for me for now. Peace out and see you guys on the flipside. :-)

AM Support still rocks!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-07T12:56:23+02:00

Last night I downloaded the AM menu with tools and installed it as per their instructions. Only to find that it didn't want to communicate with their servers to download the latest codes for all the tools. I logged a ticket and Kevin replied with a few things to try and tell him what the results are. Which I did and he couldn't understand why it would happen. He then scheduled an remote support session with me at 1AM his time! How's THAT for customer support?
So we connected and he started to remotely troubleshoot. Turns out that it seems like my ISP's proxy is to be blamed for the problems. Kevin then proceeded to compile a license for my PC, and then proceeded to download all the latest code for the tools to my machine. I'm now the proud owner of the grease pencil tool and other wonderful tools and utilities. Now just to create a shelf for it. :)

First Q&A of many to come

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-08T10:06:14+02:00

So we just finished our first Q&A for Class 1. It was an introductory one where we got to meet everyone as they were put on live cam to chat about themselves and briefly tell us who they are, where they are from, why they want to animate etc.

Mark is also a really cool guy. Loved the work he did on Garfield and Garfield 2. Working at Weta must also be a blast. One day when I'm big I hope to be able to work for a big studio like that.

Seeing as this first week's assignment was really not much I decided to start working on next week's assignment already. Got a few poses sketched out and I'm busy posing Stu.

Top 10 Ways You Know You Live With An Animator

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-09T08:14:30+02:00

Michael Taylor, who is an alumni over at AnimationMentor, posted this list that his girlfriend, Jacquie Gouveia, posted on her blog. I found it quite brilliant and hillarious and decided to post it here. :-)

This list goes out to my counterparts in the animation world. Enjoy!

“The Illusion of Life” is on your bookshelf. There is a yellow glow around it and you hear angels sing every time it’s opened.
A trip to the toy store isn’t for the kids.
When you hear the word arc, you know it has nothing to do with Noah.
They strongly believe (and you must agree) Wall-E should be nominated and win an Oscar for Best Film. In fact, the academy shouldn’t even waste there time nominating any other films, why bother?
“When She Loved Me” by Sarah Mclachlan makes them cry.
Lasseter, Stanton and Bird have become the guy friends who won’t leave.
You have some sort of Star Wars paraphernalia in your house.
There is often a video camera set up in your bedroom, but it isn’t for kinky reasons.
They have convinced you that the pot of gold at the end of every rainbow is a myth. It’s actually Pixar.
All the love and passion they express for their craft, is nothing compared to all the love and passion they express for you.

Ready...

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-12T08:38:18+02:00

After having done a dry-run of my workflow for the weekly assignments during last week, I'm ready to rock this joint and churn my assignments out on time (or rather that is what I hope).
The assignment for Week 2 of Class 1 is just sketching some quick poses of people in everyday life. Living in a really small town with no park and just 1 coffee shop makes it quite hard to do so. I have been considering driving somewhere to a shop and sit in the car and sketch people.
Easiest would be to fire up a movie and just sketch people from that. The option to pause it and have a good look at it is enticing but I think the whole idea is to be able to take a snapshot with your mind and then draw from that snapshot. I guess I will have to hide the mouse in order not to hit the pause button. ;-) Will post the sketches soon.

I’ve also been thinking about creating some posters to post on my fellow student workspaces. So here goes the first one:

Week 2 poses so far

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-13T22:33:08+02:00

So far this week has been off to a good start. Our assignment this week is to sketch general everyday poses, and then choose one of those that has the best potential of being a strong pose.

This is my first set of poses I drew. After confusing the hell out of my fellow students I promised to redraw the popular poses using the body shapes of the character we use.

After getting some wonderful feedback I chose the top four poses and redraw them. Here they are and I know I can still improve on pushing some of the poses to more extremes. however that is something I would definitely do when posing the character.

Will keep you guys updated as to which 1 (or perhaps 2) pose/s I would use for posing my character.

Week 2's Q&A went well

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-15T09:57:31+02:00

Got to say I think this week's Q&A was quite interesting. It was the first "real" Q&A we had pertaining to animation and our assignments for this week so a lot of good questions came out of it. And Mark's work showing us examples was just spectacular. Awesome stuff from an awesome man. Time for me to toddle off and go pose Stu. Will post my work here soon for you all to enjoy.

Ah, my first real Stu poses are out!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-15T16:53:21+02:00

I chose the top 3 from the previous sketches and posed Stu. So far I'm really pleased with number 9 and 11. But, number 11 might win by a fraction to become my final entry for this week's assignments.

Final pose is here!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-17T14:49:58+02:00

This is what my final pose is. It has been a very difficult choice between this one and the beer drinking one (pose 11). I'm pretty happy with my first real assignment for Class 1. :-)

Class 1, Week 2 Pose Revised

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-18T17:41:02+02:00

I received my first e-Critique today. Thanks Mark! Some very neat tips he had for my drawing skills to improve them, and also how to make my pose a little bit better. So here is the revised version. Moved the hips slightly to screen-right. Brought the character's left arm out slightly to leave a gap between the fist and the torso. Also tweaked the hip-rotation a bit so the character's right leg seems better in the crotch area. I'm truly happy with it now. This way I learn what small things to watch out for.

This week’s poster:

Off to sketching and animating the bouncing ball, and also find some excitement. ;-)

Excitement Pose Thumbnails

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-19T15:48:59+02:00

I'm still waiting for my ISP to fix my internet issues with regards to connecting to the AM Student website so that I can upload my work in progress. Decided to put it up here for now. Had loads of fun with this, and it's also my first assignment I done using my Wacom tablet. :-)

Bouncing Ball

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-21T16:52:07+02:00

This is my Bouncing Ball assignment for this week's refining pass. It's almost there. Some minor fine tuning and I'll be happy with it. We don't have to do squash & stretch for this week so it's a basic timing exercise. Also helped in planning out the scene.

Class 1, Week 3, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-24T21:26:41+02:00

Ok, so here's my final work. Let's start with the planning stuff:

My planning thumbnails for the bouncing ball. And here's my final submission:

Those planning thumbnails came in very handy when I was roughing it out. And now on to the excitement pose.

Couple of poses I drew, and I liked the dynamic feel of pose number 14. And here's the final render:

I'm feeling quite happy with how things turned out.

And the poster for this week:

Well, time to take a break tomorrow and rest for the next week's work. :-)

Class 1, Week 4, First Blocking Pass

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-29T17:29:05+02:00

This week has been a bit hectic so I'm a bit late with my work. This is the first blocking pass of the light vs. heavy bouncing balls. Just trying to get the timing right before I continue to work on the tangents. :-)

Class 1, Week 4, Refining Pass Work In Progress.

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-01-30T12:51:00+02:00

My previous post confused a few people. They didn't seem to understand that I kept the splines/tangents/f-curves linear so I'm posting this to try and stop the confusion from spreading. I have worked on the cannon ball and feel quite happy with it's timing and weight. Also worked on the splines/tangents/f-curves *sigh* so it will look better. My question is how does it *FEEL*?

Class 1, Week 4, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-01T16:55:14+02:00

Alright, this is my final entries for this week's assignment:

My revision of last week's pose.

My thumbnail planning for the two bouncing balls. One should show heaviness, and the other lightness.

And here's the movie clip of the heavy and light bouncing balls.

And now for a little side project. I will upload this to everybody's workspace after the deadline for the assignment to encourage them for week 5's assignment:

Class 1, Week 5, Devastation Thumbnails

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-02T21:23:05+02:00

These are my final devastation poses I drew. I really like number 5 and would like to thank my Maya Springboard mentor, Alex Samouridis, for giving me that idea.

Class 1, Week 5, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-08T00:04:50+02:00

Yup, it's that time again. Here's my final stuff for this week's assignment.

My thumbnail planning for this week's obstacle course. It was harder to do in 3D than this planning looks. :-)

My devastated poses. I decided to go with number 5 in the end.

The revised version of last week's assignment.

This week's assignment.

And here is this week's motivational poster. :-)

Class 1, Week 6, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-15T14:23:01+02:00

Ah yes, it's that time of the week again! :-)

The revised version of my devastated pose of last week.

My planning thumbnails for this week's overlapping assignment. Was not as easy as it looks here.

And the final version of my overlapping assignment. I decided to stick with the easy version and make sure I nail the overlapping action down properly.

And the motivational message for the coming week 7. :-)

Class 1, Week 7, Tailor Blocking

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-18T13:04:53+02:00

Class 1, Week 7, Tailor being refined... and he gots his tail!!!

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-20T15:35:15+02:00

My first pass at working on his tail. I'm feeling like I'm slowly but surely starting to grasp the whole concept of overlap, successive breaking of joints etc.

Class 1, Week 7, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-21T22:32:21+02:00

I can't believe it's the end of week 7 already! Time flies when you're having fun. :-) Ok, so here's my assignment for this week. We had to animate a bouncing ball with a tail to practice overlapping motion. Take a look.

My thumbnails for this assignment.

And my final version of the assignment animated. I'm pretty happy with it. :-)

And this coming week's motivational poster. :-)

Class 1, Week 8, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-02-28T14:56:33+02:00

Ok, time's flying way to fast now. I barely get time to blog. Can somebody apply some slight braking to time? Thanks. So, here's my work for this week's assignment. We had to create a blocked version in stepped key mode of a vanilla walk cycle. 48 frames long. We will go into splining it out next week. And also pose Stu in a pose depicting physical strength.

My thumbnails for planning out the walk cycle. Might not be the best thumbnails but they work for me.

And the walk cycle created as a result.

Planning thumbnails for the physical strength pose.

And Stu doing some hard manual labor for a change.

And the motivational poster :-)

Class 1, Week 9, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-03-09T11:19:08+02:00

So this week actually turned out to be hectic. Anyways, here is my final work for this week's assignment. We only had to do a concerned pose, and finish smoothing out the splines of last week's vanilla walk.

The thumbnail sketches I did for the concerned pose.

The final Stu render. Got to say I loved doing this week's pose a lot. :-)

And this is the walk with the splines smoothed out. I actually reblocked everything on Saturday because I didn't like the way it felt. It turned out to be easier and faster to just reblock it from scratch than trying to fix the current mess.

And this week's motivational message. Bat Stu is giving the Master Sergeant quite a hard time. ;-)

Class 1, Week 10, Final Stuff

fmaree@gmail.com — 2009-03-13T22:44:48+02:00

Ok, so I got a few things in this week’s assignment that I consider to be a final version.

The exhausted pose thumbnails

The exhausted pose itself.

My thumbnail planning of the walk cycle. I decided to go with a guy that has a dead leg and has to drag it everywhere he goes.

The playblast of the walk cycle.

A revision of the concerned pose of last week. I moved the hands a bit forward, and also lifted the shoulders up a bit.

The motivational poster. :-)