Parkour - Polishing

I'm heading to the final 10% this week. I've started to clean up my splines, fix issues and whatnot, now I just need to get that last little bit so it kicks hind quarters. Last update for this project on Sunday!

Stewie-man, Stewie-man. Does everything that a

Stewie-man can.

Parkour - Gimbal Lock And Other Fun Stuff

So Steve really liked my blocking for the Parkour. He gave some really great tips to enhance some poses and that he felt I would be really happy with this animation when I'm done. Apparently he wanted to build me up before this week when I wandered in to the wonderful world of Gimbal Lock! (no offense to Steve, of course!).

Sooo, Gimbal Lock.. aaah, good times. If you don't know what it is and for some crazy reason, interested in it, check it out here. Essentially, it crept up in my project when Stewie was doing a lot of flips. The torso would look fine in blocking but as soon as I went to spline, he was twisting like a pretzel. The torso would rotate on all three axis several times over a short span of frames. OUCH! Hehehe. Anyway, hours later I had it all straightened out, but it still got me very frustrated. I'm sure this isn't the last time either!

I'm fairly happy with this phase of the animation, but I know I have plenty of work ahead of me. I need to add some more overlap to the places where he stops quickly, like the wall jumps or the landings, but at least I know they're needed. I also have to smooth a ton out, lock planted feet in place... the list goes on and on. I only have 2 weeks to finish up before this class is over. Better get a move on!

Parkour - Insane even with pixels!

Final Assignment This Session - Parkour - Blocking

Here's the blocking stages of my last assignment for Psychology of Body Mechanics. It's based off of Parkour, or Free Running. It's a fascinating and insane sport. I watched a National Geographic Fight Science episode where a guy jumped off a platform over one story high, flipped, landed, rolled and posed all macho for the camera. NUTS!

Anyway, here's the blocking stage. I have some work to do but I think this will easily be the best assignment I've done yet. It's a lot of fun, but I know it's going to be tough. Oh, did I mention it's the hardest thing on the pick list (we're given a list of choices and each has an assigned difficulty)... plus I chose the model with arms and hands because I wanted to do wall hangs. Ugh... I must be a masochist...

Thumbnails of Stewie going on a Parkour adventure

Detailed info about the key poses I wanted to get right.

Flying and Flipping!