AM Class 5 : Short Film 3D Layout

Here is the final Layout for my Short Film. The composition/framing is more or less finalised. The titles and the credits are rough as of now. Seeing my idea from story on paper to the stage below was so very satisfying !

As Anthony Robbins says -

"Its not about what you get that makes us happy; Its what you become in the process"

Any feedback of any kind is more than welcome.

Short Film 3D Layout from Anirudh Bhalotia on Vimeo.

AM Class 5 - Short Film 2D Animatic

As mentioned in my last "Catch Up Time" post, here is the fruit of my Class 5 work at Animation Mentor.

I was totally petrified by this Class 5, as we had to make an entire animatic on paper on our own ! The very thought thought of drawing kind of gives me the scares and to draw a full animatic and to convey my story and to make sense from it was a huge uphill task for me. But as I started and progressed I was getting quite comfortable. The main thing of this assignment was to have a sense of clarity and vision of your entire story and actions(to an extent) before we even opened our 3D application, which is a very prudent thing to do. Also storyboard is a very fast and efficient to test your ideas by not wasting too much as would happen if we directly go to our 3D application without any idea at all.

You can try framing/composition/angles/poses which wont take more than 60 seconds for one panel (say idea, beat, action) and incase you not satisfied you can chuck it off in the trash and move on. In 3D it will take a lot of time and since we have would have already spent so much time, making corrections or discarding it altogether can be that much more difficult(its a mind thing actually).

Ok enough of my rant. Lets get to the animatic right away.

Short Film 2D Animatic from Anirudh Bhalotia on Vimeo.

P.S. - Due to some reason I am unable to upload my 3D Layout. I will try posting it in my next post. May be it was just my connection playing spoilsport or may be it was the size of the video. I don't know the exact reason as yet.

AM Class 5 - Week 1, QNA, Introductions

Another new term begins here at Animation Mentor(AM). This term is significant in a few ways.

Firstly its the term where we start our own independent short films right from story/script till the final render. So its no easy task by any chance, as here we need to combine all the stuff we have learnt so far, in addition to building a good story entertainment wise, learning layouts, cam angles and cuts, how the story flows, whats the entertainment value, how to keep the audience engrossed, in short we our, our own directors in a way for the next 6 months. Class 5 is the first 3 months which involves pre-production in the form of layouts and blocking and Class 6 is the last 3 months where we animate and build upon from whatever we did in Class 5.

Secondly this is the 2nd last term for me here at AM, sort of entering the twilight zone at AM. A journey of a dream which i decided to pursue in 2007, a pssion for animation and for learning it from the best in the business, for which i left my full time job, will be soon completed. Its been more than a year, but somehow it feels just yesterday when i had my first ever week here at AM. Some experiences lasts for a long long time in our life and this will surely be among one of them.

Yesterday had my first ever Class 5 QNA with my mentor and new class mates. My mentor for this term is Cal Brunker !



I must say, i didnt know much about Cal prior to this, but after interacting with him in the QNA, i think i couldnt have asked for a better mentor. Cal has a tremendous amount of experience in this field, has worked with studios like Disney, Blue Sky, to name a few and he being in the thick of things at Red Rover Studios(check out their work, its awesome!), you can imagine the amount of information we are lucky to share from him. Also as a person he is a joy to speak to and to listen to him share his very infectious enthusiasm for everything related to Animation. I am totally excited to see how this term goes and what it brings to me.

I am also lucky to have a wonderful set of class mates. During the introduction we all had to come on the cam and speak a bit about ourselves and it was so nice listening to all my classmates and now friends, as to what brings them to animation, their interests, etc. Also many of them(i guess all) have a lot of experience and are skilled in drawing as an artist, so it would be fun to learn from them about drawing which totally petrifies me a lot of time. :-)

Next week our stories brainstorming starts !

Keep a tab on this space for more !

Ciao!

AM Class 4-Assignment 2-Week3 - Blocking

Week 2 i had covered Layouts. Based on some very good critique from my super mentor Sean Ermey here is my rough blocking pass where i have added some more breakdowns in order to have a better idea of how my scene is progressing.








This week we also had to find one photo from magazines, books, etc where there was a clear emotion being communicated from the face. The same emotion we had to re-create in our 3D model. This is what my main image and the 3D face came out in the end -



Coming up next, my week 4 - Blocking Plus

AM Class 4-Assignment 2-Week2 - Layouts

Based on my assignment of Week 1, in Week 2, I had to set up the layouts and very rough poses of my entire performance. Layouts included the setting of the scene, the camera angles and the camera cuts to have an idea of how the entire scene will flow and make the entire scene interesting to watch.

Below is my layout for Week 2 -

AM Class 4-Assignment 2-Week1 - Choosing a dialog

In the first week we have to choose one dialog among the three which we have short-listed. The idea behind choosing the dialog is something which has a lot of contrast and texture in terms tempo and emotion. The emotion should not be same thru out the whole scene otherwise it will get boring and loose the audience's interest. The dialog should also have clear beats and phrases with scope showing subtext/inner though process.

Initially i had about 7 audio dialog, based on the feedback from peers and friends, i got it down to the following 3 -





And then finally based on my mentor and my choice i chose Audio - 5. I liked this particular one more than the rest, because it had clear different beats in terms of emotion. Also both man and women are involved so i get to play with both their generic personalities and it has a nice shade of humor within.

Coming up next, my layout for the scene, as to how the cam angles are, where are the cuts, whether the cuts are flowing together and finally to make sure both the angles and the cuts complement the dialog. This was a very important assignment in terms of staging and the overall look of the performance. A bad staging can make all the difference. Its very important for any animator to know not only about animation but also on the broader level of keeping the big picture in mind by knowing about why a particular camera angle works or doesn't work, what influence can the staging have on the scene, whether all the cuts are working properly without confusing the audience. Its very much what a Director goes thru before he/she gets on to the real performance.


AM Class 4 - Assignment 2-Week 2 - Layouts

Finally - My AM Journey

Finally...after months of delay, i am so excited to start this new section where i would try to upload and share with you all, my week by week progress of my awesome journey of being a student at Animation Mentor(AM).

Actually it would sound a bit strange but the very reason of starting this blog was to do exactly that, to make you all a part of my endeavors with AM then the big exciting world of blogging got the better of me and also i was crazily engrossed with AM...not that i am not now, just that i am a bit better at time management and organizing stuff now. :-)

Anyway enough of rambling...lets get down to the exciting stuff. Just a brief of what stage of AM i am at, I am in Class 4 - Advanced Acting. This is the real exciting, fun stuff for any animator, but at the same time, the hardest to make it look good and very challenging. But in the end the final result makes it all worthwhile.

Class 4 consists of two assignment. The first one is a continuous of Class 3, which is a single character acting shot where we don't do the facials and the lip-sync, but just the body performance in Class 3. Only in Class 4 do we layer in the facial and lip-sync and complete the shot per se. Since i have yet to share my Class 3 stuff, its only prudent i start with the second assignment of Class 4 which is a 2 character dialog shot and which we start from scratch right from choosing the audio till the end including facials and lip sync.

So without much ado lets start with my first week of my assignment where we have to choose 3 audio clips and based on the mentor and feedback from the awesome AM community we have to choose one. More on this in a separate post as below -

AM Class 4-Assignment 2-Week1 - Choosing an audio clip

My Class 2 Progress Demo Reel as a Student At AnimationMentor.com

Here is my 3 months of hardwork during my Class 2 - Body Mechanics at Animation Mentor - Character Animation School.

Although i should have posted this earlier, but then i moved to Class 3, things got busy and was caught up with life so i hardly got time to polish and compile it. Anyways, better late than never !

These 3 months were super fun and a huge learning experience. Body mechanics was one area where i was lacking a lot and i was looking for solid guidance prior to joining Animation Mentor. And thankfully i was lucky to have a mentor like Dana Boadway who was extremely supportive and encouraging. With huge experience in Animation, Art, Theatre and what not and a trained dancer with around 15 years of dancing experience, she sure knows what she is talking about.

Body mechanics is the foundation for any animator wanting to pursue a career in Animation. Whatever I learnt in Class 1 - Basic Foundations started to making more sense in Class 2. Body physicality and believability in motion just cannot be ignored. No matter how much detail you put in terms of acting and emotions, if your overall motion is not working, it just wont connect with the audience and it will fall flat.

I wont say i have mastered Body Mechanics, but i definitely see a massive improvement in my understanding of it and hopefully it will show in the following video. In animation the more you learn it seems the less you know. Thats the beauty of this field. Every day is a fresh day with loads of stuff to learn and immerse in your self.

Animation is never finished, its just abandoned as every time you see it there is always scope for improvement. I am sure there is quite a lot which can be refined, but i am not sure whether i would go back and tweak more. Its easy to get stuck with a particular piece of animation and its important to move on. So I guess i would try something different to keep getting better at it. But so far i am quite pleased with what i have done so far. Thanks Dana ! :-)

Hope you like it !

Feedback/suggestions/advise/comments are always welcome !

P.S. - Requires QuickTime

Don't have ? Get it here.

My Class 1 Progress Demo Reel as a Student At AnimationMentor.com

Finally !!!

After months of delay, a little bit of laziness, a little bit of procrastination, but a lot of time really busy with my Animation Mentor classes, here is my Class 1 work of 3 months ! Though by now i should be putting up my Class 3 work, i needed to make a start somewhere at least. So instead of waiting, till i make my Class 2 and Class 3 work, ready for public consumption, i thought of putting it up in parts.

Class 1 is called Basic Foundation and as the name suggests, its really about getting the basics right which will serve as a foundation for our future work as an animator. Though these basic skills will continue to grow and refine as we gain more experience by working, at least a certain level is desired and is helpful, in order to go forward into more advanced stuff.

For a layman who has no knowledge about animation and is purely watching it from an audience standpoint, there is not much entertainment and story in the following animations. Like i said these are just the basic on which the more interesting stuff will be built upon. Though for some one in the field of animation, he/she should be able to see what the various animations are about and what i was trying to achieve through these animations.

P.S. - I am not very sure if the playback speed/frame rate is same as the original one. If you find if its too slow or too fast, please let me know. I am still figuring out better ways for uploading movies. Thanks!