Invaluable Notes: Randy Pausch's Lecture

Notes from Randy Pausch's Lecture, Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams (link)

"wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you. When you are pissed off at somebody and you are angry at them, you just haven't given them enough time. Give them a little more time and they will almost always impress you."

How many times we respond instantly within ourselves to other people's behavior. We become angry inside instantly hearing things we don't like, we feel connected instantly if we hear something good from them. People say first impression lasts long, and that's the problem. If a person is mature and patient he/she would not create any impression from any instantaneous reactions. But if the person is not mature and patient he/she may conclude something totally opposite of the other person. Instantaneous reactions are bad, especially when you are not conscious about them.

Irony

One of my best friends called today and It was a great joy to talk to him after a long time. We always talk about life and goals and how can we get there. I wish I could write so many things from the conversation (I will as I organize them in words :)

After posting Invaluable Notes I just remembered what my friend had said to me. It is irony that I listened to the same thing in our talk and also in the video I was watching.

My friend said, he loves Mario games. Because it is just like how life is and what we should be doing. Keep jumping and keep moving. I totally agree with him. It's a very simple thing, life throws challenges, we face problems and all we have to do is deal with them, fight back and keep moving. From what Andrew Stanton said as I have quoted in previous post,

The key is momentum.

Invaluable Notes

This comes from the panel discussion "Pixar - A Human Story of Computer Animation" (link).

This was mentioned when somebody asked a question to Brad Bird and Andrew Stanton about story development process.

Following is a part of an example Brad Bird was giving to explain the story process. I am putting that simply in two lines, the essence.

Artist: "I just don't know what to do!"
Director: "Well just do something, so we can change it."

"The key thing is the momentum. In my mind creative project is a shark and do not let it die. Just go forward and use that time to make as many mistakes as you can. If you wait till you have the answers, you will probably first not have the answer and you have wasted all the time to find the real answer."
- Andrew

Second Walk Cycle

He is happy, so am I :) I loved animating this. And I love this character too. Thanks to Ramtin Ahmadi! Link to the rig

Cars

So much fun!!! There are lots of things that can be done with this assignment.

Here is what we had to do for each car:
1. stops screeching
2. runs out of gas
3. jumping
4. collides with the wall

3D Bouncing Ball

It's totally fun!!!

Simplicity Example: POCOYO

If you haven't already checked this, you should do it now.
http://www.pocoyo.com/

You can watch a lot of videos on youtube. Here is one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjkBxBkXJww

You really don't need complex characters to create compelling animation. Be simple, do more.

First Character Animation

This was an assignment for my Animation-I class. We had to start from one attitude and go to second attitude in 4 seconds. I went for curious to shocked/scared. I worked on it for continuously two nights without much sleep, so I fell sick after working on this assignment. I redid a lot of drawings to get better and conveying poses and to get timing right. I learned a lot of things in this assignment, especially timing. I still wish I could rework on few areas especially when the bean bag jumps.

2D Flag Animation

I kind of enjoyed the assignment, but I did not do well. The middle part is kind of boring with the same size waves in the flag. That takes away the believability of the material. But anyway here it is.

New 3D character (Almost there)

We are creating a 3d character in one of the animation classes. The same character we are going to rig and animate in the end. I dragged the modeling part a lot to make it as good as possible within given time. But I am happy with what I have so far. I wish I could do better with his hair. But never mind considering the time we have. I still have to texture his short.