A week from today I will finally be back at AM. What seemed like an eternity is now only a proverbial stones throw away. All I can say is that I’m highly optimistic about returning and even have a stronger fire, determination and eagerness then when I attended last.

It’s funny how life can throw curves at you to really dampen your spirits but I believe these last few months away has taught me a lot on so many fronts. I’ve also learned that if things get hectic again I have the wherewithal to preserver and push on. Knock on wood, this was my first and last leave of absence.

On another note…the second Mecha. I know…I know LOL. Seriously, I started it and was moving along fine and then boom, just was not holding my interest anymore. I’m kinda funny like that, if something cant hold my interest I wont even screw around with it and I will just move on.

After I left Animation Mentor there were some goals that I set for myself to achieve upon returning. A few of those goals centered around Maya which if achieved would result in a higher comfortability level in using the tool going forward. I can say that I have at least achieved the level of comfort that I so much desired. This was important to me because of my visual and creative nature.

The ability to add you own personality, ideas and for lack of a better word, flavor to a scene means a lot to me. Being able to create props, character models, along with texturing and lighting really puts me into a flow. When I’m working on my “own” thing even if it is an assignment, I try my best to standout. What is or can be distracting at least for me is the shortcomings or gaps in my knowledge. Of course you can always Google and find a tutorial but in the environment that is AM there are deadlines and time just doesn’t permit in some cases. I used to always find myself saying “man, if this were only Lightwave, I would….”

Side note, AM doesn’t require that you know how to model, texture, rig, light etc etc. The school focuses on animation only and pushes that too. Animate, animate, animate… Just wanted to get that out so readers did not get the wrong impression as the aforementioned are things that I want to do “better” personally.

Today, I’m more comfortable in Maya than I ever were in Lightwave and that is still blowing my mind due to my heavy and well documented Lightwave Fanboy-ism, but you know what? I’m not at all surprised that I’m starting to favor Maya more and more.

You see how I got away from the second Mecha topic? Hahaha…yeah I’m good, I know.

I’ll probably revisit the second Mecha and drop an animation or something sometime during the summer without notice, who knows. This doesn’t mean that I wont be working on other things and I will definitely keep everyone up on my re-experience at Animation Mentor. I really appreciate those of you that cruise by.

Speaking of which, I was on Skype with one of my class mates who is now in finishing up class 2. His name is Fawzi Yahya and is a pretty cool guy. He was showing me his final assignment which was to demonstrate a character lifting a heavy object. During our conversation I offered to create a set for his animation and was delighted when he said “hell yeah!“. Below is a screen shot from the animation featuring the set I created. Had a really a good time putting that together, modeling, lighting, etc…fun stuff.