The Final 10%

Here are the final results for term 2 (without them being properly rendered, which I'll probably get on to later!):


an02 anim 003 FINAL from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.



dog walk final 001 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.



Vanilla Walk Final hiRes from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

And that wraps up term 2! These 12 week terms really fly by. Looking back, I'm surprised to find that in my opinion, the dog walk turned out the best of all the assignments. Considering bipeds are supposed to be easier to animate and I'm not much of a dog person, I guess that's something to be proud of!

I'll be deferring this term for numerous reasons and will pick up the next class (AN03) in September. In the mean time, I plan on doing a few more game writing pieces while still practicing animation. I'll still be hanging around the campus, helping out other students. I think the break will be good to consolidate what I've learnt, plus it'll allow me to actually enjoy the great games that have come out recently. Stay tuned!

Week 9 & 10 - Blocking to Final, Timing & Spacing

Hard to find time to update blog between work, assignments and other things. Although it kind of turns out better this way, as you can get a better idea of the shot progression when it's just in one post.

So last update was my bare bones blocking, done to get the basic ideas across. The video below is Blocking +, an extension of that with more breakdown poses. I made a few changes based on critiques, mainly the start - which originally wasn't reading very well so I had to re-do it. This apparently works better.



Physicality Blocking 002 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Below is what the above basically looks like in splined mode, with the computer calculating the rest of the in betweens and some timing changes on my part.


Physicality Blocking 003 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

It's kind of bemusing how the roll itself (which I thought was going to be the hardest thing) has actually turned out to be the easiest thing to get right. I'm having a lot of trouble getting the start and very end to look right, as the actions are more subtle. In these moments of held poses, it's a fine line between not moving the character enough (having them appear lifeless) and having them look too 'floaty'. The dive roll on the other hand is over so quickly it's harder to see the minute errors occurring there.

Also interesting: During the dive I found breaking her legs slightly (so they bend the other way) actually makes the dive look better, as it makes her legs follow a nice arcing path of action. That's been my first taste of 'breaking the rules/rig' to get a better result, which is kind of cool!

Week 7 & 8 - Locomotion and Advanced Posing

Dog walk turned out way better than I thought it ever would. It's a little hard to look back and even fathom how it got to it's current iteration. Tackling a 4 legged walk just seemed ridiculous, so it is a bit of a morale boost that it turned out the way it did. Not perfect - never perfect, but pleased nonetheless.

dog walk final 001 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Next up is the final assignment which is basically us working on a physicality shot of our choosing over the next 4 weeks. Being a games man I've gone for a fairly video gamey type shot, with Stella taking cover behind a wall, peeking over, reacting from a stray shot before diving over to an opposite piece of cover. Here's the planning:

I sketched this based off video reference I took which I won't upload now.

And here's my blocking so far that barely resembles the above planning:


Physicality Blocking 001 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

The remaining weeks will simply be iterations of the above shot, so content might be sparse. I'll try find some other neat things/writing pieces to update with for any loyal readers out there :)

Week 6 - Creating Weight in Four Legged Walks

Continued with dog poses and blocking out the dog walk this week. Sketches and Poses:

Dogs @ Play!

Sloan with Bird Ball

2 Sloans 1 Pic

I realised I hadn't put up what I was using for reference for my dog walk. Most of my influence came from studying the first part of the video as it gave me a perfect profile view of a dog walk. It's easy to see the shape of the legs and the ups and downs of the chest, hips and head. I couldn't find any good reference of dog walks from a front view, so I filmed my cat to get the body mechanics right for the feet curls and arcs. For the rotations I spent a lot of time watching lectures (copyrighted so I can't put here) and really breaking down what was happening, even more so than my planning. My cat was also blessed with my presence more often as I gazed at his walk pattern endlessly.

Here's what it looks like at the moment:

quadreference compressed from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

assignment 001 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

It kind of looks like he's limping, likely due to too much movement in the neck, but also bad video editing as I was having issues rendering the cycles correctly. I've still got one more week of polish on this, then it's onto our final assignment for the term XD

Week 5 - Understanding Weight and Physicality

This week marked the start of another 3 weeks of glorious head aches as we put paper to mouse (so to speak) and actually block out our dog walks in Maya. Detailed planning definitely makes things easier, as I was merely copying/translating the poses on paper to 3D and for the most part, it worked out alright. I followed the video reference quite closely, so the timing is pretty solid I think, though Mat says there's quite a few spacing issues with the legs. It's amazing how mentors can look over your work a couple of times and pin point/predict problems you have or are going to have. True mastery, or close to it!

Didn't end up sketching many poses this week (no time), but according to mentor the ones I did pick turned out pretty well. Here they are below. (Bottom one is a combination of 2 of the sketched poses).

Had a bit of fun with the new Squirrel character. Little guy is so adorable, it's easy to make him look appealing.

Shake Shake Shake

Here's the results of the key poses and breakdowns blocked out:

dog walk blocking from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

I took a layered approach to blocking it, which is critical, had I tried to move everything at once I'd fail fast. I started with putting the hind legs into position for the key poses, then did the same for the front legs. Then I repeated that for the breakdowns. Only then did I start thinking about the rotations of the chest and hip, followed by small details in the feet and leg positions. Finally I animated the shoulders and added a teensy bit of head and neck overlap, which isn't noticeable enough.

This week I'll be converting to splines, tweaking existing poses based on feedback and adding more poses in between THOSE POSES and so on until the thing looks decent.

Week 4 - Nuts & Bolts of Quadruped Walks

4 Legs is 2 legs too many! Getting my head around the 'Sloan' dog rig took awhile. He's much like the other rigs we've played with so far in terms of how his proportions are rather odd. Stubby body, mega long and fat neck. I really wanted to do a neck scratch/behind the ear pose, but putting all his upper body neck weight on that tiny dog butt proved too difficult.

Drawing quadrupeds is harder too, I find if the dog's hair is too shaggy in the reference photo I can't use it. My anatomy knowledge isn't good enough to be able to accurately comprehend what is going on beneath all that hair. Having drawn many humans before it's easy to know where I can push a biped pose, whereas with drawing dogs I find I have to be more conservative and more true to the reference picture.

 Found a surprising amount of video reference of dogs walking on treadmills on youtube, which is great to have for this assignment. (Thank you lazy dog owners!). This week I'll be blocking out my 'vanilla' dog walk. Don't let all this planning fool you though. I still have no idea what I'm doing.

Week 3 - Arcs & Path of Action

Not perfect (it never is), but here is the polished vanilla walk (with a dash of sass). Tried to touch up on it as much as possible before my brain shut down. I can see the head needs more overlap as it is relatively still and the feet could be a tad snappier on full contact. Spacing on the leg swing also needs work.


Vanilla Walk Final hiRes from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

More action poses for this week, RUNNING with the theme of sprinters and PITCHING the idea of baseball players. I didn't see it initially but my mentor pointed out the baseball pitcher pose is pretty broken. The shoulder is stuffed and her neck doesn't follow the path of her chest. There also isn't enough curvature in her spine. So what I thought was a cool pose turned out to be pretty mediocre apparently!

Next 4 weeks we'll be animating a dog walk!

Week 2 - Full Body Walks... Part Deux!

This week we started our first full body walk cycle! (Well, 'tis my first at least). I wanted to really make sure I did enough planning this time around so I wasn't second guessing myself during blocking. Despite this being the final planning, after I scanned them in I realised I STILL could have added way way more info. You don't realise what you're missing sometimes until you're in the midst of it.

Kristen was kind enough to my my video reference :)

The following is the planning based off video reference.

Now... I got carried away with the blocking and over stepped (no pun intended animation folk!) the 'stepped' keys. In the end I ended up keying almost every frame despite that being something I shouldn't have done. I guess it was more desperation since I knew I'd have very little time to polish the walk in Week 3.


vanilla walk blocking b from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

The arms are hitchy and the knees are popping. I haven't touched the head or hair either. These features fixed and more next week!

Term 2! Week 1 - Full Body Walks Part I

Relatively easy start to the term. My mentor this term is Mathew Rees, currently a lead animator of sorts at Aardman Animation (Wallace & Gromit, Chicken Run, Creature Comforts) in the UK. Nice fellow! Seems very personable and genuinely focused on the needs of his students and our work (even offering to poke around our Maya files if need be). So I'm looking forward to his mentoring over the next 12 weeks.

New term means a selection of new rigs we get to work with, much more detailed and complex than the previous term. For the first few weeks we'll be animating with Stella! She has lots of controls, but I appreciate how easy it is to get a really nice line of action/silhouette with her. She's just so sleek. Assignment for this week is to familiarize with her and pose her out in a couple of dynamic poses.

We also learnt a lot about the body mechanics of human and quadruped walks. More on that later!

Week 11 & 12 - Exaggeration, Walks with different weights, term wrap up

Term 1 is over! And the second has just begun. I present my class 1 progress reel. Final version of my personality walk is in there too. Not much more to say other than I've learnt a lot and that in terms of things to learn - I have definitely jumped into the deep end with animation. I think I did pretty well this term, but we'll see how I go with full body bipedal and quadruped walks next term!



AaronSkinner AN01 ProgressReel from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Week 9 & 10 - Hips and Personality Walks

Apologies to you loyal readers for lack of recent update. Has been a little hectic with assignments + preparing for job interview. So Week 9 was an in-depth look at hips, particularly how they move depending on gender, body type and other factors. A common issue with student work is that many don't realise the importance of hip movement and how almost everything we do is lead by the hips before anything else. Reminder to self: Pay special attention to the hips first, as they will influence absolutely every other part of the animation.

Week 9 Pose was 'Concern'. Keeping in theme with worldwide VFX layoffs thanks to a broken business model between VFX studios and Hollywood, I added a pink slip to the scene.

Along with that we finalised our walk cycle. This vimeo upload was a bit crap for some reason, seems like it cut a few frames from the beginning/end. But you can more or less get the idea from what's there:

Ballie Walk Revision from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Week 10 (and the current week 11) has us dealing with personality walks with the Ballie character. It took awhile to think of a personality walk to animate. Originally I had envisioned a very short ice-skating, ballerina-esque animation. I wanted something that would be fun to animate while also really pushing myself. I even shot reference of Kristen doing it. After 3.5 days of trying to block it out in Maya, it just proved too difficult and beyond my skill level to even get the basics down. I quickly changed gears and fell on my back up plan of a gleeful skip.

But first, Week 10 pose was 'Exhaustion' aka how I feel after every 45 minutes of intense animation concentration:

Here is the planning for my skippity skip. Looking at it now it could definitely be MUCH more detailed. Following that is the rather unimpressive first blocking of the cycle.

personality walk from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Until Next week, Adios :)

Blast from the Past

This is the first animation I ever did, first year university 2008. From memory, we had to create a themed iPod ad. I chose to make mine inspired by my favourite cartoon series: Home Movies. I basically just recreated the scene frame for frame. The timing is off and the audio prematurely cuts off at one stage. (I could never figure out why it played fine in Flash but not in .mov format) but I still get a laugh out of it today. Enjoy!

Week 7 & 8 - Tweaking Tailor & Intro to Walks

Jamming quite a bit of work into one post today. I forgot to post one of the poses we had to do in Week 5: "Devestation". Here are my quick sketches and the final pose I decided to submit:

Week 7 involved an in-depth view into the graph editor. "What is this, statistics? I thought this was animation dagnabbit!?" I maybe hear you cry but probably not really. The location of every object within the 3D space as it moves can be essentially graphed, since each point in time the object location corresponds to several different axis of movement. This results in a graph editor that resembles this:

AKA 'spaghetti', it looks daunting (and still can be) but once understood, manipulating these curves is an extremely useful tool for cleaning up un-wanted movements or further perfecting movements. This is my final tailor revision, much improved from my first attempt, but still not perfect:


Tailor Revision 2 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Week 8 pose: "Strength". Sketches, quick mock ups to decide which I liked best, then the final product follows:

And finally: Week 8 was an introduction to walks. Walks are things that apparently, many professional animators still have trouble with. This is reassuring, because the amount of rotation and movement that transpires during even a 'simple' stock-standard walk is mind blowing. There is so much to juggle all at the same time. I won't even begin to go into the mechanics here. For now, building upon all our previous assignments, we are just animating a ball (which represents the hips) with legs. Here is the plan + initial blocking pass (uploaded to youtube coz its quicker):

Perception of Innovation

When people ask me what 'The Last of Us' is and why I  recommend it so much, it's difficult to express the impact it had on me and why I think they should really, really play it. Ultimately - unfortunately, any game is going to be judged by sweeping assumptions via the narrow scope of genre, setting and plot. Third-Person survival horror, set in an apocalyptic world with zombies, where you have to guide a female companion to safety. Resident Evil 4, Walking Dead and The Last of Us come to mind. All similar thematically, all mechanically familiar, yet all totally different.

Not that I prop award shows up as the be-all and end-all of what deserves to be recognized in this industry, but when Last of Us won 'Most Innovative' at DICE 2014 I was slightly taken aback. The general internet consensus seems to be that it's not particularly a game that offers anything new mechanically, yet what it does set out to do it excels at. Particularly the strong emotional bond between the two leading characters who act as surrogate father and daughter to each other.  I subscribed to this viewpoint for awhile, and chalked up the innovation award to some panel judge consensus that maybe through its immense polish and superb structure and characters it was perceived to be avant-garde. Fast forward to recently and I finally get the chance to play Journey. I didn't have any expectations besides it apparently being an amazing game, particularly in that it provides an experience that really cannot be found anywhere else. When you're hearing opinions off hand and people are trying to explain why something is so important to them, I suppose sometimes words cannot ever do it justice. 'It's a fantastic game' I kept hearing, so I guess I went in expecting groundbreaking gameplay, but nothing else.

I ended up acquiring the same feelings for Journey as I did for The Last of Us, the same bewilderment where I couldn't reconcile why it had affected me so much despite its perceived simplicity. The gameplay itself essentially amounted to a series of simple puzzles and platforming, but it was more than that. The feeling of solemnity is strong in Journey, it exudes through the lonely environments, the narrative and the implications that the heavy responsibility of the world is propped entirely on your shoulders. It was probably even stronger considering I played in a dark room, home alone, where nothing could distract me and pull me from the screen.

And then a short while in, as I wander the solitary digital desert, my pondering loneliness is utterly transformed. In the distance I see someone else, wandering the dunes, just like me. My focus shifts and suddenly the game isn't so much about the game itself and the ideas of rules and objectives that come with that term, it's about this other player who's sharing the exact same experience I just described. Instantly there is a connection, we run towards each other and press the 'Circle' button to emote. It's the only way for us to communicate; one button - the longer you press it the more emotive the character on screen appears. There's nothing much else to discuss then, so we go straight to figuring out the meaning of our digital existences.

There’s no denying the gameplay experience itself was smooth, elating even. Gliding across vast landscapes and leaping effortlessly from one point to another was a genuine joy. The kind of joy you can associate with improving your understanding of the world's logic and of the skill required to effortlessly traverse it. The true joy of the game though, is that other player. It’s experiencing the genuine warmth, empathy and devotion of another human being as you work together to experience this strange but familiar journey. I won’t go into spoilerific details, but it’s no secret that Journey is an allegory for life. So the way positive player to player interaction is melded by the design to bring out the best in each other through 3 hours of gameplay is a powerful message. I’m not sure a game has ever attempted it so purposefully while executing it so perfectly. It was only when I watched the ‘Making of’ documentary straight after completing it, when Creative Director Jenova Chen explained something so simple I couldn't believe I hadn't realised it after 20 years of consuming media.

Innovation doesn't have to be physical, or tangible. It doesn't have to be a fancy new mechanic, or a new technical marvel. Games aren't often regarded as emotionally stirring beyond happy, sad, angry and other primal feelings. But if something can emotionally affect you so much that it causes you to actually learn something about yourself or question your own very being... that is an innovation award well deserved.

One Day... Tangled Shot Progression

I'm saving the next assignment update for next week, so I can group Week 7 and 8 together (nothing much to report on from during Week 7).

So in the mean time to keep what little readers I have entertained... here's a video from the magnificently put together Tangled from Disney. It outlines the shot progression every scene must go through from concept to polished and reflects the same sort of workflow we do as both students and professionals. Obviously they do it way better than the likes of me. If you can get over the repetitive replaying of the same song (guaranteed it'll be in your head the rest of today), it's interesting to watch.


Progression of an Animated Shot: Gothel & Rapunzel Disney's Tangled from Jamaal Bradley on Vimeo.

Week 5 & 6 - Overlapping Action, Anticipation, Squash & Stretch

Little late on the update. Week 5 was all about overlapping action. The principle that nothing ever really starts and stops moving at the same time. Everything moves in a layered approach. There's some what of a family of principles within the concept of overlapping. It depends on the object moving, but generally you'll have follow through, a successive breaking of joints, drag and wave action. You can witness these in almost anything, from a blade of grass blowing in the wind to a baseball pitch.

We had to encompass this in jointed pendulum attached to a moving platform. Here's the final result:


Pendulum Revision from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Week 6 focused on Anticipation and using squash & stretch to convey it. Anticipation can be summed up as the 'action before the action'. E.g: The 'wind up' before a throw or a punch being the anticipation (or secondary action) - the actual resulting throw/punch being the primary action. The 'Tailor' character is basically a bouncy ball with a squirrel tail attached to it and we had to channel everything we've learnt so far into this assignment. Here is the first submission:


TailorFirst from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

It's far from perfect (and whilst writing this I actually received the mentors critique). The main issue is how he curls up half way as he looks down at the drop. I thought it would be neat to have his body AND his tail kind of looking at the gap, hence why his tail points. It was a bit of an impromptu but failed experiment, as Ray had no idea what that was about. Note to self: Keep It Simple Stupid. Other issues include: holding his anticipations for too long (so he ends up frozen in a squashed position) and his tail not arcing/curling correctly in some areas. So over the next few days i'll be tweaking Tailor a whole bunch.

Week 4 - Timing & Spacing

Last week we wrapped up week 4 which involved not one, but... TWO balls!!!

One ball had to be light while the other had to read heavy. I went for something along the lines of a tennis ball/bowling ball mix up. I definitely am trying to push myself with the assignments, so I knew I wanted some sort of interaction between them even though the assignment didn't necessarily call for that. Here is the planning on paper before I jumped into Maya to animate:

The resulting animation:


lightheavyball from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.


I got the idea for the back spin and resulting bounce while looking up video reference for balls bouncing off walls. I hadn't originally planned for back spin but thought it would add another pleasantly unexpected element. It was interesting to put theory into practice and see how the use of proper timing and spacing between frames can make 2 similar objects appear to have very different properties. Thanks to my peer buddy who gave me great tips on how to make it look believable.

Rounding up Week 3

Week 3 is done and dusted. Things are going pretty swell so far. It is really amazing to me how helpful everyone on and off campus has been. I've never felt this kind of camaraderie before in my education, nor have I ever been this excited to actually learn. I just want to soak in the knowledge of my talented peers, mentors and all the extra learning material. I wish my entire past education had been this engaging.

First off here is the final 'excitement' Stu pose:

He hasn't changed much from the work in progress I uploaded last week. After some critiques I pushed his knee forward to get that sense of forward pressure and rotated his fists so they didn't appear orthogonal. One lesson from this week: Always good to be able to see some perspective of the figure throughout, rather than having them appear 2D and flat to the screen.

Next up, our first animation assignment for the quarter. The good ol' bouncing ball. For those wondering 'Why are you paying thousands of dollars to learn how to animate balls?', here is a handy TED-Ed talk that summarises the necessary animation principles that are spacing and timing:

So with all that out of the way. Ball bounce #1:


ball bounce 01 from Aaron Skinner on Vimeo.

Ray seemed pleased with it. Just need to do a revision of it with more of a roll back before it settles.

Kentucky Route Zero is Dreamy

It's not often that a game has confused me so much that it's made me want to play more, or at the very least made me not want to quit in puzzled frustration. I read somewhere playing KRZ is like having a dream re-told to you by a loved one: You're either immediately intrigued by the haphazard string of developments and their possible meaning, or you eventually realise you're utterly bored of their nonsensical drivel. I find the most interesting dreams often start off grounded and comprehensible before carefully growing in layered perplexity. This is precisely what KRZ evokes and so it's difficult to pinpoint why I spent 2.5 hours playing through it's ultimately bewildering 2 acts. 

I'm not too fond of the term 'non-game', but for lack of a better one I'll use it here. KRZ is not so much mechanically driven by a set of rules and goals, as it is by self expression. Yes, there are objectives. You of course must reach point A to get to B in order to get to C (and during one area in Act 2, every other jumbled combination of that rings true). Most interactions involve either looking at things or choosing dialogue options, which are superbly written and therefore rightly act as the catalyst for want of more play as the plot unravels.

Dialogue is not always the engineer of the game's progression, more often: it allows you to act as co-director as you narrate what transpires on-screen. In one scene you are introduced to a new character as she is speaking on the phone. You choose the responses for her after each inaudible bark on the other side of the phone. Depending on how you choose to respond the call can either be made out to be an understanding conversation with a loved one or a curt exchange between two frustrated people, or anywhere in-between. Another example at the very start: you are always in the company of a dog wearing a straw hat, when queried about this dog by another you choose via dialogue what your relationship with the dog is. It all sounds a little frivolous, but your responses undeniably shape how you perceive and interact with these characters through the rest of the game.

There's no way you can die either, which I suppose is another dream-like pillar of the game. You are always in control. More like a lucid dream then, that inevitably keeps unfurling as you dive deeper. Unfortunately it does end though. There are still 3 acts to go and there's been no word from the developers for a year.

Going on about it seems pointless. KRZ is something that just is. It's quite abstract and unlike anything I've played with before. It stupefying, for all the right reasons. As for whatever those reasons may be exactly, I'm not so sure. If you can, just play it.

Week 3 - Excitement

Week 3's assignments will involve our first ball bounce, but I'll start it off with a pose. This week's pose is based around the theme 'excitement'. Funnily enough google imaging for 'excitement'/'excitement pose' results in many previous AM student's work. Needless to say, it was pretty damn hard to think up original/unique poses that hadn't been done before. This week I'm trying to simplify my thumb-nailing style to get my ideas on paper quickly. Both mentor and myself noted that last week's sketches probably took more effort than they were worth.

For now, I've chosen the bottom right pose. I wanted to tackle the theme without resorting to a gleeful fist-airborne fist pump. Here's a first attempt at it (no doubt will need tweaking):

Here is a previous attempt at another pose, which I may choose instead. It feels more 'exciting' I 'spose but I do like the above pose's clear line of action better.

I shall put it to a vote I think!

Week 2 Pose Revision

After getting some really helpful feedback from other students I made a few changes to Stu. Here's the old pose:

And here's the new pose:

The bent arm is brought closer to the body which feels much more natural and enhanced the silhouette. The shoulders are on a sharper angle and the body and arm are closer together, which I think enhance the idea that all the weight is really on his arm. It's amazing how simply having the thumb appear over and to the side of the box makes the pose read that much better. His right foot is rotated a little more to the right so his entire foot is a little more visible.

We'll see what mentor Ray says about it soon, perhaps there are even more great changes I could make that I'm oblivious to.

Week 2 - Posing & Principles

This Thursday's Q&A was all about the 12 principles of animation, the original 'rules' the old Disney animators swore by and that every animator still swears by today. Some examples for the plebes: Squash and Stretch (the change of volume in reaction to force, e.g the squash of a ball as it makes full contact with the ground before it bounces back up and returns to form); Anticipation (the action before the action, e.g the pulling back before the punch); and Arcs (almost everything moves in an arc, arcs are visually pleasing!). Not all rules necessarily apply to every scene, nor do the principles have to be followed to the T. But you have to know the rules in order to break the rules (effectively).

The assignment this week was to go out and observe people in interesting poses and draw them. Then we pick our favourite sketch and use our trusty 'Stu' rig to pose it in 3D. However a 43 degree heatwave doesn't make this an easy task, so I sketched poses off of references instead. Here are the results:

I realise my sketches are far more detailed than they have to be. I actually find it hard to simplify and hold back the detail. Preferably I'd like to be sketching out twice or three times as many poses in less time with very simplistic, but effective gesture drawings. It is the gesture of the figure that is most important, so I will try to experiment with quicker drawing styles in the coming weeks.

The final rendered pose: (I went a little overboard while messing with mental ray renderer.)

I'm hoping it effectively communicates Stu's emotion. It's slightly different to the sketch to give him a more 'bored' look. I referenced myself for this pose and could really feel the strain on the pushed out hip so I pushed it out as far as possible while still trying to maintain the character's balance and line of action.