06/05/13 - Personal Development Summary

At the beginning of the semester I was aware of a few aspects that I needed to work on the get the best out of my performances. They were anatomy, body language and the sense of weight.

Anatomy
I see anatomy as a vital part of my improvement as an artist and animator. Throughout the year i have been attending extra life drawing classes put on by Lynn and using various sources online such as pose maniacs and another site which uses photostock images and offers a simulated life drawing class in my spare time. I've focused on specific areas that I feel are weaknesses such as hands, feet, faces and male anatomy. And searched out techniques to help me improve.

Sense of weight
Again i have mainly been aiming to improve my sense of weight through life drawing. The book, Force: Dynamic life drawing for animators has been a huge influence and has encouraged me to sometimes be more fluid with my drawing looking for lines of movement  to influence structure which have given my drawings more life. I've tried to transplant this knowledge into 3D by improving the poses of my 3D models by copying pictures and using the line of action technique.

Body language
A large part of my project was weighted on the performance that i produced revealing the emotion and thought process of the character. To improve the outcome it made sense to look into body language and the subtle gestures that add to a performance and really let the audience know how the character feels.

As the semester went on and it became clearer that motion capture was something that would be a vital part of my final outcome much of my development time went into learning new technology such as Vicon Blade 2.0 and Motion builder. It was tough to begin with but any solution to a problem i recorded on this blog which meant if it happened again i was able to quickly resolve it. This will also serve valuable for any future endevors and has encouraged me to begin documenting my problems and solutions more often on a personal blog. With a little help from lecturers such as Grant and Lynn i am now confident that i would be able to run my own motion capture session and be able to run through the pipeline between blade, Motionbuilder and Maya with much improved speed.












Even though this my not apply to my honours project i feel I've improved my ability to sketch freely. I carry a sketchbook around with me at all times and use it daily to encourage using my imagination. The quality of the drawings that i now produce in my sketchbook i feel has improved hugely and by sketching daily it has helped me to become less frustrated when drawing. I no longer feel like everything that i draw needs to be perfect and understand that even the drawings that I'm not so proud of are still signs of progress.

Finally I'll mention my odd collection of skills that I began to improve a little but as they weren't as crucial to my project were only worked on a little. I find as i come to the end of my uni experience i've become more eager to learn pretty much everything than i ever have before and sometimes this urge proved to be a little distracting. To help keep myself focused i allowed myself one day a week to work on something not necessarily related to my project. The following are some examples of these mini projects.

Digital Painting
Aim: Improve ability to render a final painting.
Result: Happy with improvement but highlights need for looking at textures of cloth and fur better.

Modelling

Aim: Improve ability to model from a concept sketch and topology
Result: Accuracy of model to concept massively improved, topology managed one mesh made completely of quads, downside it took me a day to model barely anything. Speed needs to be improved.

Quadruped walk cycle

Aim: Understand and create a quadruped walk cycle.
Result: Happy with the legs and feel like i understand the motion and order of the movement but really need to work on follow through as a principle.