This sudden reopening is inspired by Doron Meir's lecture about getting into and advancing in the animation industry, and the "underwear millionaire"'s philosophy and approach to self improvement, passed on to me by a friend.
In order to keep track of the various assignments I've been given and goals I've set, and in order to create some kind of obligation that will keep me motivated and dedicated to the working process, I've decided to reanimate this blog as a "progress diary". Every day I will post an update with the knowledge and skills that I have acquired. "you learn something new every day" isn't a cliche, but rather a truth usually ignored.
Keeping track and documenting the many things I come across everyday during my work and research on the internet will not only create a library I can revisit when the need arises but will also help the information I learn to "sink in". furthermore, it might be a useful resource for others in the future.
Having said that, I'll get started with my most recent task.
During the past 2 months I've been working on an acting assignment based on a random monologue taken from a movie I do not know. Even though it is not yet smoothed and polished, I am already displeased with it's current state. having cried about it to various people, my mother and a friend gave me a very simple advice:
"Share your work with other people, share it with whoever you can - teachers, colleagues and friends. each will have his own input for you to try and maybe apply to your work"
Thinking about it, it really is simple. and so, I've uploaded this video to facebook:
Soon after it was uploaded I received many comments. to sum it up, it was said that Malissa (the character) appears very angry all throughout the scene, which isn't with accordance with her tone which starts sad, disappointed and maybe a little desperate. It was recommended that I keep her gestures less flashy in the beginning, that I avoid using gestures that illustrate her words and that I think deeply about what the character is really going through, and how what she does supports what she says.
keeping these things in mind I've also received 2 other tips and sources of reference.
the first is heath ledger's as the Joker, which is an example of marvelous acting, without using many hand gestures. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8PxG5zvgOM
The second is a movie recommendation - "Something's gotta give" starring Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton, which is a great reference for a dramatic actress. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337741/
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Aside from looking for ways to improve the acting of my animation, I've also encountered some problems with my rig. while using the graph editor I've deleted a whole bunch of keys I had no need for, but without noticing I've deleted some keys connected to way the rig performs. not being able to fix the rig, I realized I have to copy the animation to a new file. thanks to that problem I found a very cool script called dkanim.
what the script basically does is copy a selected object's animation information to a text file, and allowing you to import this information to a different object of the same name.
all I had to do was open the scene before the rig became corrupted and import the text file.
During this process I've also learned of a way to delete keys without harming your rig:
edit -> keys -> delete keys.
while deleting keys via the graph editor might cause you deleting keys you may not want to delete, using this action is perfectly safe and assures driven keys are unharmed :)
One more advice I received while looking for a solution to this problem was to use a referenced rig.
here is an article on how do so, while preserving a clean and efficient pipeline:
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Some other cool stuff I came across today are this cool korean artist, Kim Jung-Gi, look him up.
A simple tutorial on how to draw a human head in an angle:
And a great info page on anatomy, by http://foervraengd.deviantart.com/?rnrd=10477.
the picture can be seen here:
One more great tip by Doron Meir can be found here:
though I recommend reading the whole article, in short, Doron recommends switching mediums. when trying to illustrate an idea, use several mediums, such as writing, drawing, painting, sculpting, etc. you might catch something in one medium that you overlooked in another :)
(and a link to his site, which is basically a great pile of knowledge http://www.mechanics-of-inspiration.com/)
I think this is about it for today. hopefully I will return with new knowledge tomorrow :)
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