I figured I would post my blocking for my next animation, if nothing more than to push my other animations a little further down the page 
Should be finaled in a few weeks, I’ll post then!
Wow, I can’t believe that I’m already HALF way through Animation Mentor! It’s kind of a sad milestone, but I’m very excited for whatever awaits. I learned a TON about acting this class and it’s only the intro class. I can’t wait to see how things unfold next class! Marek Kochout was an AWESOME mentor and an all around great guy.
I’m kind of hesitant to post this, but I think it’s important. Below is the first rough blocking pass of a pantomime shot I did at AM. This is seriously my first shot at blocking the shot so don’t make fun, okay?! Can’t you just taste the food he’s cooking? Yeah, me either. I would imagine that his food is bland, dry, muddy, and void of any zest or zing though.Luckly I wasn’t in too deep at this point and was glad to go back to the drawing board. The first pass sucked but there were a couple things I thought were working so it wasn’t a total waste of time. If I would have tried to continue forward with something that wasn’t working I would waste more time trying to breath life into it. I realized that a large portion of the issues in that blocking pass were timing and lack of esential breakdowns, but the main issue was ACTING!!I decided to spend a few minutes in character before even attempting to act out the pan toss. I turned on the soundtrack to Rattatoille and really loosened up, I even did a cocky little dance. When I finally got loose enough I didn’t fall into the rut of doing the exact same thing over and over again, I tried attempting things differently each time, and not just subtletys. I moved things around, changed the layout and tried to forget my pre-concieved ideas as to what I wanted to do during the shot. I just let it happen naturally. Here’s the next pass at it, still has quite a few issues but it was getting closer.Anyway, here’s the end result. I had a pretty good arsenal of video reference and sketches that changing the last bit wasn’t a huge deal. I still want to do some more to it but I’m focusing on current shots for now. It’s not perfect but I think it’s far better than it would have turned out if I would have tried making my first pass of blocking work.I hope this is helpful, or at least worth the read for someone out there. post or email critiques!
I have been terrible about updating this blog. I always tell people about it followed by the disclaimer “I haven’t updated it lately, but soon I’ll get back into the habit.” knowing that I probably won’t. It’s not that I don’t have awesome things to say, it’s that every time I open this text entry box I get blogger’s block.
AM has been an amazing adventure, I can’t believe that I’m almost half way through it already. I’m not saying that I’m a master animator or anything, but I would have never imagined that I could learn this stuff so fast, especially from an online school.
Joe Mandia (Imageworks, Blue Sky, Disney) was my mentor for body mechanics. Joe was a wealth of knowledge, and it was nice to learn from someone with a background working in games. I would say that the single most important thing I learned during that class was to have a thorough plan of a shot and know the inside and outside of your shot before even touching Maya. Nothing can be left to chance and happy accidents. I ended up having to fix problems within’ spline that could have been easily avoided by paying more attention while blocking. Class 2 was quite fast paced, and while I may not have ended up with any winning reel shots, I really was able to find a workflow that works for me. I think learning from mistakes, or “the hard way” is sometimes the best way to learn.
Introduction to acting has also been a whirlwind of animation knowledge. My mentor is Marek Kochout (Dreamworks). Marek has been constantly helping me to push the acting in my shots to the next level. He has helped me think outside of the box to come up with unique acting choices. The class is only half way through, and I’m now beginning my first dialogue shot at AM. Meaning I finally have the BISHOP rig!!
I think everyone, in any career, sometimes doubts if it’s for them. I certainly have felt like I can’t “animate my ass” so to speak. But I would be more worried if I thought I was amazing and felt 100% comfortable doing what I’m doing. I’m more passionate about animation than anything else in life and I know that it is where I’m supposed to be.
Wow, time really has flew! My mentor this term was Mike Walling, an awesome animator from Blue Sky. I will forever be thankful for his dedication to his duties as a mentor. If Mike’s experience is an accurate representation of the industry then it’s just more re-assurance that I’m going into the right field. Mike really seemed to love his job at Blue Sky.
I thought that I knew the principles of animation pretty well before coming to AM but just like anything in this world, every time you learn something it opens your eyes to the things you don’t yet know.
The Animation Mentor community has been awesome. Everyone there is passionate about animation and I really feel like I could go to any student, ask for their honest opinion, and actually get it. I was a little nervous about posting public reviews at first, it’s hard to post unfinished work for everyone to see. I’m glad I got over the fear, because getting critiques by other students has helped me tremendously. I also tried my hardest this quarter to help others with their work by posting PR critiques. I think it’s helped me more than it’s helped anyone else. My animation eye is getting so much better, instead of just feeling like something is wrong, I can pinpoint the issues and that’s helped me in my work a ton.
My new mentor is Joe Mandia. I’ve only had a couple of Q and A sessions, but so far I can attest to his awesomeness. Joe is extremely dedicated to his students, he gave us all of his contact information and even his AIM screenname. Body Mechanics is an extremely important and difficult class, but I know that I’m going to learn so much.
I’m a peer buddy this term, meaning that I have a small group of first term students that I help every week. They’re all doing very well so far and I’ve been trying my hardest to provide them with all the help I can, and I hope that it makes things easier for them.
I’ve gotten emails from a few readers (crazy, I know) asking questions about Animation Mentor. I have a little secret for those of you who are planning to join… DO IT NOW! The prices are increasing by $1,075 with the new curriculum, but if you pay the $500 enrollment fee by August 31st you can still get the current price.
I promise you won’t regret it, no matter who you are.
And tell them I sent you. 
So for quite a while now I have wanted to make my own puppets. I don’t even want to do ventriloquism, I just want to make them. Tonight I was scouring the internet for information on making puppets (there’s a HUGE hobbyist community) and I came across a list of suggested books for the beginner puppet maker. My eye zipped down to an image of a book I haven’t seen since I was 7 and it immediately took me back. I’ve always said that the Christopher Hart books are what got me hooked on drawing characters, but tonight I realized that it was Ed Emberley’s Drawing Book of Animals that truly got me hooked. I remember going with my class to the school library and checking that book out over and over again until my teacher sternly suggested that I should branch out a little. (kind of like when I kept making my mom rent Star Wars Animated Classics - Ewoks: The Haunted Village, but that’s a different story) I found the book on Amazon for $1.07 and I think I’ll buy it, take that Mrs. Seamons.
Oh, no, don’t get me wrong. I’m leaning A TON at Animation Mentor! The one thing that I can’t seem to get into my head; however, is to save my freaking work!! Tonight was the second night that I’ve lost a considerable amount of work to the electricity god… who I’m guessing is Zeus. On Monday I started on my bouncing balls project and I had planned on having the light ball trigger the fall of the heavy ball. It was actually beginning to look pretty good, I was in the ZONE and animating my cute little heart out when ZAP!! The lights, as well as my computer, went out. Well I really learned my lesson and after a palm slap to my forehead and a “stupid stupid stupid” I promised myself that I would not let that happen again. Yeah, needless to say, it happened again tonight. I might be better off now though, I decided to scrap the concept and do something a little more basic… after all it IS “Basic Foundations”
The good news: I had enough battery in my laptop to play 23 games of Spider Solitaire while the power was out… one of which, I won!
Wow, my first day on AM was quite exciting. I watched a few of the videos and I’ve begun playing around with Stu a bit. That IK arm is going to be the death of me, I know it’s good practice but I’ve had traumatic experiences in the past. The Eric Goldberg interview was golden and it made me even more excited for his book. A lot of the people in my class have pretty good demo reels already, which is intimidating but I’m grateful that there are so many talented people.
Tomorrow, my first Q and A.
