Animation Week 1

 Posing and learning new software was my main focus this last week. 

I decided to pick up blender and start practicing some of what ive learned for a different piece of software that maya to have more to look into for pose practicing. I ended up doing a small attack animation and also a walking block out. I have not done a walk cycle in a long time and I struggle a lot with them, so I decided I wanted to work on them to try to wrap my head around what i need to fix and correct. My main hiccup that i fall into is lack of proper block out and focusing on strong poses for my key points of movement. I usually will neglect going into stepped mode and start animating movement as i see it focusing way too much on timing and the overall feel of things getting distracted with technicalities in the animation trying to solve problems without just focusing on the foundation of the animation first and getting strong posing in a block out and going from there. One advantage to using blender compared to maya is the sheer volume of rigs available. Something that helps me get into animating is animating characters from games I play so i can try to get emotion and aspects of that character's personality into the animation. I had a lot of fun posing and animating this Psylocke rig i found learning the ropes of Blender and forcing myself back to basics of posing and walk cycles. So far, this walk cycle I have restarted it about 3 times by now as I keep falling into traps of complexity or failing to use proper reference. Leads me to another point of work I need, reference reference reference. I have been terrible at using proper reference in my animation, criminally underused them and that needs to change. I searched for a good few hours to find the reference I wanted to use for this walk cycle animation focusing on fashion show catwalks looking for ones that had the right angles I needed to be able to recreate the walk and try to understand more of why I have struggle with them in the past. I hope to complete this walk cycle midway through week 2. 

Following this I want combat sequence by week 8 for the halfway point. My goal is something 10-20 seconds long with an action sequence that further uses camera movements as well. This may take longer than just the halfway point, but I want to give myself up to that point as a first deadline to push for. 

     As a plan of action to make this fight sequence my goal is to have a rough blockout of the whole sequence by end of week 3, spend week 4 and 5 polishing and adding fleshing out this block out more and then with weeks 6, 7, and 9 dedicated to finishing out the animation. 

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• Timeline:
• week 2-3
• Rough Blockout
• week 4-5
• Polish Blockout
• Week 6-8 
•  Finish animation

Following that for the 2nd part of the semester to week 16 I want to make a sporting sequence animation. I'm not sure if I want to do motorsports or skiing as of now but I'd really enjoy animating either of those.

Similarly for these ones I'd spend the first 3 weeks blocking and the remaining time cleaning up and finishing the animation. For length something around 8-15 seconds would be the goal for the 2nd sequence but depends on what I've learned and how confident I am.

• Timeline:
• week 9-11
• Rough Blockout
• week 12-14
• Polish Blockout
• Week 14-16
•  Finish animation