Animation Sketches - Not Typed!!??

I was really inspired by Decembers 11 Second Club audio clip and was planning on doing an animation to it. Turns out the month of December was very busy -- as always, and I didn't have time to animate my idea. I was looking through my sketchbook and I decided to time it out to the audio and post it anyways. Doing these thumbnails and timing it out to the audio is a huge time saver! It makes you think through the entire shot, whats going to happen when, the contrast of the characters, things that will work and might not...and it doesn't that too long to do!





Maybe I'll have time to animate this one day!

AM Progress Reel

ALL done with Animation Mentor! Here is my AM Progress reel showing every piece I did while attending the school from newest to oldest:


AM Progress Reel - Jess Morris from Jess Morris on Vimeo.

SHORT FILM POLISH PASS 1

Update of my Short Film, first pass Polish...

Short Film Blocking Plus

Here is an update of my short film!

Short Film Blocking

Here is an update on my short film! What you are looking at is my short film in the Blocking Stage. This is when I make all of my acting decisions. After this stage is called the Blocking Plus stage. In this stage I break down the blocking I already have and start to add overlap, anticipation, etc. Pretty much anything that helps to describe the motion and make it believable. Next stage is Polish! This is where things start to come to life!...that's the goal at least!

Short Film: Maid to Haunt - Layout

New Video Coming soon - need to replace old one

This is the layout for my short film! This is an important step because this stage is setting up the whole film. The main thing to focus on at the Layout stage is cameras and placement of characters with in the scene. It is also invaluable to add the important key poses that will help tell the story.

Short Film: Maid to Haunt - Animatic

Here is my animatic for my short film! An animatic is taking the storyboads and puttling them together to get a better idea of what the flim might look like. You get a good idea of the timing at this stage and see if things are working the way you want them to. A lot of issues can be solved at this point.

She Hit Me Update

Still not finished, but here is an update! I have worked in the last of my mentors notes form last term and I have swapped out the characters for the 'in-character' textured and clothed models.

First week of Class 5!

This is my first week of Class 5 and for those of you who don't know, Class 5 at Animation Mentor is coming up with the story for your short. You then illustrate the idea, make an animatic and complete layout in Maya by the end of the term. SO for the past six months I have been jotting down ideas in a little brown notebook that hasn't left my side. I didn't realize how many ideas I had until I started typing them out in a word document. Doesn't mean they are all good ideas, but ideas none the less. There are a couple ideas that I came up with that I like, I just have to wait and see some reactions from other people to see if they are interesting. Because in the end, it is all about the audience!

My new mentor for Class 5 is Cal Brunker! I am really excited to have him guiding me through the story process of my short! He first started out as an animator and is now a Story Artist and Director. He has worked on a large variety of things, all the way from music videos to Horton Hears a Who! You can see his website here: http://calbrunker.com/

He said something during Q&A last night that I haven't heard any other mentors say, and it really made me happy. He said if you are truly and honestly passionate about animation, it is ridiculously fulfilling when you reach your goals. It just makes me really happy to hear, because I have been hearing horror stories on how people hate the hard work animation requires, they hate the long hours, they hate how tedious it is, that it is not all it is cracked up to be... With hearing things like what Cal said and knowing how I feel about animation and the hard work it requires, just makes me realize that animation isn't in those other people's hearts. And how much it does fill mine. I love what I do. I love animation. Yes I struggle, yes I get frustrated, but it only pushed me that much harder. And as I reach certain points in my learning it is, like Cal said, extremely fulfilling.

Blocking Plus Plus...PLUS

Still not polishing, but you have to work certain things out before you get to that point. I am ALMOST happy with what I am seeing, just a couple of things some friends and my mentor Dave Burgess pointed out that I am going to fix up and then on to polishing!

She Hit Me! - Blocking Plus Plus

I am supposed to be done polishing by this point for my deadline at school, but I had to take the extra time to really be satisfied with my blocking. Which I am now! Just a couple things to flesh out and I am on to polish, then facial animation. I really love how the girl is driving the scene and the guy is totally confused. I hope the emotions are reading!

Class 4: She Hit Me! - Blocking Plus

Here is my blocking plus. I have made some changes to the acting and also added some more keys to smooth the movements out. The mouth is also blocked out to get some kind of idea what that will be looking like. I also took the first two shots into 1st Pass Polish.

I am happy with my progress and how it is looking so far. It will be interesting to see how this shot looks in a couple of weeks!

Class 4: Expressions

These are expressions I took from photo to 3D:

Class 4: She Hit Me! - Layout

My next AM assignment is a 2 character dialogue shot. I found some great lines and I narrowed it down to this one. I really like it, it's been a lot of fun so far! I think the contrast in characters is really great and the confusion and slap is hilarious!

This is my Layout Pass:



Here is my animatic/thumbs I did before my 3D version:



and thumbnails:

Run-Jump-Roll

I did this piece last weekend as kind of a skill-speed piece. I wanted to see what I could do in a limited amount of time. I am really happy with it! Here it is...