Blogpost 6: Week 2 - Exercise 1A - Blocking

In this exercise, I'm given the assignment to record down a video of me and my group mates, acting out a scene from 4 choices. Scenes are Dawn of the Dead, The Godfather, Planet of the Apes and Frankenstein. I've selected the scene The Godfather to block out my movements as I have an idea of how the key poses should be acted out like. The basic flow of the scene is, A leans backwards and swings forward to hit the jaw of B. B groans, holding his jaw at the same time and slowly spins and falls to the ground. In the following scene, I'll be acting as B.

This is the entire video of the scene. If the contact of the fist and my face was closer it would create a better blocking pose. But I was able to capture the different poses of the entire scene, which would be beneficial for animating with this references from the video. 

This is the starting stance of me (left) and my classmate Tai Heng (right). Providing anticipation in animation terms, together with the emotion of anger and disagreement between each other.

Tai Heng lifts his fist straight towards my face, creating a leaning forward action when executing the attack.

This image shows me getting hit in the jaw, having my hands moving towards my jaw after getting hit. Tai Heng's fist is still in the air to show follow up actions even after he attacked.

At this point, I moved backwards and turned around, with my hands still on my jaw. Notice that Tai Heng's fist is still in the air. The emotion of pain is shown on my face as I headed towards the wall right behind.

I leaned against the wall to show myself stopping the force exerted from Tai Heng's fist, with one of my hands holding against it. Getting dizzy and light-headed after the attack.

In the given scene, I'm told to slowly turn and fall to the ground after getting hit. My hand is still touching the wall, showing it slowly leaving away from it as I head towards the ground.

This continues the action of slowly falling towards the ground. 

As I touched the ground, my right arms hits the floor at the same time with my knees to keep my balance. 

This is the final pose taken for the entire exercise, with me curled up in pain after getting hit from Tai Heng.

In this exercise, I feel that the camera should be right in front of me as I hit the ground and providing me chances to block out the emotions carried on my face as I was about to fall. However, at least in this view, provided me the motion of my legs and entire body throughout the entire video. Tai Heng helped a lot in showing follow up actions as his fist are still held up in the air even after the attack. By blocking out the poses gives the animator detailed information of the entire video, and  a rough idea of how the animation should be like. Shown in class on Week 1's Friday, Disney animations were also using real actors to act out scenes for the animators to look at and animate them into well-known cartoons.