In progress...

Here's my first jump into the 11 second club competition for this month. Unfortunately I think I might scrap much of this pass. But I think there's still some interesting stuff in it. More ta come later ;)



UPDATED 1-23-09: Here's my latest iteration. I changed the idea a lot, in order to emphasize the acting rather than the action of the scene. It's not perfect and some of the guy's poses need to be modified because they're not that strong, but it's going in the right direction I think...



UPDATED 1-25-09: Still plugging away at this one. There's some floatyness to his arms...mostly because I'm trying out using IK for the first time. But his emotions are reading a bit better. I might not finish this in time for the competition, but I will finish it for my reel ;)



UPDATED 1-26-09: I'm really enjoying tracking my progress! I flipped it back to stepped to try to resolve some of the acting issues. I think it's looking better. I might just keep going and key it as much as possible. Usually I feel like that creates too much work for myself, but in this case it feels like the right thing to do.




UPDATED 1-27-09: Man I'm cranking away! I'm really enjoying compiling my posts together like this. It's a good way to keep track of my progression. There's a lot that needs to be cleaned up with the hands and the mouth. The girl needs a final "pop" at the end too to draw your eye away from the gesticulations of the dude.

I decided this time to really key the scene as much as possible. Before I've always kind of sculpted the animation from the curves...moving the weights around. I don't know if this is going to make it easier or harder, but right now...it's just feeling right.



UPDATED 1-28-09: I'm kind of experimenting with this one. I'm trying to really get my spacing down in blocking before I move over the splines. I have converted it since posting this video and it seems to be working well, but I think I'll still have to invest a lot of time into making it look less puppet-like.

I should make another update on this later tonight ;)



UPDATED 1-29-09: Moving the splines around a bit. The timing still isn't quite there, but it's coming along. The end just isn't working for me just yet. I think I might go for something more subtle...



UPDATED 1-31-09: Here's my final pass before submission to 11 second club. I think it's a good pass for the time I had, but it still need a lot of work. It's come a hell of a long way though!