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Well here it is, all the work I pulled off in class one. The order is latest assignment to the first.
It’s weird but looking back at some of the work, I actually have to cringe. I guess that is a sign that I’m growing because I can see where it could be improved. Regardless…it’s a lot tougher than it looks 
Now it’s time to chillout and take a little break as we wait for class two which starts the week after next. From what I keep hearing this class is super tough and very demanding. Full body characters, body mechanics, harder assignments…woo hoo…I’m ready.
Bring it on!
I cant believe it. Were spending this week putting together our class one progress reels and that is about it.
It’s been an interesting restart to this adventure for me to say the least. So many unexpected personal events and distractions that I have amazed even myself that I made it through unscathed!
I’m very excited about Class 2 Body Mechanics we get to go deep into the fundamentals and really start applying what we learned so far. Again, I plan to get back to blogging at my normal pace and I know that it has been very limited at times this term.
Animation Mentor is just an awesome awesome place but it requires so much hard work and dedication. Everyone keeps telling me that Class 2 ups the anty.
Say What? Class 1 was brutal! Here we go again
So in between terms what’s next?
Well, I get a week break before the second term so I plan on focusing on my notes from last class. Going over some of the tutorials I bought from Jason Ryan. I’m also learning to keep my short term goals simple and attainable. One of the biggest goals I want to attain is the continual development of my animation workflow. During my break I plan on getting a very good handle on Digicel Flipbook and working out 2D thumbnail animations into my planning stage.
Drawing and sketching…. I’m at a point right now where I feel like I truly suck as a artist drawing wise. There were some super talented artist in my class one that I truly envied like you wouldn’t believe. I keep thinking to myself “Jezz, I used to be able to pull those kinda drawings off!” I cant believe I let my skills get sooo rusty!
Some how I got to figure out how to get some drawing sessions in! Maybe I’ll designate a few solid days a week and block some time in just for the rebirth of my sketching. It will definitely be more than what I’m getting in right now and that’s the truth!
Hope you all are having a superb weekend and I should have my class one demo reel posted this Friday…..(Exhale)….wow.
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…
Well the first week is pretty much done. My mentor for this term is CG Animator Paul Allen. Just from the first few minutes of hearing him talk I knew that this was a really cool guy. Paul worked as an animator on the “Ant Bully”, “The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron (TV)” and was the Animation Supervisor for “The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron (feature)” amongst other things.
Paul seems to be very funny and laid back but you get the feeling that teaching is in his blood which is great. I’m excited to see how things progress throughout this term as I’m sure to be in for a really good time.
As expected, at least for class one, this week has been filled with getting re acclimated and reacquainted with the AM site and the new students. Animation Mentor is such a unique place, it is truly a utopia for animators, talk about positive vibes.
No animation assignments yet, more or less your responsible for just introducing yourself and watching orientation videos. This upcoming week will start the slow ramp up to the tepid pace that class one is known for. Better keep that notepad near by and a cup of coffee never hurts either.
On a side note, I’m planning to integrate more 2D pencil tests into my pre-planning/preparation work flow. This is something that has been on my mind for age’s but I never pursued it hard enough. Ideally, if I can get a comfortable work flow going that suits me. Then the incorporation of my thumbnail sketches and 2D pencil tests would be fantastic. Aside from some of the options I’m exploring, it would be nice to use the “grease pencil” and call it a day. We will see how it goes…
If habits are hard to break then you better make them good!
Well the day is finally here. In about 15 minutes I’ll have access to the site and start to get re acclimated with everything that is Animation Mentor. Man, it really seems like such a long time ago.
The only thing that sucks is that I’m still at work so I wont get the full compliment until I get home later today. But hey, that’s cool, I’m just glad it’s time to kick it into gear again.
On a side note, I’ve been wanting to get some new monitors for quite a while now. Currently, I’m using a dual monitor setup with 20 inch CRT’s. Yep, the big boys and they take up a considerable amount of space. So today I decided to go ahead and pull the trigger on a couple of 22 inch wide screen flat panel monitors. This is going to be really interesting once I have that setup LOL. Were talking almost three feet of horizontal space!
