wrapping up class 4
I'm becoming nocturnal. A animampire. A vampimator. You get the idea. This is certainly not the first time I've seen 5 a.m. from the night-side, and it certainly won't be the last. If this backwards schedule didn't mean that I couldn't get anything done during normal business hours (errands, appointments, etc.), I would keep it. Aside from these pesky early birds, it's silent. Nothing but me and my splines.
Before I get too far off track (or off my rocker), I'll catch you up on my progress with this super-challenging acting shot. I'm almost to the finish line! This is the last week we get to work on it, so we're all putting the final noodly polish bits on to make these the best no-facial-animation-acting-shots ever!
I won't lie; I was very discouraged when I received my mentor's critique from last week. Not because I was going in the wrong direction, but because I really believed that I had followed his instructions from the week before. It had been an extremely long week of staring at curves in the graph editor, and I sincerely believed that my work was starting to shine. Hubris! Of course my mentor is just looking out for me and trying to help me make my work as awesome as possible before I move on to the next term. I'm just stubborn sometimes. Runs in the family.
I had to redo some body mechanics, rework a bit of timing at the beginning to get a little bit of a blend between the first two actions, and tone down a bit that was getting too busy, and voila! As stubborn as I have been about this shot, it definitely looks a million times better than it did at the start of the assignment. This still isn't how I would have read the line of dialogue, but it was a welcome challenge to follow my "director"'s notes.
I'm looking forward to taking a week off from listening to this line of dialogue (sorry, Hugh Laurie. I adore you, but enough already!) and being able to focus on some stuff from previous classes that needs a little love before the ol' reel comes together.
Here's the final, turned-in version of my very first acting shot with dialogue! My mentor had a few more tiny notes, just to get it looking its best before I move forward with it, but I'm taking a few days off before I jump back in to polish mode. Enjoy!
On to class 5!