Homework for Wednesday and Midterm Grading Checklist:

For Wednesday:

• Revise your walk cycles! Put any final touches you would like to have to it to add both life and craftsmanship to your animation. 
• Please place any final improvements or life drawing samples I've asked you to do on the server. 
• Bring to class an idea for your walk cycle with personality. 
• Remember to add a "stamp" to your performance, where your character takes a moment to think, change direction, or does something else before he continues to walk!
• With your idea, bring a sample reference you have filmed yourself, using your phone, camera, or something else.  Practicing your reference at home will better inform what we do in class that day!
• Make notes of important parts of your character's figure. How does the character walk? What primitive 3-D shapes make up the different parts of your character? Where is the line of action? What joints are being stressed? Where are the major points of tension in the character's posing

This week, we are creating our first big performance: A walk with emotion!  To prepare for this, you have begun on an in-class exercise where a character picks up an object and interacts with it!  This will help you produce everything we create from this class, forward.

For midterms, I will be looking at all of the assignments you have produced thus far, and providing full feedback for each! In the MIDETERMS folder: please place on the server one movie file of the following assignments, and one folder of your drawings labeled as such:

1. Your ball bounce project (lastname_p1)
2. Your shape emotion project (lastname_p2)
3. Your research project (lastname_p3)
4. Your walk cycle (lastname_p4)
5. A folder with your figure drawings and caricatures in it, including the ones I asked you to produce (lastname_sk1)
6. In addition, bring your walk cycle project drawings to class so I can look at them along with your work!

Midterm is moved up a week from where it has been in the previous years. Because of this, remember that we have all of this week and next week before fall break. The review I give you during midterm will help give you the necessary tools to accomplish everything you need to do the next two weeks!

Homework for Monday, September 19th!

A. Complete the following assignment!

• Read pages 102 - 166 of the Animator's Survival Kit! 
• This section covers walk cycles! We will take everything that you have learned from the last few weeks and apply all of your skills to create believable walk cycles!
• Awesome notes: One of my other students, Julie Lasseter, found a good reference for the 12 principles of animation for all of you, using Disney sequences. Please refer to these references at this link!
• Prepare two potential character designs for your walk cycle!
• IMPORTANT NOTES FOR CONSIDERATION
• Your character will be a biped/humanoid/anthropomorphic character! (2 legs two arms!
• Pay attention to the design of the character’s
• body
• head
• skeleton
• arms
• legs
• feet
• hands
• clothing!
• You will create 2 model sheets! One for each character, with the following poses:
• Front, 3/4 Front, Side, 3/4 Back, Back.
• You will create the following from observation:
• 10 figure drawings: lineart only, at least 8 are full body.
• 5 caricatures

B. For those of you who have yet to pay, pay for your supplies!

• PAY FOR YOUR PAPER and peg bar ($55.00 paid in full at the business office)
• Bring your Light Box and Animator's Survival Kit to class!
• I will check for your animation paper, your light box, and your copy of the Animator's Survival Kit!

Thank you all for your patience with this Monday. We will now resume our regularly scheduled classes. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to contact me at mshaw@mca.edu. Good luck with the rest of the week! 

Assignment # 3: Research assignment!

Congratulations! At this point you have begun developing the necessary drawing and observation skills to produce quality animated content! Up next is a short assignment we will engage in before taking our skills to the wonderful world of traditional animation!  From here on out, we will animate full-body characters. To work up the necessary practice, you will create the following!

1. Produce a 6-7 second animation where you recreate the action in an animated sequence of choice!
2. Select an animated sequence you like that displays clear, decisive character performance.  Animate this scene making note of EXTREME DRAWINGS (EXT), KEY DRAWINGS (KEY), BREAKDOWN DRAWINGS (BK), and INBETWEEN DRAWINGS (IBT)!

• Make an X Sheet for me that shows your initial estimations of your character's timing.
• Animate ONE CHARACTER only! I'd rather see quality over quantity.
• When animating the character, do not REDRAW the character itself. Produce an armature, or your own character design over this character!
• Pay attention to these concepts:
• Arcs
• Line of action
• Weight and Balance
• Keeping characters ON MODEL.

When complete, make a blog at http://blogger.com, and an youtube channel at http://youtube.com. We will use these as places to produce final work as well as initial concepts! Bring your finished work, along with your created websites to class!