AM - Class 3 / Week 4 - Lecture

Locomotion.

In this lecture Dave Mullins talks about locomotion in the human body; He shot himself performing different types of physical actions like siting, standing, lifting, throwing, then analyzed these shots in terms of 'source of force' and 'weight shift'.

Here are some random notes I got from Dave analyzing his reference:

- Fulcrum is the point of balance in a character or an object.

- The mass is evenly distributed around the Fulcrum ( or what we call center-line of gravity )

- Our bodies developed a way to move in the most efficient manner, always taking short cuts to preform any action.

- In order to the human body to stay in balance while moving, it counter balances its self between the hips & legs to     sustain a well balanced locomotion.... that's a very confusing sentence :)

- External force changes the natural flow of any locomotion.

- When lifting weights, the heavier the object being lifted the more body parts are involved in the process.

- Anticipation before the movement, and settle after the movement, are key elements in animation.

The butter of this lecture is that, before you start animating you will need to shoot / find a reference, analyze it thoroughly, find out where the fulcrum is in the character, how the weight is shifting between the legs once that is well understood, fire up Maya, & start animating!

AM - Class 3 / Week 3 - Lecture

Advanced Arcs and Path of Action.

Arcs can add more to animated scenes than any other animation principle you may know, it could lift up a shot form amateur level to a Wow!! professional level.

Every part of the human body moves on arcs, the only part that dose not arc on movement is the eyes, they tend to move in a snappy, poppy fashion...  In fact, everything in life moves on arcs! well.. other than Robots of course. 

Check out Dr. Harold Edgerton's book: 'The Anatomy of Movement' to get a visual idea about arcs in real life.

Adding arcs while animation any action creates more believable performance for your characters because it will feel more organic, no body could explain it better than Frank & Ollie, they said in there book The Illusion Of Life: 

'Straight inbetweens completely kill the essence of an action'  

so DON'T forget to add inbetweens that creates nice clean arcs in the scene you animate!

Its really a good Idea to grab a scene from your favorite animated movie ( Disney movie.. I like Disney ) and choose a part
of a character, like the nose, or the hips...  & track it on your monitor with a dry marker, you'll be AMAZED to see all these arcs flowing, that's one of the reasons that makes these movies alive & iconic.

Even though its sounds like tracking arcs is more towards the polishing stage, but you need to plan them early in the game, even from the blocking stage, because it will make the process of tracking arcs a lot easier.

The more you pay attention to details like arcs, the more spontaneous it will become, AND the better your work will be.

AM - Class 3 / Week 2 - Lecture

Blocking To Final.

Another blocking to final lecture by Dave Burgess... The Legend!! Check his movie credits to know why!!

AM - Class 3 / Week 1 - Lecture

Intro To Staging And Composition.

Lots of things are involved in the staging process, Characters, Props, Set.. etc, Camera Angle/lenses, & the action that will take place in the shot.

The most important thing about staging is clarity, you should make sure that the idea & the point of the shot is very clear to the audience while staging.

Keep it simple, and keep your full concentration on the message that you're telling the audience; Staging (with its simplicity) should help conveying that message.. not confuse it!

One of the most important things in staging is 'The Camera', its actually the seat of your audience, and you have to place it in the most interesting, entertaining, yet clear position. 

Here are some of the main famous type of shots known in cinema:

Establishing shot (usually used at the opening of the scene), Long shot, Medium shot, Close-Up shot, High Angle shot, Low Angle shot, Over the Shoulder shot (used when having two characters in the scene), Point of View shot 

(to show what the character is looking at), there are plenty more but these are the most commonly used..

Camera Movement: 

Before animating the camera you should ask your self.. Why I'm moving my camera?  I personally see some great animations that gets messed up by un-necessary camera movement.. the camera should move only for a purpose.

A good reasons for animating the camera would be: following a character, emphasizing on a character's reaction, revealing an important element in the scene, or maybe creating a sense of action.. but avoid camera moves that are pointless, or will distract your audience from the main subject.

Type of camera moves: Pan, Track In/Out, Dolly, Crane, Boom, Tilt Up/Down.

Type of camera lenses: Long Lens 100-200mm, Normal lens 35-50 mm, Short lens 10-20mm, Normal lens are the most appealing to the human eyes.

There is another question that you should ask yourself while staging your shots; What I'm trying to tell the audience with this camera angle? when you get used to asking your self these kind of questions your whole animation will 

start making more sense.

Quick tips:

When framing characters, remember to leave some head / feet room. 

Drive the viewer's eyes to the direction you want them to look at through your composition. 

Do not forget the important Rule Of Thirds.

Ciao :)

Class Three Begins!

This class I was assigned to be mentored by Jason Martinsen who is known as 'The Traveling Mentor'

At first, I wanted to swap class with other student because my work timing conflicts with Jason's timing & it will be hard for me to attend the Q&As, but when I saw his work!! I was like.. I'm swapping with No Body!!  Jason's work is 

so Awesome!! he has a very strong cell animation background which makes his 3d animation so smooth & appealing.

Here, Check out his reel on his website.. Amazing!!

AM - End of Class Two!!

After long sleepless nights; class two is finally over!! It was an Awesome learning experience with John Nguyen.

As the habit goes, at the end of each term the mentor will wright a personal assessment for each student, and I'm always eager to know what my mentor thinks of my work, & what advice he can give me for further improvement.  Here is what John had to say:

Areas of strength: Manar is a very good animator and has a solid grasp of animation principles. His understanding of body mechanics is excellent. This allows him to focus some of this time to adding a story and personality to his work. His shots are fun and entertaining. Its has been a pleasure to have him in class. His enthusiasm and open mindedness has made it easy to teach.

Areas of improvement: Manar could work on his timing as far as it relates to the pace of the shot. Using timing and exaggerating to give energy and emotion to the shot, are a couple thing I think he can experiment with.

I wish John all the best in his career & I hope our path will cross again in the near future.

AM - Class 2 / Week12 - Assignment

Same as the previous term, our last assignment is to collect all the shots we've animated this term in a single progress
reel.   Hope you like it!

AM - Class 2 / Week 12 - Lecture

Summery!

This lecture was a very quick wrap up for everything learned in this term, weight & balance, Blocking, strong appealing posing, hips animation, external & internal force, arcs, timing & spacing.

AM - Class 2 / Week 11 - Lecture

Adding The Final 10%

In this lecture Kenny Roy took a shot that a student animated & labelled as final, and he pushed it further by 

adding an extra polish pass here & there, subtle anticipation, smooth arks.. etc

Here is some quick tips I got from the lecture:

- Step away from the shot for a while then come back with a fresh eye, write your notes, be critical to your work.
- Always observe the center of gravity in your characters.
- Hide the legs & work on the body/waist first, then go back to the legs.
- Twinning of feet or arms (in timing & posing) is a bad thing to have in animation, avoid it as much as possible!

Check out Kenny's website for some amazing tips and videos on animation.

AM - Class 2 / Week 10 - Lecture

Walk-Through a Shot.

In this lecture Rick O’Connor takes us through his process of animating a shot form start to finish.

- Shooting video reference
- Sketching thumbnails for the key poses along with frame numbers & notes.
- Blocking the key poses in Maya.
- Second blocking pass, and tweaking the timing in the poses.
- Showing the shot to the directer or a colleague to get feedback.

- Finish & polishing the shot.

As you can see, Rick follows the same exact steps that we've been talking about in previous posts, but its always great to
see these giants in action as if they are working next to your desk!

AM - Class 2 / Week 9 - Lecture

Timing & Spacing

To understand what is timing and what is spacing we'll go back to the bouncing ball example, Timing is when the 

ball hits the ground, as for Spacing its how you place the in-between frames of the ball arcing through the air.

To further demonstrate, here is an illustration form Richard Williams book 'Animator's Survival Toolkit'

Quick notes:

- There are a number of elements that influence timing in a shot : Weight, External / Internal Force, Momentum, Animation Style.

- A great advice that all pros agree on is that Do Not let Maya make the in-betweens for you, if you do so the 

spacing will look very even & boring, adding ease ins & ease out will make the spacing much more interesting.

- Tracking your in-betweens with a dry wipe marker (same like what I've mentioned in the last post) will help you 

see and correct the pops in the spacing..

- Making simple changes in spacing & timing will make a huge difference in your shot.

AM - Class 2 / Week 8 - Lecture

Arcs and Path of Action

Arcs & Path of Action are greatly related, they always go hand in hand with each other.. 

Every time there is a motion there is a path for that motion, that path is called path of action. The path of action -in most cases- has an arc shape. In animation we need to make that arc smooth & clean to add quality to the shot, bumpy path of action will weaken the animation no mater how good the character posing is.

If you watch any animated Disney movie you will notice that it has a very fluid feel to it, that's all because of smooth arcs & path of action, and that what makes Disney work so remarkable!

I personally never thought of tracking arcs in my animation before joining Animation Mentor, and was always wondering 

why my work looked so bad!! Now, I came to realize that it was all about two things: Arcs, and Path of Action.. along with 

solid character posing of course.

There is plenty of tools in Maya for Ghosting, and showing animation path, but I found the best way for tracing arcs is by drawing on my monitor with a dry wipe marker.. try it.. it really works :)

AM - Class 2 / Week 7 - Lecture

FORCE.

Animation is not about moving characters from point A to point B, we have to know why we're moving these characters, 

& we have to think about the force behind the movement because : Nothing Moves Without a Force!

There are Two types of force: 

External Force: like a character puling / pushing, jumping... etc..

Internal Force: tells you that the character is a live and making its own decisions.

While animating a certain action we DON'T just keyframe the main poses and let the computer figure out the in-betweens, 

its up us Animators to direct the sequence of transforming between these poses, How we get from one pose to the other, What body parts are involved in the process, We need to make sure that the entire body of the character IS involved in the movement but each with different level of intensity..

So Force is what part of the body is moving first, and the parts that follows along, its setting up a sequence of energy being released through out the body to make the movement.

Its how we transition our characters from one place to the other, and that involves Lead & Follow, Timing, Path of Action, 

All the important animation principles that we're learning at AM.

As for Internal Force its what's going in in the character's head displayed through external posing, its the acting, the 

personality, its the reaction in a certain situation.

A very good advice I got from Wayne Gilbert during the lecture: Animators should always have a reference to work with, 

analyze the motion in that reference, de-assemble it, study it carefully, then re-assemble it into your animation the 

way like it.

AM - Class 2 / Week 6 - Lecture

And another Blocking to Final lecture by Mike Stern.

Mike was among the first group that graduated from Animation Mentor, now he is working at DreamWorks as a character animator.

His impressive list of credits includes: Bee Movie, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, and recently Puss in Boots.

Check out his AWESOME Animation Mentor graduation short: Distraxion.

AM - Class 2 / Week 5 - Lecture

Weight and Balance

Weight & Balance are crucial elements in animation, sometimes it feels wrong even when watching a high budget animated movie from major studios.
To create a solid character animation we need to understand weight & balance in real life before we start applying it into animation.

In order for a character to be balanced; its weight needs to be evenly distributed a long its center line of gravity, (the center line is the vertical line that connects the supporting foot on the ground with the base of the neck)

In real life, a fat person requires more time and power to move forward as well as to stop, same in animation, a character with a big mass requires more time & energy to propel it self to obtain locomotion than a smaller character would.
Balance wise, the faster the person is moving, the less balanced he is, the slower he moves the more balanced he is,
But if the person is completely balanced he can't move anywhere, therefor we need to break off that balance in order for us
to move around.

If you don't follow the rules of real life weight & balance while animating a shot it will simply look lifeless, there is a fine line between exaggerating the rules of weight and breaking them, you can exaggerate the rules of weight but the one thing that you Can Not exaggerate is balance, you can only break the balance of a character during locomotion & that is about the
only time that your character is off balanced, like walk, run, jump, or what kind of locomotion you have for the character.


Quick notes:
- A well balanced character is the one that all its parts are working with each other to balance itself.
- Extreme reversal action helps selling the idea of weight (for something like a pull, a push, or a jump)
- In order to sell the weight!! exaggerate!!
- Exaggerate the squash & stretch by compressing its body clusters closer together, or stretching them a part.
- When you're animating a character throwing a heavy object; make sure to utilize the entire body to make that object go far... same principle applies to a jump.

Line of Action.

Our mentor John Nguyen shared with as a very nice article that might be known for some but not for others!!
It talks about the line of action, and the Rule of Thirds..

Here, check it out!!

AM - Class 2 / Week 4 - Lecture

 Walk-Through: Blocking to Final

Yet another lecture hosted by Ethan Hurd explaining his way of approaching a shot from start to finish.
Ethan is such an amazing animator, he animated on famous titles like Toy Story 2, Shrek 2, Madagascar, Open Season, Surf's Up, Bolt, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, and Gnomeo and Juliet.

Its really cool to see professional animators walking us through there process of animating a shot..
They are humans!! just like us!!

AM - Class 2 / Week 3 - Lecture

In-depth Look at Hips

In this lecture, Bobby takes a closer look (through real life references) at hips & how they move.

When we watch beginner animators reels we'll notice that the hips is often ignored!!

Well.. actually everything starts & drives from the hips, and to start understanding how hips moves you'll need to analyze
live footage & see how the weight is distributed between the hips and legs.

One thing to keep in mind is that the center of gravity is always above the point of suspension.
In a well balanced character pose; you should be able to draw a straight vertical line between the base of the neck and
the supporting foot on the ground.

Another thing is that the hips (in most cases) counter rotate the shoulders, this will make the pose rather appealing.

And like we always say, once we understand the principles of hips rotation, we can exaggerate it to serve the purpose of
that shot.

AM - Class 2 / Week 2 - Lecture

BLOCKING TO FINAL

This was another lecture that talks about animating a shot from Blocking all the way to the final stage.
It was hosted by Dimos Vrysellas who is a great animator, worked on a number of features like:
The Wiled, Shark Tale, Sindbad, Spirit, and The Prince of Egypt.

AM - Class 2 / Week 1 - Lecture

CLARITY IN BLOCKING.

Blocking is setting up the foundation for a shot.
In order to sell the idea to your self or the director first you'll need to block it out , blocking should convey your thoughts
on the shot with a bunch of posses, this is the best way for you to know if your idea is working or not.

1 - Things you need to know before you start blocking:
-Understand the shot.
-What are my goals in this shot?
-What dose the shot calls for?
-What are the limitations in the shot?
-What is the duration of a shot?

2 - Once you answered all these questions, you can go a head & find / shoot a reference video for the action you're about
to animate, even if you know exactly what you need too do you still need to take this step because it will help you finding
this nice little gestures in the reference that you can slide into your shot to make it more interesting.

3 - The next step is to draw little thumbnails poses with the help of the reference, its good to accompany the drawings
with frame numbers to know on where each pose will fit in the timeline.

4 - Then you start blocking in Maya with Stepped Tangents keyframes.

5 - After you finish blocking, re time the posses in the timeline

6 - Push your posses further (exaggerate) to get the most out of each pose.

7 - convert your keyframes to liner, at this stage show your work to others ( director, colleague, wife ) to get feedback.

8 - After you're done with blocking here is a check list that you need to double tick:
-Dose the shot reads correctly??
-Are the posses looking interesting??
-Is the animation looking interesting??

If all the above are OK, you can proceed to the next steps, which is Blocking Plus, then Splining, and finally.. Polishing.

Have fun!