BOO! A Month of Madness

This month I'm definitely feasting and not starving! I've got two assignments to complete for Stephen Gregory by the end of the month before our tutoring session begins. I went to visit my folks for five days [of course I had that scheduled before finding out I'd have some homework]. My wife and I are moving apartments so I can have a proper office/study room, since I work at home and will be going to school from home. AND, I was just assigned a HUGE project at work, RealNetworks, that needs to be completed in the next week. Now if I could just add a few more hours to the day.......

One of my assignments is to have a character jump. I started sketching some poses on a napkin waiting in the airport, just little thumbnails of poses I imagined a jumping person would take before doing any research....just feeling it out mentally. While I'm still a beginner and finding a good working method, I first just like to imagine what the poses and motion would feel like in my head, put down the ideas and then go do some research to see how close I am and where I'm off. I think animators are essentially conveying the idea and feeling of motion and E-motion!

click to enlarge

Upon returning from seeing my folks, I picked up Eadweard Muybridge's fantastic book, The Human Figure In Motion, to study the plates of men jumping. I then began thumbnailing key and extreme poses from the plates. There are plenty of poses missing from the plates, so I tried to fill them in using my imagination. At this stage. I also looked for the arcs of motion in various body parts [images to come on this in another post] from one plate to the next. Since Muybridge's pics are of actual humans, I exaggerated my poses a bit and added in a few extremes I think will give the jump a livelier feeling.

BUT, this research of course just isn't enough as observing the real deal. Plus, I didn't have a clue how long it would take to create a basic jump. So, last night I took my MacBook to the new apartment [before we fill it up with our stuff this weekend], and filmed myself jumping with the built-in webcam. Viewing this and sketching out some more poses, will allow me to fill in the missing blanks from the Muybridge plates, get a better grip on the arcs of motion, the followthroughs, and provide me with a better sense of timing in the action.

While I'm slightly embarrassed to be posting this, I figure on the road to becoming a professional animator and life as one will involve me acting out WAY more embarrassing stunts. So, hereeeeeeeeeees the video clip of me jumping [apologies to the downstairs neighbors].