04/02/2010

Class 304: Polishing of my first animation and planning for the high bar accident


Here is the polished version of my recent animation. It's been one of the hardest thing I animated so far, doesn't look perfect but it helped me learn a lot. My next animation exercise will be animation a character having an accident during a gymnastic exercise.
Below are the video reference and rough thumbnail planning I'll be using for my next animation assignement.







4 comments:

Francis said...

Hey ;)

I just found your blog, because i was doing some research about the "blocking pass" thing.

You seem a "beginer" animator, like me....Actualy I am woking at Ubisoft Montreal in the game industrie from some month now.

Can i ask you a question ? Because iam struggling with animation term a little bit.

When you are in your "Blocking Stage", how many "blocking pass" do you have ? And what each pass shoul contain ? (ie : First pass : Key Poses, Second Pass : Breaking, etc.)

And when we are talking about "Blocking Stage"...How many Stage an animation shoulg have ? (ie : Planning, Blocking, Timing, Polish, etc.)

Like you see I'm just a little confuse with all that stuff.

But whatever, great stuff, iam looking foward to it.

Francis.

Francis said...

Breaking = Breakdown,
Yea, I should re-read my self...

But Hey, iam Frenchy ;)

Krzysztof Boyoko said...

Hey Francis, thanks a lot for having the time to go through.

Generally, the term blocking refers to the first stage of your animation where you put your main storytelling keys.

Some animators only put the main key poses in that stage and other will add breakdowns to give to the animation as much detail as possible, it's really up to the shot you're doing and your own way of working.

Right before the blocking , there is the planning stage, where you really think about everything you're going to animate. You can draw, record yourself, find reference videos on the internet for inspiration, write down ideas on paper...

After that blocking stage, there's another pass that can be called "blocking plus" or advanced blocking, which is just your animation with even more details, overlaps, and everything you want.

In the third stage or refining stage, I generally work until I feel that I've nearly finished the shot. It can take as much time as necessary.
Finally in the last stage (final polish)I just add the final details like really cleaning arcs, avoiding knee pops and other small details.

I just wanted to note that all of those stages aren't to follow exactly, they're just a way to organise your work and they're almost always different with every animator.

Hope this helps, let me know if there is anything else you need to know.

Francis said...

I could not have hope for a better answer ;p Very clear, thx.

Having read/watch a lot on animation tutorials and book, I completely agree that these majors stages can be different from animations / animators. But overall, what I like with AM is that they teach you a good methodology/workflow. Witch is a good base to put your own twist after.

++

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