Scream Real Loud

So, this week we took our two-person dialogue sequences and blocked in the main key poses to define the movement and performance that we'll be animating. This lays the groundwork for everything that is to come. I went a bit further than normal with the blocking in the first and last shots, because this week we'll be taking one shot out of blocking and starting actual animation, and I wanted to make sure I had a firm foundation to start with. So, here she is: (Remember, we block in "stepped" mode, so all you will see are the actual poses without any inbetween frames.)


I'm so glad that I went with this scene. Sure, it's complex as hell, but it's exactly what I need at this point in my education, to see exactly what I can do and how well I can do it. Plus, this scene is about 50% physicality and 50% performance. Prior to the first dialogue assignment, everything I had done was concentrated on the physicality of movement, and the first dialogue assignment was concentrated on performance. So now, I have a chance to combine both worlds into something wild and crazy. And we all know how great wild ajnd crazy is, right? How many astro-sign medalions can you wear? (Try five of them.)

Other than this, life is... well, it's life, I suppose. Saw a bunch of people I haven't seen in ages last night at a big shindig at Fox Valade's pad, which was fun. (Hell, just getting out of the house is a reason to celebrate.) And at work this week I had the supreme displeasure of running a whole slew of awful Steven Segal and Sylvester Stallone films, including Above The Law, Under Siege 2: Dark Territory, The Glimmer Man, Hard to Kill, plus Stallone's Assassins, and the ever-popular 'Taco Bell Version" of Demolition Man. (And yes, I kid you not, it's actually called the "Taco Bell" version.) Oi.

There are some cool and nifty things happening, though. I will be participating with several other animators from school in the "Project 21" contest, where you are given 21 days to write, produce, and shoot (or, in our case, animate) a short film.I'm not doing any pre-production work on it - just animating - which will be a nice change from the old "lets wear every hat" nightmares. And I've been accepted as a student volunteer at this year's SIGGRAPH conference in August (an international conference of animation and computer graphics, which I've been dreaming of attending for a decade) so I'll have all sorts of incredible opportunities to meet people and pass around my reel

So now, we scrape the fish off the grill and sleep for the next eight days.

Sardines! I've forgotten the sardines!

So this week at AM we did Layout and basic blocking for our two-person dialogue shots. After much debate, I decided to go with a chunk of dialogue from the film version of Noises Off (which, oddly enough, you can watch in its entirety on YouTube.) The scene features Carol Burnett and the late John Ritter. Of course, I don't want to re-make the scene from the film, but rather go off on my own tangent of what the dialogue might mean in a different context. So here's what I came up with:


It kinda draws upon what most people would list as one of their greatest fears, and exploits it. :-) I'm very excited about this shot because I haven't done anything this wild and crazy yet. So we'll have to see if I've bitten off more than I can chew.