Time To Animate «

It’s been a pretty busy week for me all around but informative to say the least. My mentor seems to be a bottomless pit of animation information. I actually thought I knew where all the good stuff was but thanks to Paul I’m sitting on a plethora of new stuff! I actually need to schedule time to go through it all and start putting together my own notes. From the looks of it I’m sure this is just the beginning so I better start categorizing this stuff.

My assignment this week was to draw some sketches of people from life. Basically go out into the world and start sketching. Afterwards, pick a pose you like and put STU in it. Below is a snap shot of the pose I created. Of course I would have loved to put in some fancy lighting, props and other stuff but my mentor was adamant about keeping it simple. So I adhered of course and will wait until the end of the term to spruce everything up for my class one demo reel.

A couple of post ago I spoke about incorporating a 2D pencil test pipeline into my animation work flow. For my Animation Mentor work I’ve decided to go with Jason’s grease pencil located here. If your using Maya this comes highly recommended.

Here are few screens to describe what I’m talking about. This image was posted by Drew Blom over at the “The art of Toon”. If you have a Wacom tablet you can just sketch right inside Maya on each frame and figure out some quick timing before you begin animating. There are so many possibilities that one can come up with via this pipeline that it boggles the mind.

Over at AM this week we start the all important bouncing ball assignments. I’m actually excited about them oddly enough. Can wait to see what happens…

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April 18, 2008 at 2:30 pm

Anonymous

I think it is great that you are trying your hand at the animation field. So far since you are just starting I would recommend going to a onsite animation school. Animation Mentor is great to teach you to become a clone of the guys teaching there. But at a real school you have many other students sitting in the labs with you working long hard hours, there is no price tag you can put on that, it gets you ready to work in the real world at a studio, SCAD is the top on the east coast. My opinion if you are truly making your goal to become an animator then going to SCAD in Savannah will achiev you this goal. But also keep in mind it will be years before you obtain the title animator at a major studio.

April 20, 2008 at 7:44 am

Anthony Hollis

Hey Anonymous,

Thanks for stopping by my blog and checking out my stuff. What makes this world go around is that we are all entitled to our own opinions and I’m sure that SCAD is a pretty awesome school. I think any institution that teaches animation the right way is a great place to be.

Unfortunately I will have to differ in opinion with you on your assessment of AM. Instead of me going on the defensive or trying to quote statistics. So let’s agree to disagree but you obviously have not done your homework on the program, the job placement and the students.

I’ll say this much though…if I could be a clone of Bobby “boom” Beck, Carlos Baena, Shawn Kelly, Brett Coderre, Paul Allen or Victor Navarone to name a few. I would have paid 3x a much to go to Animation Mentor LOL.

Seriously though, no one is trying to become a clone of anyone. But I prefer to learn from proven sources and develop a solid network connection in the process. My instructors know what studios want and with that said I’ll take my chances @ Animation Mentor.

By the way, you would be surprised at how much actual interaction we students have with one another. Trust me when I say we can look over each others shoulders (literally). Feedback is feedback…regardless if your there physically or virtually. Animation Mentor conquered that barrier very nicely and the students have extended it in so many ways that you can get feedback when ever you need it.

Anyway my friend, good luck to you at SCAD if your still attending and with the rest of your journey on becoming an Animator if your not already. Animation is truly a “Life” long learning process and I plan on spending the rest of mine doing just that.

Cheers,

Anthony!

April 23, 2008 at 9:19 am

Dave Humphreys