Learning Animation book group

[SirRon]

That would be a fantastic idea! I have that Richard William's book too. I've been wanting to work on foundation animation skills too. But I'm kinda with you in that I don't have experience to really instruct people. Sign me up for any animation study group. :thumbsup:

[virtualmic]

We really don't need to instruct anybody in the beginning. I would say let's start this anyways. Let's decide a page of the book, we do the exercises done there and post our results on say Monday. Then initially we can crit each other's work and hopefully, other people would join in.

[stewartjones]

I think this is a great idea. Even for people who have been animating for years, it's always good to do some basics every now and again.

For the moment, I really don't have time to do them myself, but I could maybe help out with some critiques, and some tips... Well, as much as my limited knowledge can help with. :)

I definately think this should be started off ASAP, and people can join in when they realise what's going on.

Just a for instance, how about:

BOOK: The Animator's Survival Kit
AUTHOR: Richard Williams
PAGES: 48 - 50
TITLE: The Pendulum Swing
DESCRIPTION: Produce a swinging pendulum (looping animation). 50 frames per cycle max.
KEY ELEMENTS FOR ASSESSMENT: Timing, spacing, arcs
TIMESCALE: Around 4 weeks / END DATE: 01 October 2005

Just an idea, you don't have to use this one!

Anyway, great idea. I'm really surprised more people aren't interested in doing something like this!

Cheers


-Stu

[virtualmic]

Hey Stu,

Thanks for the detailed description of the exercise. So let's start with this one. However, I would suggest that we keep the time frame as 1 week for this.

So last date (nothing rigid about this) for this exercise: 12th Sept.

Whoever wants to join this exercise can create a thread in the WIP-Animation forum, with the title Richard Williams' book's exercises:<your name> and can post all your expts for this and later exercises there. We all can see your work there and post crits.

Stu/SirRon, if you have some better idea on how to organize, please suggest.

I would post my first experiments tomorrow itself.

sa

[stewartjones]

Just a thought on the time frame.

Sure I think a week is enough time to work on this, but for people brand new to animation it could be difficult. EG - If they wanna use max/maya etc, they have to set up the character, then animate, and then sort out the graph editor etc. It's a big thing to do for someone really new to it.

Just my 2 cents on that one.

[stewartjones]

Oh, just a quick note. If anyone is using Maya 6.5+ I've chucked together this Pendulum rig, so you can get straight into animating. Hope it helps out


http://www.stu-jones.co.uk/stuJones_QuickPendulumRig.mb

[andy_maxman]

thats swell news saurabh.....nice thought.....

[Andini]

I think this is a great idea! It's just what I need to get started. I've got the book and the tools (not the greatest, but enough to get the job done).

However, would it be possible to get a Book Group sub-forum on the Animation board (like the Animation Challenge sub-forum)? I think it would be better than putting it all on the Animation WIP forum. I didn't like how the Cinematography forum got all cluttered once the 2-minute film challenges started.

Just an idea. Looking forward to doing some exercises!
-Andy

[virtualmic]

Stu: Thanks a lot for the setup. I guess, that would help the beginners a lot and our 1 week timeframe would be good. For the time being, let's keep it a week. If more people join in and suggest an extension, we'll extend it. Anyways, people can post in the threads, once this time frame is over too. In other words, people can join anytime.

Coming to the question of threads, I was thinking that instead of people creating threads individually, we can create threads based on exercise. I think that would be more organized. So for the first exercise, I have posted my expt. here:
http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=273837

Also I was thinking maybe we could extend this exercise by say dampening the pendulum, trying to hit it to wall etc. Please suggest something about this.

Anand: Thanks for the post. Hope you can join in our group and give some suggestions/critique.

Andini: Sure, we'll try that. But first, we'll have to prove our worth in front of mods that we are serious about this whole project. Only then will they consider our request. So let's clutter the animation wip forum a litte...;) That would give us some publicity. :)

[stewartjones]

Ok cool.

Well, how about next week, we get the pendulum to swing the way you have yours now, but come to a settled position at the end. This would cover some overlapping action principles which would be very neat! :)

Just my thoughts, more input would be sweeeet! I love the idea of it hitting against a wall, that could definately be an awesome idea :thumbsup: . If you let me know, i could maybe provide the initial movement so that everyone could animate just the pendulum swinging, and come out with the same sort of results, making it easier for people to crit?!?!

Anyways, just a few ideas there!

-Stu

[mttjss]

very good idea guys - especially for the practice.

I entered the pendulum swing in the Animation W.I.P. forum - btw.

looking forward to more of these :thumbsup:

[mttjss]

are we still doing this? seemed like a good idea for those of us that need the practice.

I could work on the exercises on my own, but thought the group idea was a good thing.

[virtualmic]

Hi, Ya sure we are continuing on this. I am really busy this week with an important family emergency. I am sorry that I didn't inform you guys about this. Please wait till Friday. We'll start this seriously from this weekend. Hope that's OK with you. You can of course pick up an exercise and start doing for this week. Its an open project! I'll join in with you.

Saurabh.

[klingos]

Hi !
I think this sounds like a really fun thing. When is it going to start ?

/klingos, sweden

[virtualmic]

...All right gang, I am back! But a bad news.. I have lost my license of Maya. In the sense that my room mate had a license of Maya and me had of 3dsmax, and he has now moved out..:( Anyways, now all the animations I'll be posting, would be done in 3dsmax. Its not a bad package at all, specially for a newbie like me. :)

So let's get back to business. We'll extend exercise 1 for this week more, that is till 25th September. So guys please start posting your experiments in the following thread. Don't make any more threads for this exercise, we'll keep it a single thread for one execise, something like DSF.

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=273837

I have also purchased some Web Space at last. So here is the link to that space. Also this all was done in last 10 min. So please bear with the minimalistic web page for now. I'll slowly update this page too, to reflect our progress.

http://www.saurabhagrawal.com (http://famehosting.com/%7Esaurabha/)
All right? If you have any question/ suggestion, please speak up.

Saurabh.

[virtualmic]

Assignment 2: (I am following Stu's format. Oh, Stu, where are you? ;) )

BOOK: The Animator's Survival Kit
AUTHOR: Richard Williams
PAGES: 48 - 50
TITLE: The Pendulum Swing
DESCRIPTION: Produce a swinging damped pendulum, which stops swinging after a few swings.
KEY ELEMENTS FOR ASSESSMENT: Timing, spacing, arcs
TIMESCALE: 1 week / END DATE: 02 October 2005

Enjoy!

sA

[stewartjones]

Hey sorry, for the lack of input recently. Just finished up a project at work, and sorting out 2 full time courses has had me pushed to get any free time! Anyhow, just thought I should add that I don't think it's a good idea for anyone to animate anything but the swing for the moment. So, that means no moving the main bit which holds the errr, shall we say string and ball!

This will give everyone a chance to focus purely on arcs and timing for the time being. Oh Saurabh, great idea on the website thing to keep track of stuff, maybe we need a forum of some sort so we can work out how many people are interested in this? (I'm interested but unfortunately won't be able to contribute much :sad: )

[markovicd]

huh ... i am in this one !:)

[waiski_k]

this sounds really good! im in too! =) :thumbsup:

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