Sunday, October 30, 2005

Week 06 - Animation Mentor - animation assignment

Hi everyone,

this week could be titled... "catching up". Well, at least I try to. This was a great day today because we got one hour more. Couldn't every day just have 25 hours? I can sleep one hour longer and this way create more quality work during the day.

Anyway, I'm going to read all those hundreds of post I missed during the last week and I have to upload my stuff still. This weeks assignment was a blast and I really enjoyed it a bunch. Finally we got to animate Tailor. You can't imagine how much story you can tell with a ball and a tail. I've seen some awesome animations out there already and it gets more and more difficult to keep up with the good guys.

Ben, our 2D guy, did an awesome animation on paper and talking about KISS (keep it simple, stupid!) - he doesn't seem to know what it means. Haha! Amazing stuff, really. And his animation keeps going on and on. And Martin (my roommate) was a blast, too. He is never satisfied with my work. I think he is never satisfied with his own work as well. So he keeps on pushing me and telling me where my animation just lacks quality. And even though I hate it when he nags on my work... he still is right and after getting over it my animations get better. Thanks, Martin.

Anyway, talking about Tailor. I wanted to animate him soo much and really thought about what to do. I decided on this:


Yes, quite a bunch, I think. And the 180 degree turn almost killed me because you have to overlap in at least 2 directions at a time (talking about "muting" one channel which makes this easier). Well, after hours of planning, animation and tweaking I finished with this version:

http://am.alexmlehmann.com/w06_an01.mov (6MB - plays after loading fully)

Since I'm currently animating full time on two 30 seconds spots for television I really had to stick to this assignment only and did not have the time to do any revisions. Michelle told us that revision is just a plus for us and that we first should finish the assignment before starting any revisions. After all, that is what I did.

Feel free to post some comments about whether you like it and whether it looks cartoony. AM is getting better each week and I'd love to have more time to practise... but working is great as well and I love my job at animoto. More about that in the next blog entry coming soon =)

Have fun and God bless you all,

- Alex

2 comments:

Benjamin De Schrijver said...

You really want my face to turn all red, don't you? Anyways, I'll be posting some crits on your animation in your workspace, and good luck with the job!

- Benjamin

Alex M. Lehmann said...

Ha! There he is! I'd put my eyes on this one...