Acting Test

In the senior class, we're so fortunate to be working with Rex Grignon, a world class senior animator from PDI/DreamWorks.  He has been nothing less than amazing and incredibly helpful.  Over the past few weeks he's given us a challenging test to take on.  In brief, we have a boss-type character who responds to some news on the phone.  At the same time, he reveals part of his character through idle action with an object.  The whole test must be 5 to 6 seconds in length.  Here's my take on it.  I can see that a lot of my motions are still looking mechanical rather than natural, so I need to figure out what's going on there.  After that, my next step is to start polishing and getting in the subtleties and details.  As usual I'm open to any advice or comments to help me improve this.

Biomechanics/Weight Test

We've been working on biomechanics in my 3D animation class, where the goal is to get a sense of weight with our character.  Here's what I've been working on this week.  It has a couple different elements to it, some of which I'm still working on.  I think the basics are there though.  Lately I've been working on getting my overall pacing and timing better by returning to my reference with an eye on more realistic timing.  Any comments/advice is always appreciated.