Animation Lesson 1 week 1

I've started my animation lesson with a happy character pose and a bouncing ball animation. I'm using Red-Nelb character for the pose and Dougie for the animation.

Happy Pose

Bouncing ball animation

It look so easy but animating a bouncing ball is so hard. You have to get the right timing and spacing. You have to plan and think on how the ball bounces, how much it rotates, how slow it is at the top of its bounces, how much it accelerates towards the ground. So far, week 1 is good and I learned alot. You can download the blend files here:
Happy pose 
Bouncing ball

Animation Lessons

I'm in a quest to learn basic to advance animation but unfortunately, I don't have the $$$ to enroll in school that specialized in animation like Animation Mentor. So I decided that I will have to learn it by myself. How will I do it? Well, I have been reading blogs and watching some progress reel by some AM students and I have to say that their lesson program make some real sense. They start from bouncing ball then move their way up to animating fully rigged character. If it won't create an issue to AM, I will try to follow their program but through observations only and learn the principles in animation by reading Disney Animation - The Illusion of Life and the Animator's Survival Kit. And of course, I will be using free rigged characters and props and using Blender 2.5 as the primary 3d tool and get some feedback and critics from the guys at blenderartist.com. Wish me luck ^_^

btw: Here's the list of exercise that I'm going to do

Lesson 1 week 1
red-nelb pose - Happy
bouncing ball animation

Lesson 1 week 2

red-nelb pose - Sad
bouncing ball (heavy and light)

Lesson 1 week 3

red-nelb pose - Thrilled
ball obstacle course - pinball obstacle design

Lesson 1 week 4

red-nelb pose - Fear
pendulum

Lesson 1 week 5

red-nelb pose - Relaxed
dougie animation

Lesson 1 week 6

red-nelb pose - Mad
dougie animation 2

Lesson 1 week 7

red-nelb pose - Courageous
red-nelg legs -walk cycle

Lesson 1 week 8

red-nelb pose - Bored
red-nelb legs - personality walk

Gutom

Finally, my latest short film is out. I worked on this short for 9 months from concept to final picture and I could say that it's very worth it. I accept that there are some major flaws in this short from the very beginning but nonetheless it's a priceless experience. I learned a lot from this short. I learned a lot about Blender 2.5. I also learned that I like animation more than the rest that's why after this project I will concentrate on learning more about character animation. Thank you for watching "Gutom".



modeling, animating and rendering done in Blender 2.5

Music by
Kevin Macleod and Borea under creative commons attribution "3.0".

Fish are friends, not food

A quote from finding nemo

"Sharks: [reciting] I am a nice shark, not a mindless eating machine. If I am to change this image, I must first change myself. Fish are friends, not food."

done in inkscape.