Monday class
I wasn’t feeling great, so I didn’t go to class today. I asked my friends what I was missing, and found out it was retopology. I then watched the class videos that where released, and tried to catch up on the work.
values when black and white makes the values disappear because colours are too saturated. This one is for values normal black and white is for saturation.
The class videos were a little confusing, as it seems like the screen wasn’t recorded for the first video, only photoshop, as Henry would be talking about something like it’s on the screen but there wasn’t anything related to what he was talking about on the screen.
I started the Retopology exercise, and the videos seemed to be showing me everything so it was pretty easy to follow along. 
I started with the ring around the eyes, then the mask. I’m glad it is starting easy, as my brain already tries to break thigs down to simplify them so I can understand them, and this is saving me from having to break it down myself.
I then did the same thing I did for the eyes to the mouth, and filled in the mask to the eyes.
I then worked on my model. I added the wings and then started to smooth it out. then i looked up foxes anatomy to get an idea of the muscle directions.
I talked to henry about sculpting the mushrooms, or just making brushes. He suggested just making brushes. I also need to straighten the tail out, as if i leave it the way it is, it might warp the hind legs when i go to move the tail. I also asked about the mouth, he said that we only need to model, the mouth open if we want the pose at the end to include the mouth open.
Thursday’s class
Today we had a talk from Nathan McConnel from Framestore, they worked on guardians of the galaxy volume 3. They worked on the golden compass! That’s so cool. He talked about the process that the animators at Framestore went through while designing rocket from guardians of the galaxy vol 3 and how they had to almost work backwards since they knew what rocket looks like when he grows up and so had to turn him back to baby. Also talked about how they made rockets friends, Lylia, Teefs, and Floor. Previs is important to help communicate with the director, as it is easier to make changes. Also record your own reference for character expressions, human emotion can be used for animal expressions but you do have to account for the changes in anatomy, and example is the mouth and how animal snouts change how the mouth would move compared to a human. It was really interesting. They start form skeleton, then add muscles, then skin ,then fur, then cloths etc. Said Pre roll and post roll is really important, we haven’t learnt much about that yet. they use Maya almost exclusively.
After that talk Alec gave us a talk on 3D run cycles and how they are different to walk cycles. but the talk with Nathan McConnel ran on a bit long so we didn’t have time to do the class activity, Alec said we should maybe try to do that for homework.
Then Aodhan gave us a talk on 2D run cycles. We then were left to make our run cycles.
I made a run cycle on 1’s at 18fps. Aodhan said the arms where too similar/ flipped and needed a bit of differentiation to be clearer. so i changed them a bit to see if that helped fix the problem.
He was right. Its not a big deference but it is noticeable and I like the change.
ideas for my walk cycles.
Walk cycle 1 vanilla, (who/what) + fixed after feedback.
Walk cycle 2 personality, (regal walk, Princess Alantia) 2d. + fixed after feedback.
Run cycle 1 vanilla, (who/what) + fixed after feedback.
Run cycle 2 personality, (clumsy but military, Cordok) 2d + fixed after feedback.
got some feed back on my walk cycles.
For walk, leg still pops on last frame, so fix that.
Run, need to adjust silhouettes more, as they are still too similar.
For personality walk, the pause is too long/ need to change them to slightly different frames, shouldn’t stop, just slow.
Haven’t got feedback for personality run yet.
After I finished the base’s I did a quick sketch of the characters I would be animating
I might simplify the colour profile of Alantia’s dress as I am not sure how to add gradients in harmony.
My own work/ study for the week.
Qrbits art , Iv’e been watching a lot of Qrbits as they give a lot of helpful tip on ways to improve in art.
Kuzillon, I also watched some of Zuzillon’s videos
Streams I also like to watch this persons streams sometimes, as I really want to learn from their colouring process.
I wanted to try some more dynamic poses/ referencing anatomically posed figures. I had a lot of fun doing these little practice sketches.