Class 1 - Week 11

It's all about balance... Tuk & Rol is my little tribute to those cute little pill pugs in A Bug's Life. Speaking of that movie, Pixar giant Joe Ranft passed away last week. He was the voice of the caterpillar Heimlich and was one of the head of story people there at the studio. It's a great loss to the animation world, not to mention his family and friends.

Victor Navone (my mentor) said the mood at Pixar was very very sad, and they are at the tail end of animation crunchtime on Cars - very difficult set of circumstances, I would think. The show must go on, of course, and I would guess that's the way Joe would have wanted it...

So back to my piddly little animations...I did some more refining on my "Baywatched" animation.

So, as you can see, I changed the camera. Doug Dooley left me a lot of feedback which I lost when the server turned over for the next session - they wiped it all clean and I wasn't able to get it all down. C'est la vie. I'm much happy with my attempt at overlapping this go around, but I've still got a lot of hours of practice to get under my belt before I feel confident with that.

Carlos Baena (Pixar) emphasized patience, patience, patience to me when I meet him at Siggraph this year. He was rejected several times from Pixar before he finally got in (on the third try, I think), and before he made it, he put up the rejection letters by his bed. His friends thought he was crazy, "Why do you put that stuff up?" But it kept him going somehow and reminded him to have patience.

Bobby Beck (you should know who he is by now without me having to tell you) said overlap takes a long, long time to really master.

Looking back at this assignment (I posting this almost a full 3 months after the fact), I remember how good I thought it was, but now I see that the timing really needs some tightening up and variation, and there's a lot to be refined. Probably the one thing I wouldn't change so much is the reaction of the lifeguard at the end. Other than that, I would say it's only about 75% the way to where it would need to be in order to be "feature quality".

(But who knows, at the end of my training I might say it's only 30%! Who knows...) Lifelong learning, it is...