A few weeks ago I signed up for the Animation Personal Mentor course being run by Keith Lango. I’m in the middle of a break in my work right now and thought it would be a great opportunity to go back to my animation and really try to break through to a higher level with it. Game animation, being quite fast-paced, can be a little limited in that you only get to push it so far before you run out of time. This can mean you lose your eye (as Keith has so aptly put it) and get into the habit of settling for something far short of a finished, polished performance.
A few weeks ago I signed up for the Animation Personal Mentor course being run by Keith Lango. I’m in the middle of a break in my work right now and thought it would be a great opportunity to go back to my animation and really try to break through to a higher level with it. Game animation, being quite fast-paced, can be a little limited in that you only get to push it so far before you run out of time. This can mean you lose your eye (as Keith has so aptly put it) and get into the habit of settling for something far short of a finished, polished performance.
Keith’s course is an 8 week programme tailored to each individual animator which well help them work on the areas they feel they need the most help in. So far I’m loving it and I’ve already learned enough to make it money well spent. Things that I never would have picked up working away here on my own. Keith is a great teacher and just a nice guy to work with and if you are an animator considering taking his course in the future…do it.
I’m going to be putting up some animation exercises that I’m doing as part of the course to show people what I’m doing and also to keep a record of how I’m progressing. The film above (which I hope shows up because I’ve never posted a movie to my site before…please let me know if it doesn’t work) is a blocked-out version of one of my exercises. Nothing fancy or complicated but I’m treating it as an exercise in taking an animation beyond what I would normally do for a game…to a higher level of polish.
The reason it’s jerky is because it’s still in an early form…hopefully as I show my progress with it it will start to look a lot smoother and more natural.
9 replies on “Animation Exercise”
great stuff Claire, looking forward to seeing the polished version.
Olive
Claire…
you’re so talented!! I wish you could bottle that up in a pill form and pass it along to me! I desperately want to be creative and create things! I just don’t know where to start. Oh, by the way, I tried your peanut butter cookie recipe…they were the best I’ve eaten and my kids liked them too. I actually added chocolate chips to mine. Thanks for sharing.
Flee
Lovely work Claire, great body expressions, looking forward to seeing the finished thing.
Flee, thanks but I seem to remember you have plenty of talent…tell you what, if you come up with a pill that will let me sing like you, we’ll do a deal 🙂
Chocolate chip peanut butter cookies! I’m pretty sure that’s a sin. I’m really glad you and your kids enjoyed the cookies, I have very happy memories of making them as a kid.
Maca, thank you and welcome back!
BTW, Flee, you asked before what camera I use and I forgot to answer. It’s a Canon 10D that I treated myself to a few years ago. I love it and have really gotten my money’s worth although it’s a little big and not exactly subtle.
I love the eyebrows!
Wow. Excellent. It’s great to have a talent that can be demonstated so tangibly.
Hi John, thank you 🙂
You should definitely get your camera out, it’s such a relaxing hobby. I love getting out and doing something creative but without the pressure of doing it for work.
[…] This is the last of the body mechanics animation exercises that I did for my course. I posted this one when it was at an earlier stage and this is it all cleaned up. There is an acting piece to follow…at some point…after this NaNoWriMo craziness is over. […]