End of Week 3, Start of Week 4

Last week was a busy week. I didn't spend as much time as I wanted (during the day-time hours) in front of the computer causing some late nights during the weekend. Week 3's assignment had a few pieces to it. We had to:
1. Draw out a plan for bouncing a basketball or soccer ball
2. Animate that basketball or soccer ball based on that plan
3. Sketch an "Excited" pose
4. Pose Stu in the sketched pose of our choice

I spent a lot of time working on drawing out the plan for the basketball in an attempt to make it as real feeling as I could.
This is the planning I did for the bounce. (This also had to be the 5th drawing I did before I got it somewhat legible and understandable.)

I learned a valuable lesson this week. Planning is key. Prior to drawing the above plan out, I spent about 5 hours animating and testing what my bouncing ball would look like in Maya. I came up with bounces that seemed really mechanical, bounces that traveled the same distance even though the ball was not bouncing as high, and all together non-realistic bounces. After studying some video, taking some much needed feedback from some fellow students, and drawing out my plan of action, the actual animating didn't take half as long as the unfortunate animation attempts I started with. The following is my final submitted assignment of the bouncing basketball.

On the less time consuming side of the homework for this week was the Stu pose. We had to sketch out some EXCITED poses and then take our dear Stu character and put him in that pose. Below are the excited sketches I came up with last week. (As a mini side project, I would like to pose Stu in the first pose, the heel click pose, that is in the top left corner of the picture. Stay tuned for that posting.)

And finally, here is my Stu, excited as can be that Week 3 didn't kill me.

On to week 4!!!
This week's inspiring quote is "Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going." (Unknown author)
So, this week I will be consciously working on putting together good habits to make sure my work gets done efficiently, effectively and in a timely manner!

Update on how that works out coming soon. :)