Monkeyin' around

The new term at AM has got off to a flying start - I can't believe it's Week 3 (or class 3 come to that) already! My latest mentor is T. Dan Hofstedt who is an awesome animator and mentor. My Q&A sessions are at 6am in the morning ... and I'm not really a morning person. However, T. Dan once filled in for my Class 1 mentor, so I knew how great he was and decided not to switch classes for a more reasonable hour. And so far, it's been worth getting up for! T. Dan has worked in traditional 2D animation for Disney, among other studios, as well as CG for Sony. Can't quite believe that someone who animated on the Lion King, now knows my name and critiques my work! SO exciting! You can see some of his work on his website.
This term I'm starting off with a monkey bars shot - hence the cheesy title ;p
We can pretty much choose what we want to do, as long as it's got good body mechanics in the shot. So it's great to have that freedom, although can feel a little daunting with so much choice! However, I settled on monkey bars and am really enjoying it. Almost everyone that has stopped by my workspace has commended me on choosing a "challenging" shot though, so I hope I haven't bitten off more than I can chew...
It's certainly proving a challenge but think I'm starting to get there. It's certainly going to help me refine arcs in my animation, as that's pretty much all the swinging consists of. However, getting that rhythm and flow is proving challenging.

Here's what I've got so far - Blocking Plus. I've moved past blocking, in stepped mode, and this is currently in linear. Done quite a bit of straight ahead on it to try to get the lead and follow actions working. Still got a way to go though as the action still isn't quite there, and there's a lot of refining to do.
Let me know what you think of it so far!

Monkey Bars blocking Plus from Sarah Knight on Vimeo.