Eric Brody's Animation Mentor Blog

Session 412ish - Dialogue Lit

2008-04-25T00:20:00.000-07:00

Well, as promised, here is a lit version of my dialogue shot! I think it looks much better than the smelly ol' playblast in my reel below. Just as an update, class 5 (I'm in session 504 right now) is all about developing my story for my shot film. I pretty much have the story down now (after having chosen the best of several ideas) and I am working on ironing out the details and cutting some stuff to make it fit the desired length. I don't think I'll be posting much during this class, though, because I don't want to give away my story quite yet :) Anyhow, enjoy the prettier version of my dialogue shot!

Class 4 Dialogue Shot Lit -

Session 412 - Class 4 Reel

2008-03-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

Here is my reel for class 4! It contains all of the work I've done at AM so far. The most recent shot has been updated since the previous post, and a nice render of it should be coming along soon. Hope you like it!

Class 4 Reel -

Session 411 - Dialogue - Near Final

2008-03-23T11:28:00.000-07:00

This is my "final" version of the dialogue shot! I put the final in quotes because i still have another critique from my mentor, Dave Burgess, after which i will be revising the shot based on his comments, and then doing a nice render for the real final version next week. This should be pretty dang close to final though, so I hope you like it! Comments and critiques are welcome!

Dialogue Near Final -

Session 404 - Monologue Revised

2008-02-05T17:13:00.001-08:00

Here is my (mostly) final monologue shot! I'm going to make a couple more tweaks and add some scenery and maybe a hat or something before the end of the class, but right now i've moved on to my 2-person dialogue shot so the rest of the stuff for this one will have to wait. I think this shot has progressed a ton since last class, and i'm pretty happy with it. Enjoy!

Class 4 Monologue -

Session 312 - Acting Shot Revised

2008-02-05T16:55:00.000-08:00

Okay it has been forever since i updated this (again) but i've got some cool stuff coming. This here is a revision of my 'acting' shot that has been nicely rendered out. I am actually in session 404 right now, but this shot was finished during session 312. I didn't post the shot from the end of class 3 because that one rolled over into class 4, and I am just finishing up the final revisions of it. I'll post it soon! I swear!

Class 3 Acting Shot Revised and Rendered -

Session 305 - Acting Shot

2007-11-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

Okay, so i'm terrible at updating this. Here's the deal with this session, there are only two assignments... and here is the first one! I'm actually in class 309 right now, but i'm not posting the work in progress at this point. Still too early! Here's the final shot for sessions 301-305 though. I didn't get to do a snazzy render though because mental ray was being a pain, but i'll get one for class 312. Here it is! I'll try to post a work in progress of the next assignment before it actually finishes.

Session 212 - Class 2 Reel

2007-09-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

WOW. I suck at posting. This was the final week of class 2 and it has been a doozy getting everything done these past few week. I got there tho, and things came out pretty well. Below you will find the final renders for all of my animation mentor work thus far. The latest shot is one you have not seen yet! Enjoy!

Class 2 Reel -

Session 207 - Post Jump Final

2007-08-20T11:55:00.001-07:00

Here is the final version of my post jump! I squeezed in some leg twanging in the end, though it would have been nice to have them flop down too. Not enough frames though! oh well. Here it is!

Post Jump Final:

Session 206 - Post Jump Blocking Plus

2007-08-11T22:34:00.001-07:00

Here is the blocking plus for the assignment i started last week. I also incorporated some changes from joe's critique on fixing up some arcs and making them more lively. here it is!

Post Jump Blocking Plus:

Session 205 - Post Jump Blocking

2007-08-09T18:43:00.001-07:00

So for this week's assignment we had a choice of four things to do, and several characters we could use to do them! I picked the one where we had to have the no-arms stewie jump from post to post. I also came up with a story that i feel has a sufficient amount of buildup and senseless violence to be considered comedy. YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Post Jump Blocking:

Session 204 - Turn Smoothing

2007-08-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

I know, I suck at posting. Those of you who remember randomidity should already be aware of this. So... A bit delayed, here is my assignment for 204! It is the smoothed, final version of the assignment that was started in session 201, and has gotten a whole lot better since then thanks to some very good advice from Joe. Here it is!

Turn Animation Final:

Session 202 - Turn Blocking

2007-07-19T19:47:00.000-07:00

Ack! I was late this week, i stink. Just been so busy! Anyhow, this week our assignment was to start out w/ the blocking for our turn animation. This is what i did! I'm going to be tweaking that jump though, and adding more to it.

Turn Blocking:

Session 201 - Turn Video Reference

2007-07-08T21:41:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I started the first session of class 2 today, and it is looking to kick some ass. Got my new mentor, Joe Mandia, who has a heckuva resume. Our assignment was to do some sketches and get video reference for one of three choices of animation sequences. The one i chose was the 'turn' animation, and here is the stuff i put together!

Turn Video Reference:

Sketches 01:

Sketches 02:

Session 112 - Compilation

2007-06-23T09:37:00.000-07:00

So this was the final week of class 1! All we had to do was compile all the assignments in to one movie, so here it is!

Class 1 Reel:

Session 111 - Personality Walk Final

2007-06-19T23:54:00.000-07:00

Sorry this one was a little late! Got caught up in some stuff. This week i worked on finishing up my personality walk, giving it some good polish and fixing the stuff from my critique. We also had a pose! The theme was 'balance'. Here's the stuff!

Pose Sketches:

Balance Pose:

Final Personality Walk:

Session 110 - Personality Walk Cleanup

2007-06-09T22:09:00.000-07:00

This week we were supposed to do the blocking for the personality walk, but since i did that last week i went ahead and smoothed it out and then put it into perspective view instead of side view. I am getting ahead but Elliott told me to so it's alll good. We also had "exhausted" poses to do! Here is stuff!

Sketches:

Final Exhausted Pose:

Personality Walk:

Session 109 - Personality Walk Blocking

2007-06-02T23:00:00.000-07:00

Actually this really isn't the assignment but Elliott and I talked about it and he said i should do this since i already had finished my walk. So what i did was the blocking for a couple of 'personality walks'. I also had a pose this week, it was "concerned". Here's all that stuff!!

Pose Sketches:

Concerned Pose:

'Testing' Walk:

'Zombie' Walk:

Session 108 - Vanilla Walk Revision

2007-06-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

Here is the revision for my vanilla walk! More stuff coming on Sunday!

Vanilla Walk Revision:

Session 108 - Vanilla Walk

2007-05-27T01:52:00.000-07:00

This week we were supposed to just do the blocking (certain poses but not the whole, smooth animation) for a 'vanilla' walk. A vanilla walk is just a plain old ordinary walk without much character or personality. I ended up getting this done pretty quickly so on Wednesday during the Q/A i asked Elliot and he said it was cool for us to go ahead and finish the walk out and make it smooth. So i did. We also had a pose this week which was supposed to convey 'strength'. I came up with a rather fun idea for this one, which i'm quite proud of! Here are my sketches, followed by the pose, then the walk stuff.

Strength Sketches:

Final Strength Pose:

Walk Planning Sketches:

Final Walk Animation:

Session 107 - Tailor

2007-05-20T02:51:00.000-07:00

This week's assignment gave us the choice between making one-leg (a one-legged ball type dude) or tailor (seen below) do some jumping stuff. The tailor assignment was the more difficult of the two, so i chose that one. I came up with a few ideas and started working on one, but then on Wednesday Elliot told us to try and push ourselves to make this one really interesting and to give tailor some character so i decided to switch ideas to a different one that had a greater focus on tailor as a character. so here are my rough sketches of the idea and then the final animation!!

Planning Sketches:

Final Tailor Animation:

Session 106 - Pendulum

2007-05-13T11:39:00.000-07:00

For this week's assignment we were supposed to take this pendulum thing and make the block move around some how, then have the sort of "chain" thing on the bottom move realistically as if it were just hanging from the bottom of it. The point of this was so we could work with having different movements built on top of each other in order to get the chain to move right. Here is my planning sketch that i did for the basic movement of the block:

Pendulum Sketch:

And here is the animation!

Final Pendulum Animation:

Session 105 - Revision

2007-05-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

Hey all! I got some notes from Elliot on my squash and stretch animation from session 105, so I made a few changes. Here they are! i think the ball looks a lot more alive now!

Squash/Stretch Revision:

Session 105 - Squash and Stretch

2007-05-06T10:46:00.000-07:00

Hey all! This week we added squash and stretch to the ball bounce, as well as an obstacle course to play around with. I had fun with this one, cuz I love the whole squash and stretch thing. Poses are back too! The theme for the poses was 'devastation'. I only actually posed out two of the sketches i did this week because i needed to spend a bit more time on the animation, rather than doing a bajillion poses. Of the two i did, one is a serious attempt at doing what they want for the assignment, and the other i just thought would be funny. See if you can figure out which is which! So, here's the stuff:

Final Squash/Stretch Animation:

It doesn't quite settle perfectly at the end but i feel like that is okay. i would rather have the motion look as best i can get it than rush the movement to make it settle.

Devastation Sketches:

Final Pose:

Destroy the City Pose:

Session 104 - Heavy & Light Ball Bounce

2007-04-29T10:54:00.000-07:00

So, this week our assignment was to create an animation of two balls bouncing, one that is light and one that is heavy. I chose to do something like a bowling ball and a ping pong ball. So first I went and bought some ping pong balls and bounced them around for a while. I didn't want to buy a bowling ball though, but I was able to find some good video reference on youtube. This was incredibly helpful and I think is the reason I was able to get it looking so heavy in the end.

After the observation I did some rough sketches of how I wanted it to work, then I went and animated the heavy ball alone. This was a bit easier for the way I was doing it because basically I wanted the ping pong ball to be bouncing around and hitting off the bowling ball but for the bowling ball to not really be affected by it. After I had the heavy ball pretty much down, I put the light ball in and just kinda let it go where it wanted to. I had to adjust the timing to get it to bounce in the right place to hit the heavy ball, but it ended up working out alright. Not exactly how I sketched it, but that's probably a good thing if you look at my sketches. Here they are:

Final Heavy/Light Ball Bounce Sketch:

So, as you can see it is pretty freaking confusing, and not exactly what I ended up with. I tried to give it color so it was less confusing, but that only gets you so far. Anyhow, here's the final ball bounce!

Final Heavy/Light Ball Bounce:

I think this turned out pretty well. Ping pong balls bounce around a hell of a lot in real life. This would have been very hard to do if we were supposed to work in all 3 dimensions. yipes. Oh, also, there was no pose assignment this week. Sorry! Maybe next week!

AM Blog.Start

2007-04-22T22:08:00.000-07:00

So I decided to start one of these newfangled animation mentor blogs so people could check out the work I've been doing at AM. Sooo, to get things started.. I'm in Class 1 (of 6) right now, with mentor Elliot Roberts. I'm just starting week 4 (Session 104) right now, but that will come in a later post once I've actually done something for it. Here's the stuff from my previous weeks!

Session 101:
This week we didn't have an actual assignment other than to just do some housekeeping stuff. We also had a live Q/A sessions with Shawn Kelly. This was awesome. He has so much energy, and is just so excited about animation I felt like he got the entire class seriously revved up to start the course. We also met Elliot, and just kinda introduced ourselves and talked about whatever stuff. It was funtimes.com, and I think our class got off to a good start.

Session 102:
This week we were supposed to do a bunch of sketches and then choose our favorite and pose the Stu character with the sketch as a reference. I ended up doing a few because I didn't know which sketch would make the best pose. Here are my sketches:

Final (Sitting) Pose:

Flex Pose:

Reach Pose:

So yeah, I felt like the sitting pose ended up being the most interesting one. The flex one was pretty good too, so it was a tough decision. Yeah!

Session 103:
In week 3 our assignment was to do a ball bouncing with the weight and bounce of a basketball. So I went out and bought a basketball, and stood outside dropping it on the ground for a while to see how it bounces. This is what I came up with after a few days of working on it and tweaking the heck out of it.

Ball Bounce:

We were also supposed to do some poses in the vain of what we did last week, but this week we were supposed to do them to the theme of "Excitement". I came up with a few poses, but my singing in the rain one was most definitely my favorite. Here they are!

Sketches:

Final (Singing in the Rain) Pose:

Hooray Pose:

TeeHee Pose:

And that's it! I'll be posting at least once a week to keep this thing up to date with what I've been working on. Hooray!