Class 2 Session 4

Here’s my week 4 assignment.

Heavy Push - Rough Blocking - Stepped Mode



Assignment
Video Reference (thanks to my brother for helping out)

Well, for the assignment, I wanted it to look like Stewie was pushing a refrigerator, still in the box, up a ramp and into a truck.
It took 10 minutes to model the truck and figure out the look of the scene with the background etc. So that extra fluff didn’t take time away from animating, but I think it adds just a little to the shot.

I planned, planned, planned for the push. I sketched from my video reference and exaggerated the spine and the weight. It was helpful, but the timing that I had planned for was way off. When I got it to the computer I noticed that the freaking ramp was too long, so my push was close to 500 frames long. So I shortened the ramp, took out some of the anticipation and got it down to 300. The anticipation that I removed was about 76 frames long and Stewie was stretching his arms with his hands clasped…..kind of cracking his knuckles before he grabbed a hold of the fridge. I liked it, but had to scrap it for length reasons.

You may be wondering what the hell happened to my week 3 sneak. A lot happened, the rig went wacko, well, I think it was me not really knowing how to manipulate it during the blocking. But I blame it on Stewie version 2.2. Many, many people had problems with Stewie and he’s an easy target to blame. Honestly though, it was me not paying attention to the rotations on the arms. There were some issues with the rig not remembering keys though. Hopefully, with a brand new version of Stewie, and a better knowledge of the rotation from stepped to spline, I will resolve the issue with this week’s assignment. I have had to really pay attention to my rotations to avoid the dreaded gimbal lock that I got in week 3. No, I will not post the assignment. It’s not something I am happy with. So you will never see it unless you are in AM and access my workspace. You don’t want to see it anyway….well, people do like seeing train wrecks……but not mine.