Blocking "Ballie", Video Reference and More...Class 2 - Week 2

Finally here it is, my first animation assignment for this term (this is a 4 week assignment, 2 more left). We have had two lectures in a row of blocking methods (and there are more coming), i feel those have helped me tremendously, i've cut off my blocking time a lot, with the little tips and tricks, and the previous experience of a few months i feel that i'm taming the beast, at least for this kind of animation. I'm starting to believe that i'm getting good at this stuff, at least from my own personal point of view, i look back and now i can see all the progress i've made, throughout this blocking i could see more clearly what i was doing and could apply the principles mindfully.

One thing i feel i'm having trouble with is exaggeration and squash and stretch. I wish i could make things a little more cartoony but it's a little difficult for me at this point, and i strongly believe that it is for anyone at this stage of learning, what i mean is, to break the rules you have to know them first, (or something like that my mentor said), i mean, if i want to achieve a more cartoony feel, i prefer to nail down the physics first by studying a lot of video reference, shorts, movies, life action etc. and when the time is right then let's break them, and of course this is a little more obvious to me when i remember now that we haven't received an in-depth class on exaggeration or squash and stretch. So to sum up, first things first.

Two misconceptions i wanted to clear up, two relatives and some friends made me write about this, one of them is the "does it take a long time?", the answer is yes, well structured, polished animation takes time, my father saw me shooting video reference the other day and after a few hours he asked "did you finish the animation" lol, and with my experience and knowledge no way (poor dad)! it takes along time because this is almost like 2D, drawing by drawing with some help from the computer. The other thing is the video reference, we tend to think at first that animation is an automatic thing that comes instantly with talent, i know i thought like that!, my brother saw me watching some footage and said "that's cheating" lol, and that's ok, i think everybody thinks like that at first, but the truth is that video reference is an amazing way of learning animation, i mean wow, what a great teacher is a piece of .mov file. And as Bobby Beck said, "after a while you won't need to rely that much on video reference because you'll know how things behave" <--or something like that, because animation comes from observation.