Thursday, December 13, 2007

iTutor - First pass at cleaning up

Just a quick update, but I had another meeting with Stephen last night to go over my latest pass on my second assignment. So first off, here it is, but please keep in mind I turned it in unfinished. The arms need a little work, and I didn't even touch the hands, fingers, and facial animation yet on this pass, but I will complete them as well as address the notes Stephen and I talked about.

" First pass at cleanup"


So basically most of his notes, other than the unfinished parts were in regards to the timing, finessing and smoothing of some parts out. There is a little bit of a pop, right around frame 55 (about 2 seconds in) right as he begins his motion into his "clenched pose" that needs to be smoothed out. Right now it looks kinda like a half-assed antic that isn't workin properly, and may in fact be the cause of a few other problems. One of which being the arc of his left arm going into the same motion. If you follow his elbow with your eyes...there is a weird little "hitch" in the curve where it should really be smooth. So Stephen suggested to implement a little bit more of an antic in his torso, where he leans screen right and slightly rotates his chest before going into the "serpentine" motion into the clenched pose. By doing this, it may give me some breathing room to keep that arm along the smooth and fluid arc.

I know this might not make sense to some of you, and I apologize, because it is a little difficult to explain. But hopefully when I finish it and put these 2 videos side by side you will be able to see the difference.

Another area he said could use some tweaking was when he deflates. There is a slight pop in the elbows too where it seems to get hung up a lil, and that by separating the timing of some of the elements might help. For example by dropping the shoulders 2 or 3 frames earlier, will help sell the idea that they are the driving force in the deflation.


Like I said most if his comments on this were just about finessing. He seemed pretty happy with it overall and said that it was pretty close which felt really good to hear. There were a few other comments he had that were extremely helpful which I will address in the next pass, some of which were in reference to the parts I hadn't finished (ie hands and face). But they are a little more difficult to point out by just explaining in this post. So hopefully when you see the comparison of the 2 when I am finished, the differences will be a lot clearer.


Also I will be starting to thumbnail/ block out the next assignment this week which will be a dialogue shot. This will be a real test for me because my experience with true acting has been limited and may be the one thing that is keeping me from getting into feature work at this stage. So this is going to be a really important assignment. The only hitch is that we only have 2 weeks left, so if I am going to get it done with Stephen's help I am going to need to pick a really short, yet expressive piece of dialogue. Roughly no more than 4 or 5 words. That will probably be the toughest part, so if anyone has any suggestions for me I would be more than willing to consider them.

Thanks for checking in, and until next time!

3 comments:

Adam Kaszycki said...

maybe the infamous dialogue,

"YOU, talking to ME?!"

sal iovine said...

wow. dan this is so nice i had to play it frame by frame to catch all the subtile movements and expressions. right on. excellent timing and posing.
-s.

Bobby Pontillas said...

I know it man! I feel like I need more time with him! It flies by doesnt it?