Happy Halloween everyone!

I'm lame and am not doing anything special tonight (besides my Q&A) but I did dress up Enzo for a couple minutes! I don't think he likes halloween very much...

Another week gone by

Well, another great week is behind me, and the good news is that my video uploaded properly! My mentor Elliot couldn't have possibly been any more helpful throughout the week; he really goes above and beyond what's expected!

This week we get a ball with squash and stretch, so I'm actually pretty excited about that since I think it'll add a lot of character. I still have to think up a good idea though :S We also have to do a pose with Stu that shows devastation, and THAT I have a good idea for :D

In other news, I finally watched Surf's Up, which was actually a lot better than I expected! I didn't realize it was documentary style, but it works really well, especially since for the voices they actually had the actors stand in a room together and improv based on a pretty loose script. The whole thing ended up really natural and appealing, and quite funny, although it doesn't really come off as a kid's movie imo.

I also just started playing the new Ratchet and Clank game for PS3, which is also very good! Although the animation isn't exactly movie quality, it's a lot better than most other games, and I would certainly be more than happy to work on something like that. You can tell that they actually put a lot of work into getting good-quality results, whereas a lot of game companies have their animators working so quickly that the end product is pretty lackluster.

Anyways, that's it for now, check back next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel!

Only 17 more months to go!

It's officially the start of week 4, which means I've been at AM for almost a month now! I guess a month isn't actually very long, but it feels satisfying anyways.

Last week was our first animation week, which would've been really fun, but instead it was mostly just frustrating b/c my computer decided to crap out and develop a stutter (if you use your imagination I'm sure you can see how that would make animation difficult). I'm hoping to have it fixed this week, although I'm sort of dreading the fix itself.

I'm getting a new motherboard and processor and I know my computer is gonna be awesome, but at the same time, getting a new computer always sucks. It's kinda like getting a new house. It's technically better, and it's great once you're moved in, but there's always a really unpleasant period where you have to reorganize, throw stuff out, wander around looking for stuff you've lost, and generally just get annoyed because you don't have everything available that you're used to. I also find that I never realize how much useful stuff I had until it's gone, and that moving takes waaaay longer than I expect.

Anyways, as a result of my stupid broken computer my work wasn't as complete as I would've liked, but I'll post it anyways. This isn't actually the finished version of some of the stuff, but I can't stand to compile another video :P

This week my assignment is to animate a heavy ball and a light ball, so if you just HAPPEN to have some reference footage of a bowling ball or a ping pong ball bouncing, let me know!

EDIT: This was supposed to be posted Monday, but I got an upload error and then we took my computer apart to fix it. Oops! But now my computer is fixed with a brand spanking new Quad Core processor. Yaaaaaaaay :D

EDIT2: Apparently the video refuses to upload properly, so sorry, no video for you!

My first REAL week

Last week was a fake week since we didn't really have to do anything, but as it turns out, real weeks are good too! I had some trouble finding good people to draw since it wouldn't stop raining and my car is broken, but it was fun trying to be creative with boring poses and playing with gimpy-proportioned Stu.

The Q and A was great again, and Elliot joined early which made for some good times. I also learned some useful things about how to approach my sketching, like exaggerating on the fly and redrawing for more readability and emotion. Oh, and he mentioned watching Hudsucker Proxy and Glengary Glenn Ross for good acting, which I'm writing here so that if I lose the paper I wrote those titles on (again) I still know what to rent!

The pose I decided to turn in is the talking/explaining one, although the dreamy one seemed more popular. I just couldn't turn something in that has twinning, but I feel pretty good about the submitted pose too.

Thanks to anyone who posted on my workspace btw! I was all disappointed and concerned that I wouldn't get any responses since I didn't post anything until noon Saturday, but again everyone was suspiciously nice and I got a ton of very kind and useful comments.

Anyways, next week is the big week where we actually start animating! We have to pose Stu AND make a ball bounce, which is very scary. I'm not even kidding, I think it's gonna be hard! Wish me luck :)

Yesterday was a good day

So, yesterday I was given a brand new 24 inch monitor (so beautiful) AND I had my first Q&A with my mentor and classmates. The monitor is awesome for obvious reasons, and the Q&A was awesome b/c everyone in my class seemed very interesting and friendly, and so did the mentor! I was originally dreading the first Q&A since I thought we were just going to have to introduce ourselves by talking about ourselves at random (which always makes me feel cheesy) but instead we just had to give our animation background and name a favorite character, which is soooooo much better. Elliot genuinely seems like a nice, helpful guy, and I like his general point of view and sense of humor to boot! It should be a very enjoyable and educational few months :)

AM is awesome!

I have to go to bed soon so I'll keep this quick, but I just wanted to mention that Animation Mentor is completely awesome so far (mostly I feel guilty for not posting about it sooner). Everyone seems ridiculously nice and friendly (almost suspiciously so!) and the syllabus looks fantastically fantastic. The whole website is quite ingenious really, and I can't wait until next week when the learning really begins.

Anyways, I'll have more to say tomorrow after my first Q&A with Mr. Elliot Roberts, assuming I remember to post :)