Intro to Maya

So, the first two weeks after a two hard weeks working on the trailer project went with getting to know Autodesk Maya and how to animate in the program. I learned how to use the graph editor, but I really like to work in stepped frames. I still need to learn a lot, but I'm starting to like this a lot!
Most of the assignments we already did in 2D on first year, so we already knew all the basics, which was nice!

The second assignment we got was about to make three balls with different weight.



For the third assignment we had to animate a ball that was moving in a room.

In the fourth assignment we were given a Luxo lamp with 4 controllers, it was really difficult, but in the end I got the hang of it.

Then we had two days for animating a Luxo lamp with personality. 

Mine is an old lady who has to suddenly run for her life.

The last assignment we given was about to make balls move to the beat of music.

This is what I ended up doing. :)

Intro to Maya

For the last three days of our first school year at the Animation Workshop we were introduced to the program that we're going to use next year, Maya.
We made some small assignments in the beginning just to get to know the program, which was really nice. I ended up making a picture of one of the characters from Team Fortress 2 that I really love!
It was a nice year and I wish I could take another :) 

End Year Exam

This is the result of my end year exam. I'm very happy with the grade I got, but I still think I could work a lot more on the animation in this one.

La Poudrière

We had a week with some french students from the school, La Poudrière. We were again divided into groups and worked on small projects. The students from France were our directors and had before landing in Denmark prepared a concept, characters, storyworld and so on. We had to help them decide on the animation style.
This is what our group ended up making. I animated the yellow dog, who was a really big douchebag.

Flash

Flash is really, really, REALLY hard to use for animation in my opinion. It was also really fun.
I learned a lot, but I hope that I'll never use it again for animation. :)

Short, Short Film

I'm very lazy at these blog updates, but I guess better late than never. 

Ok, so we were having a month working on a small project called the "Short, Short Film" where we had to create a 30 sec. film. We had to make the movie for kids, so we had to make it really goofy but still for kids to watch. Kids from a kindergarten were visiting us to give us some feedback on our idea, and they especially liked the smashing parts. We had a lot of trouble finding out what our story should be about, but I think we succeeded very well in the end. I worked mostly on animation, clean-up and managing things in the group. I also helped a lot with the character design and making character references, so I was very busy. :) I learned a lot from making this little movie!

Our story is very funky, I hope you enjoy!

We had John Kricfalusi as one of our style guides which was really cool!

After Effects

We had another week with Uri as teacher again and he tought us how to use After Effects.
Sooo, I now know after effects! *ahem*

Character Design

Character design with Julia Bracegirdle was amazing! I discovered a new skill I didn't knew I had, and I'm so happy for designing characters now. I hope that I can contribute in our trailer project and bachelor movie with this skill.
In our first assignment we had to make a movie about Danish culture with simple characters made out of black paper. It was really fun and I learned how simple characters and movement can express a lot without telling.
The second assignment we got was about to find a lot of items, furniture or houses that we could see a face in and take pictures of them. Unfortunately I don't have the movie or pictures anymore.

For the third assignment we were supposed to make a creature from Frankenstein's laboratory out of picture, which was called a Bricolage. I think the assignment was exciting and we got to work with some very funny shapes.

 The last assignment we got was the most awesome one and the one where I learned the most after my opinion!We got to design our own character from an audio track. We had to imagine what the persons looked like and how they acted. 

I came up with a big-nosed guy who loves smelling to whine and a very spoiled girl who smokes.

I think I discovered one of my strengths, which apparently is character design and I really love doing it, so I hope I can do more of it in the future!

 

Layout with Uri Kranot

My weeks with Uri was very interesting. It opened a whole new world for me! I think layot and composition was very exciting and I learned a lot from it. In the first assignment we had to recompose a picture with a queen being followed to the gallows by some guards. We were almost free to do whatever we wanted, so I tried to change the camera angle and get the queen more in focus.

For the second assignment we were given a Batman scene were the Pinguin are fleeing from Batman. it was funny because when we were done with the scene we saw the real clip and it was really bad composed actually, Batman's head were hidden by the lamp almost all the time, so you couldn't tell what was happening. I learned that you can also cheat a lot and that a lot of the things in the layout are not even showing on the screen.

For the last assignment we had the story about Bonnie & Clyde and we were almost free to do whatever layout we wanted. The idea here was to cheat with the perspective, which was really difficult I think, but I learned so much from it!
 

Summer holiday

I'm sorry I have been very late a updating stuff and will be a little more yet, because I'm visiting the old parents on Lolland :)
Hopefully I will pull myself together and update a lot of crazy stuff when I get back the 8th of July and also my showreel.
See you until then!

Dialogue Animation

For these two weeks we had the awesome teacher Christian Kuntz. It was nice to hear his background story of how he became an animator and he was really skilled! I learned a lot from these two weeks and think I now understand how the mouth shapes after a sound and that the sound is at the same time as the movements. It was also nice to know that the body moves so it fits to the words and expressions.

I chose a male voice clip even though I had Roxanne from A Goofy Movie. It was fun!

Dialogue Animation from Louise Gregersen on Vimeo.

Colour

This is the last class we had with Lawrence Marvit! I'm going to miss that awesome teacher :)

I really had trouble with this one even though it's said to be the easiest one of the classes we've had. I didn't really understand the principle in warm and cool colours. Luckily Lawrence explained it really good and I think I'm getting it now. Now I just need to practise a lot with it, and I've already used a lot of it in my own drawings. I'm happy to know how to light things now!

Mixing colours and lighting them.

Trying to make a colour-palette. 

Trying to pick colours for a b/w picture.

Trying to get the same colours as the ones in the picture. 

... and at last we got an assignment which was digital. Little Red Riding Hood. I tried to make an evil red sky, but at the same time light it with light yellow. It was fun :)

I can only say thanks to Lawrence! I feel a lot smarter now even though it might not look like it 8D

Non-Dialogue Animation

This week we had Mike Nguyen as teacher which was really awesome! He was very inspiring and we had some cool lectures about how to make animation look more alive. You can give life to your characters by studying real life and energy. Fx an elephant moves slow and always have at least three feet on the ground, it would look weird if it suddenly walked really fast like a dog.
I'm really happy for the great lectures and awesome time with Mike, I learned a lot! Now I just need to get it to work in my own animation.
I tried to put more feeling in my non-dialogue animation. I think I succeeded a bit, but I wish to make it much better in the future!


Bernard Blind Date from Louise Gregersen on Vimeo.

Clean-up animation

For two days we've had Jonas Jensenas teacher and it was quite nice. He showed us a lot of important things to do in TV-paint and how to clean up an animation! It was lovely with some relaxing study. This is my finished clean-up from the two days:

Clean-up - Story of Animation from Louise Gregersen on Vimeo.

Introduction to TV-Paint

So these are my works from the first week with TV-paint! We had the awesome Rune Ryberg as teacher again and he taught us how to use TV-paint. It is a really great program and I really like to use it for animations! The first assignment was to make a bird fly! So I made a lot of bird studies to start with. I studies how the wings actually moves backwards when the wings swing down, and that it takes more frames for the wings to go down than up because of the air is heavier on the way down.

Bird Animation from Louise Gregersen on Vimeo.
The second assignment was to make a short animation with a frog and a fly. It was really fun and we had a lot of freedom, I enjoyed it very much!

FrogFly LouiseGregersen from Louise Gregersen on Vimeo.

Acting Animation

So this is my work from the Acting week with Rune Ryberg! It was super inspiring to use sound with your animation. I'm not satisfied at all and I missed a day in school because of illness, but I hope that I can make it better some day.

Danny Conducter from Louise Gregersen on Vimeo.

Storyboard First Assignment

This week we had about making storyboards with the super awesome teacher Niall Laverty! It was very exciting and I enjoyed it a lot. I learned a lot of things I didn't know before and I really feel like I now enjoy making small stories in pictures. This is my first assignment. We were supposed to first make a rough storyboard. We had some stories to choose between and I chose 'snowball fight'. After some critique from some classmates we should finish our storyboard and this is what I ended up with.

Rough:

Done:

Design with Lawrence

My second week with Lawrence Marvit as teacher was really cool and I learned a lot, much more than I expected. I actually drew a fully rendered picture, which is a very big step for me (which he also said to me).

The first assignment included coming up with an idea for a cool Atlantis weapon, designing it and drawing it with rendering.

In the second assignment we were given the idea Ghost Pirates in Venice, which was really cool. I loved the assignment and I enjoyed it very much. I learned a lot about rendering and cast shadows and how other buildings can reflect light. Though it's far from done I really like the way it is now.

Third assignment we were given the idea Fairy City. Here we learned about patterns and textures. I actually didn't use any textures other than the vains I made on the tree. I also learned a lot about values and focus points. I'm not fully satisfied with this piece yet and I was also told to work more on it, but other than that I'm again very proud of that I made a fully rendered picture.