Maya: first contact

1st task - Bouncing 1 ball

2nd task - Bouncing 3 balls 

(squishy ball, tennis ball, bowling ball)

use locators

add stretch

add squash

(below) My squishy ball bounces off the 2 walls which I feel it was a challenge at this point as its trajectory is diagonal instead of straight and my knowledge of Maya is almost non existent. 

Squish was unexpectedly time consuming because I did not place the locator at the edge of the ball and had to change Y each time the ball squashed or stretched.

Note to self: Place locators before anything else

Bowling ball has small bounce, like the one in the video I used as reference

3rd task - Build a piece of furniture

Note to self: figure out how to save the cloth in one position without having to place it again every time I open the scene.

Nuala and Bradley showed me how to use textures - they're both very nice and helpful

Textures I used were found on google

 I made the bed covers using ncloth command

Wanted to try ocean texture on something and I'm loving it. Should find a fun way of using it in the future

Life drawing - Madam Mim

The beginning of every session is a bit rocky and my drawings look stiff and just generally bad, but I am starting to put more focus on movement instead of anatomy and I am very pleased with it.

Gesture Drawing for animation by Walt Stanchfield

From the PDF copy I have

Scale world: my second story

2nd STORY:

(Backstory)

Bigs are running out of space on their world due to constant technological development and they're preparing to invade the Smalls' world.

Midi not present (just like above), their world is obscured by clouds and space dust.

No Big or Small that ever ventured down the scale made it back to tell the story.

Midis are just a myth.

Bigs can physically assimilate parts of their environment and they communicate through high pitched noises.

Bigs are thelepatic

Main character:

- the runt of the Bigs' world:

-a bit of an outsider because his shoulder crystals are smaller than average

-moss growing on the side of his face (unkept allure)

-has a bit of a flower power spirit

-shorter than others because he's been spending too much of his childhood in the mines, fascinated with the beauty of the ore

-in his spare time he polishes different stone parts of his body

-dreams of becoming a sculptor

-plasma crystal-based life form

(Story below)

Story follows the goofy Big marching to Small world

We see propaganda posters about Smalls

Our main Big doesn't really believe that Smalls are that bad and once on their world, saves a lonely scared Small

Scale World: my first suggested story

As the group didn't want to change much about the world we were given, my two stories had to keep the scale part a bit too literal for my liking so I decided to work around that and focus on the story.

1st STORY:
(Backstory)
With the purpose of keeping true to the scale idea, the Midi world does not appear in the middle of the scale but is rather situated at the base of it, long forgotten by the Bigs and Smalls.
Both Bigs and Smalls perpetuate their species by asexual reproduction(once per life cycle maybe).
Bigs and Smalls come from the Midis of the bigger world underneath (explaining the gravity pulling down the two worlds) and are the result of a disease.
The Midis built the scale to keep Bigs and Smalls from contaminating the others and separated them in order to avoid the possibility of conflict between them.
Midis now exist in Bigs and Smalls culture only as a myth.
Smalls have discovered a cure for the disease (by accident) and are slowly reverting the process of getting smaller and smaller.
The Bigs are too proud to accept anything from the "despicable" Smalls as they believe logic and knowledge will reveal the cure to them
Smalls are afraid that the fast expanding cities of the Bigs and their constant increase in size will tip the scales and destroy both their worlds so they insist on giving them the cure

(Story)
The story follows a Small diplomat as it travels to the world of Bigs in order to give them the cure
We see  a few Bigs trying to sculpt their legs smaller, in contrast with other Bigs that are obviously proud of their imposing statures.
One of these Bigs listens to the Small and travels back to Mini world with them in order to get cured.

Life drawing - Drawing Dirk

Need more practice drawing Dirk, my last sketches look too much like Robert and very little like Dirk. 

Character design pointers

Pixar

"Think about the meaning of the word 'character'. You're supposed to breath life into these things, make them appealing and give them the magic that will allow people to imagine what they're like to meet and how they might move."-Neil McFarland

Ricky Nierva

Above: Ricky Nierva

Disney

Below: Sergio Pablos 

The most important point he makes is exactly what I've been telling my team mates every week (!): without clear knowledge of the personality/motivation/ etc of a character the design is not believable.

Below: Aaron Blaise

Colour palette inspiration for future reference

I really just like the textures/patterns in the images below: