Lifting Heavy Objects: First Pass at Tweaking Feet

Just making sure feet stay planted in the first part of the ani and that the knees don't intersect the barbell.

Liftign Heavy Objects: Upper Bod 90% Complete

Tweaked out the end of the animation where the upper bod is concerned. Time to move on to the lower body before coming back to finish off the upper at the end.

Lifting Heavy Objects Stage 4

Tweaking out some more of the upper body in this one.

Lifting Heavy Objects Stage 3

Here I'm still focusing on tweaking out the upper body in this 3rd pass. More tweaks are needed, but we'll tackle the feet before we go back and further refine the upper bod.

Zoo Drawings 2

Reading Richard Williams Amazing Book!

So I'm part of the way in to the amazing book on becoming an animator by Richard Williams, director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The Animator's Survival Kit is one of two main tomes for animators, the other being The Illusion of Life by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas [of the Disney Nine Old Men].

I wanna start noting some of highlights from my readings here, starting with some important terminology. I'd like to post some still images of animation as I go along and diagram out some of this terminology in my own efforts towards becoming an animator. So look for that in future posts.

For now, here are some terms defines:

Extremes:

- main poses that show some major change in action
- the extreme positions in movement


Keys:

- most important poses in the animation!
- these are the STORYTELLING poses
- perhaps these are the "keystones" in building a solid and successful animated sequence

Breakdowns/Passing Positions:

- these occur between extreme poses and are quite important to the action in a scene
- these poses create "arcs of action" or perhaps, "lines of action" that happen while passing from one extreme to the other

Inbetweens:

-the poses between the extremes and passing positions

FLOW OF IMPORTANCE:

Keys>Extremes>Passing/Breakdowns>InBetweens

DT| Lifting Heavy Objects Tweaking Out Upper Body

In this clip you can see we've begun tweaking out some of the upper body movements from the initial blocking stage. Will come back and add some specific comments to what was being focused on at this stage.

DT| Lifiting Heavy Objects: Blocking Extremes

Here is the first stage of blocking in the extremes for a lifting of heavy objects body mechanics. I am using the Digital Tutors DVD series for this training.

Zoo Drawings

Just joined the zoo and am making Monday afternoons a zoo drawing session. I'm in week 2, so my animal drawings have miles of improvement to go, but I thought I'd post two from today's session.