More animation blocking

After a much-needed Christmas break at home I am now back at uni - and that means diving straight back into my work!

Just before Christmas I blocked out another five shots of The Life of a Student Animator. The first two are the 'monotonous clicking' shots that I use to break up the pacing of the piece - and to show how quiet an animator's daily life can be! - with the second one having Phoebe (the student character in my piece) more fidgety than the first as it's later on in the day. The next shot shows her eating her lunch/procrastinating. Finally the last two shots show her viewing her work and then celebrating about what she sees.

I'm really happy with how these shots are turning out so far and I look forward to seeing them smoothed out and completed! The only thing I'm not sure about at the moment is the expression she pulls when she's trying to chew her sandwich (currently invisible) faster; at the moment Phoebe looks worried, when really I think she would be more likely just to look annoyed or determined.

Something I like when blocking is that even in a relatively short space of time you can see a lot of progress and improvements in your work as you go, between playblasts. Something that I thought wasn't working to begin with was one of Phoebe's celebration poses. Below is the initial way I had posed her in an earlier playblast:

There was something about it that just wasn't strong enough, so I worked to give her a more defined line of action by pointing her head and right arm in the same direction to follow the curve of her body:

I love these two images as they show what a huge difference a small amount of work and thought will make to how believable and impacting a character piece is.

I have been checking boxes off my shotlist as I go, and I also added a column to keep track of which shots are in which Maya files, as some things are easier to keep in the same scene (such as the two 'monotonous clicking' shots).

(Click image to enlarge. You can see the actual spreadsheet here, which I will continue to update as I animate.)

Since there are now only 10 more weeks to work on this project (Animex week leaves very little time to work) I am today going to lay out a more detailed schedule for myself to make sure I'm completing as many shots a week as necessary to finish comfortably in time.

Caitlin :)