Monday, January 19, 2009

First Assignment!

Well, it´s been a while since I´ve posted anything here. I kept delaying delaying, but allot has been going on with AnimationMentor since my last post.

Now were actually in week 3 of Class 1: ''Planning and Blocking Methods''.
We have to learn how best to plan our animation in our head or on paper before we actually start animating on the computer. That will save us allot of time once we start working professionally, because we'll have to deal with deadlines and what not. Not only that, it's better to know what you are going to animate instead of just doing something that might not be interesting and having to start all over. Now before I tell you what assignments I got this week, let me tell you a little bit about week 2.

Last week we went over the Principles of Animation, which was very interesting. We've got to see all sorts of video's explaining the principles. Things like the old bugs bunny cartoons, the classic Disney animations but also live action stuff like Charlie Chaplin. He was a genius by the way, Chaplin, explaining something like an action or emotion without words just body language is amazing. Before I didn't even notice, but now that I have to explain a feeling by just posing a faceless 3D character and make it clear to the audience I realize how difficult it actually is.

Also I forgot to tell you how the meeting with my mentor, Jalil Sadool, went! The Q&A was even better then I hoped it would be. First of all we introduced ourselves, explain why and when we found out we wanted to be animators.
He also asked us which medium we wanted to work in later like videogames, commercials, special effects or movies. Then Jalil started talking about how he got into the animation industry. He talked for 1 hour straight, I can't tell you everything now, but it was so inspirational! And the way he told it just had everyone at the edge of their seats!

He talked about when he came out of school he started sending out demoreels to try and get a job as an animator, but how all the studios kept rejecting him and how some didn't even take the time to let him know he was rejected. He decided to lock himself up for like 6 months and animated like crazy practicing and working on animations to create a new demoreel. After he finished that he started giving out the new demoreel to the studios, AGAIN, hoping a studio would hire him as an animator. After some time of no responds of none of the studios, all the calls came together! He got calls from:

Bluesky Studios (Studio behind Ice Age 1 & 2, Horton Hears a WHO!)
DNA Productions ( Studio behind Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius)
Weta Digital (Studio behind ''I, Robot'', King Kong, Narnia, X-MEN III)
Rythem and Hues (Night at the Museum, The Incredible Hulk, Mummy

Since he could choose which studio to work for he ended up choosing Rythem and Hues where he worked on Night at the Museum.Hes currenly employed at Weta Digital where hes working on the upcoming movie AVATAR by director James Cameron ( who also directed Titanic).

Of course the talk was more detailed then what im writing now, but this is the very very VERY short version of the talk. He also mentioned what we are going to do next few weeks and he told us that he is going to show us the work he's done on ''A Night at the Museum''. He'll show us his basic workflow and how he handled his shot/assignment.

Then out of nowhere he asked us if we wanted a good friend of his to come by one day and talk about his work.
I don't know his friends name but he told us the guy animated the shot in KING KONG where king kong rips open a T-Rex's jaw and then beats his chest. The entire class was of course blown away that we get to learn from such talented artists, and we all said yes to his suggestion. So when his friend comes and has his talk I'll let you know how that went! Because I'm real excited to hear what he has to say!

After getting such an inspirational talk you just can't help wanting to animate a full character with facial animation doing some amazing slow motion back flips, with explosions in the background and everything else you could come up with. BUT...we can't.
We have to start from the bottom up if we ever want to become good animators.

So next weeks assignment is to animate a ball with the weight of a soccer ball or basketball bouncing across the screen. And not only that we also have to pose Stu in an excited pose.
So I'll have to go outside and get some reference of people having fun and being ....excited!
I'm hoping I'll win the lottery, because I'll be EXTREMLY excited which would make my assignment that much easier! ;P

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Welcome to AnimationMentor.com!

Finally Finally Finally!!! I can't believe all that waiting is over! It's time to start learning.

On the 5th of January the virtual doors to the school opened and I could access all kinds of new training video's, tools, lectures and even a new model called Stu! Comming from the Maya Springboard with a limited amount of students I was suprised to see how many people are actually in the AnimationMentor program. I thought I was the only one from the Netherlands, but it turned out there are 10 other! So that was a nice surprise.

We also got to know who our mentor for class 1 is.
My mentor is Jalil Sadool, an amazing animator who has worked on; Garfield: a Tail of Two Kittens, Night at the Museum and The Chronicles of Narnia among others. He is currently working on Avatar at Weta Digital Ltd.
Our class will get to meet him on thursday...so tomorrow, and we'll introduce ourselves and meet all the other students.

Now in the first week we aren't going to make any assignments. We just have to introduce ourselves and get used to the website, but since iv'e done the Maya Springboard I already have that part locked down ; ) Next week is when the fun really with posing Stu.

I'll let you know how the Q&A goes, which takes place in about 8 hours :S Now before I go here's the new model iv'e been talking about...

STU