Secrets - Part 05 (Finding my Finale)

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Well, here it is.

Except for a few tiny spacing and timing adjustments, I was able to clean up all of my curves without too much of a hassle and get my arcs nailed down. It was the most painless time I’ve ever had of completing all of those finishing little touches, which makes me think either I’m getting the hang of this just a little bit, or that I got a lot of bit lucky. It took awhile longer than I had anticipated getting it done.

My mentor Dave Burgess left me two great major notes that I will incorporate into this piece. The first is that when she leans back in her chair, her shoulders and head hit at the same time. I will drag the head slightly. Great eye on that one and I wish I would have thought of that first! The second is that her dismissive hand gesture is a little big and I should scale down the anticipation a tad. I always had this feeling in my gut that it was a touch too in-your-face-ish and I'm actually kind of relieved he said something about it. Again spot on advice.

I started to rig and animate the pigtails on Sunday morning with just four hours to go until my deadline. I realize now just how incredibly rusty I am as a rigger. I got the right one working just fine but the left one was giving me a bit of grief. I will have to revisit it. Sad, because it’s seems to be just about the simplest thing to rig and I’ve tackled much tougher challenges in the past. Anyhow, I didn’t want to hand in sloppy work on her hair and have it distract from the main animation.

I’m about half way through animating her right pigtail. It really seems to add a lot to the piece. I will work on it over school break and have it done before class picks up again. So if you check my three-item list from last post, I only really finished one out of the three. But somehow, it doesn’t faze me much. I’m still very pleased with how it turned out. I find it very rare in both my professional and personal work to get the opportunity to work on something until you are more or less completely satisfied with it. It is surprisingly…satisfying.

So with a bit of reflection as I end my third quarter, it has been another just amazing semester at AnimationMentor. I can’t believe how much more confidence I have when approaching a shot. In addition, I really appreciate knowing how to plan and work it through to polish. This has been such an amazing experience that I will always be very grateful for. I look back and can’t believe that it has only been nine months so far. I can’t wait for the next nine.

I have been very lucky to get three mentors so far that I've had mountains of respect for and work very easily with. They have pushed and pulled me to new heights that I only dreamed of last year. It is always a bit sad to me to have the last critique from my mentors. I feel much closer to everyone in the school than I would have thought before I started. So this one is for DaveB, I hope our paths cross in the near future. Sniff.

I hope this finds you well and a big thank you for your interest.