Ballie with a little extra bounce in his step.

Hey Everyone!

Sorry I got a week behind on my blog. Things got a little busy here lately so I will combine two weeks of work in one post. It makes sense since they do sort of go together.

Our assignment was to have "Ballie" doing a walk but with some personality this time...sad, happy, tired, weak, etc... you get the idea. So first I started off by recording myself doing a whole bunch of different walks. I ended up narrowing it down to these nine. Then I showed this video to my fellow AM classmates and had them tell me which one was their favorite. For some reason...a lot of people picked #8. ;)




Everyone had their favorite out of those nine walks, but I went my instincts and decided on #5. From there, I then planned out my main poses on paper for the walk I had chose.




Then I took those main poses and blocked out the walk with "Ballie" in the computer.




Then finally the fun part!...and most difficult part. I got to smooth it all out and make sure it had good arcs, overlapping action, timing, weight, squash & stretch, exaggeration, spacing, etc... All those great principles that we have been learning and I have been telling you about for the last 3 months. We were allowed to add in the 3rd perspective this time which was great. I ended up creating a whole little environment for my walk because I had a little extra time. Here is the finished product. :)



Did you catch the gum on the bottom of Ballie's foot when he paused??? I added that in for just for fun. :)


We also had to do a couple poses during the last couple weeks. Heres my pose conveying "exhaustion."




Heres my pose conveying "balance."




Well that was a lot of work I just posted. I hope you enjoyed my explanation of it all...even my goofy reference video of me walking...and our family dog Jade. Using video of yourself acting out what ever you plan to animate is a must to be an animator. Maybe I will post more reference video of myself in the future...but I should warn you now...it might get pretty goofy as you can imagine. Maybe a little embarrassing for me, but thats ok :) because its a part of doing what I love.

Thank you!