AM Masterclass Assignment 3

I've had a brilliant third week on the A&C program! Starting with Brian Mendenhall's lecture on Advanced Quadruped Walks, which was epic and then I was really inspired by my peers working on this assignment. After seeing how detailed some students have been planning and sketching their assignment, the first thing I decided to do was step my game up with my planning and sketching.

One part of this weeks assignment was to plan a 4-6 second quadruped animation piece that I will be working on over the next 4 weeks. I've planned something really simple to look at, but has plenty of animation to think about. Here is the sketch I made to plan, analyse and note the important parts of this upcoming piece.

The reference I found and cut together videos clips that really shows a lot of the mechanics and the small intricacies that I will be adding at the polishing stage, such as ear flicks, tongue licks and breathing. So I think it's going to be very helpful now and during the production. Here is my Quadruped Walk Cycle revision. It's still not great, but I think it passes and I know that the next time it will be even better because I have learnt SO much from doing this one: The feedback this week from Leigh was really indepth...
- Ear flicks will happen when they hear something, they tune in the sound. Or it can happen when they want to flick away bugs.
- You can feel the weight from the shudder when the tiger stops.
- Communicating through body language; think about eye, (but can be broken down to...) head, shoulder and hip direction, where they are all focused on an object, but when something happens else where, one can stay focused on the object while the other turns or looks away. Each part amounts to how much attention the character is giving to the object.
- It can be one thing if a Lion looks at you, but if he puts his foot down in your direction you know he's going to come for you.
- Get into the habit of including the cadence of the piece and time out beats so that you're aware of how many frames you'll be using and how long an action will take.
- Pick out/find a moment in each shot that speaks louder than everything else in the shot. That will keep the audience interested and coming back for more! In this piece, sell the moment where he stops and stomps his foot down and looks around.
- The roll of the feet in the revision still isn't quite working and needs some attention and the scapula is punching a little bit high.
- I could losen the jaw a little bit to look like he's breathing.
- The toes could be spread further as the paws land.

Animal joke of the week:
I really should be animating cows, because they are the only animal that go to the moovies!

Thanks for reading this week and as always feel free to leave me comments!

Adiós!!

Soundtrack: Ladysmith Black Mambazo - Induku Zethu