AM Class 2- Week 10 Assignment

Ah now into Spline. Such a painful part of the process. Everthing is looking good and then you put it in spline and you have to redo a lot of parts. I ran into a ton of gimbal lock and I'm going to be more careful next time so I don't run into that.

AM Class 2- Week 9 Assignment

This week I put my animation on 2's just to lock down the movements.  My mentor sugguested to put it to the music to make sure it follows it.

AM Class 2- Week 8 Assignment

I have been sick as can be. I had the same mouth virus that my daughter had and put me in bed for four days and I've lost about fifteen pounds! So I'm playing catch up with posting my assignments. This week we put our shot into blocking. My mentor suggested putting it on 4's because of the complicated movements.

AM Class 2- Week 7 Assignment

Just submitted my final on my Stewie being scared.  Looking forward to what my mentor has to say so I can "plus" my shot.  I picked my new shot for the next four weeks. It's Dancing Stewie doing an old 40's dance.

AM Class 2- Week 6 Assignment

Week 6 is all about Blocking Plus. We put our shot into spline mode and get it as far along as we can.

AM Class 2- Week 5 Assignment

My concept is Stewie (No arms) is walking happily by a home haunters yard haunt.  He is suddenly scared by a grave popping skeleton. This is my re-block of my orginal blocking. I had some notes from my Mentor that I addressed.

AM Class 2- Week 4 Assignment

Finally to the point of final polish. I spent a long time on my shot and I think it paid off. Minor notes from my mentor, I'm a very happy man this week. We also had to choose our shot for the next month. We work with Stewie (He has no arms so we can focus on the shoulders and head). My idea is that he is walking along happily by a home haunters graveyard then a grave popper pops up and scares Stewie. He jumps back and falls down.

AM Class 2- Week 3 Assignment

Week three we are moving into blocking plus. Class 2 is a big step up from Class 1. I'm learning a lot and my mentor is really prepared and knows his stuff.

AM Class 2- Week 2 Assignment

This week we blocked out our shot. Just the key poses and breakdowns.

AM Class 2- Week 1 Assignment

Class 2 has began!  My new mentor Martin Hopkins works at Dreamworks Animation.  He has been a mentor at AnimationMentor for six years.  The class is intro to Psychology of Body Mechanics.  My first week we had to shoot video reference for the shot we picked. I decided to have Ballie walking up a ton of stairs.  He walks up three stairs stumbles, leans against the wall and slides down.  

AM Class 1- Week 12 Assignment

We are now entering the last week of Class 1 and it's been a great ride.  This week we had to put together all our work and post it on our public review. Here's mine....enjoy!!

Class 1 Week 11 Assignment

I choose to re-create the silly walk from Monty Python for my "personality walk". Our assignment is to pose Stu with weight on one leg showing balance.

AM Class 1- Week 10 Assignment

Did my revisions to my vanilla walk (looks a lot better). We started blocking our personality walk this week.  I chose my walk from Monty Python's sketch "Ministry of Silly Walks". This weeks pose was exhausted.

AM Class 1-Week 9 Assignment

The week before we had to block out our vanilla walk.  This week we finished up polishing the ballie walk. The emotion for our pose was concern.

Revisions

AM Class 1- Week 8 Assignment

One of the hardest things in animation is "the walk".  We are animating a standard (vanilla= normal) walk. This week we start the blocking and next week we polish. We also had a physical strength pose.

Week 7 Revisions

Got some great notes on my tailor (ball with tail) assignment.  Didn't have many notes for the Pendulum so it was a quick fix.

AM Class 1- Week 7 Assignment

This week is about combining the bouncing ball and overlapping action. We are using a rig with a ball and tail (tailor).  This has been the toughest assignment to date!  My shot needs a lot of work, I'm sure my mentor will give me great advice.

Week 6 Revisions

Tour of Dreamwork's Animation Studio!

I was lucky enough to win a raffle at AnimationMentor and was one of the five chosen to get a tour of Dreamwork's Animation Studio!  I left around 6 in the morning to get to downtown. I had to go to the Los Angeles Convention Center to catch the bus to the studio.  I met my fellow AM classmates (one from Germany, two from England, and one from Philadelphia). They were all alumni except for me.  I couldn't take pictures inside because they have four movies in the works that haven't been announced.  The highlight of the tour was seeing a secret room in the effects department.  There is a bookcase and you pull a lever in a book to unlock the secret entrance. There is a bar with beer taps, wine, two fireplaces (fake) and it was filled with antique furniture and nick knacks.

Los Angeles Convention Center

Had to take a bus from L.A Convention Center to Dreamwork's in Glendale.

This was our tour guide Tim.  Amazing and very knowledgable guy.

My AnimationMentor classmates Lu, Rich, Duncan and Martin.

Care package from AnimationMentor!

My son and I talked to Suzanne at the BBQ and she said that she could get us some AnimationMentor stuff.  Today we received a box from her with T-shirts, AnimationMentor Alumni license plate cover (going to have to put this on after I graduate)  and a nice card. We are  both very touched by this kind gesture.

AM Class 1-Week 6 Assignment

Our week 6 assignment consists of Overlapping Action. It was a hard concept to grasp. I kept it simple so I could focus on the basics.

Week 5 Revisions

These are the revisions I made to my week 5 assignments.

AM Class 1- Week 5 Assignment

 This week we had to animate a ball going through an obstacle course. We had to incorporate Squash and Stretch and Anticipation. This was a really fun assignment and a chance to give the ball some life and character. We also had to pose Stu (AnimationMentor supplied rig) in a "Devastated" pose.

This is my revision of my bowling ball vs. ping pong ball.

AnimationMentor BBQ!

This Weekend I traveled up to San Francisco with my son to attend the AnimationMentor BBQ!!! It was located in a park right by Fisherman's Wharf and Fort Mason. We could see the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance and it was a sunny beautiful day. Got to meet some of my co-students and the founder's of AnimationMentor.  Food was great and it really felt like a family. I'm definitely going to have to go next year.

Tour of Dreamworks Animation Studio!

AnimationMentor recently had a raffle for five lucky students to get a tour of Dreamworks Animation Studio. Guess what... I WON!!!! I got a call this morning and I was jumping up and down when I heard the news.  Dreamwork's should be contacting me this coming week when its going to be.  I'm very excited!  I'll definitely post the pics I can from the tour.

AM Class 1-Week 4 Fourth Assignment

This week we had to animate two bouncing ball.  One has to be heavy (bowling ball) and the other Light (ping pong ball).  We also had to revise our last week bouncing ball assignment.  I didn't change anything to the bouncing ball because I didn't get any notes from my mentor.

Revised "Excitement" Pose

I tried to make the line of action run from the top of the hand down to the leg. I switched the leg my character was standing on to help.  So then I put the other leg up.

Walt Disney book from the library.

I found this book at my local library. It's such an entertaining read I finished it the first night I got it.  It's written by Jack Kinney who was a great animator at Disney Studios. He was a supervising animator that produced such memorable shorts such as the  Goofy how-to series and he worked on features, one of my favorite scenes in Dumbo (the pink elephants). The book describes an array of characters that worked at the Disney studios. There are some great stories about Walt and hysterical situations that you wouldn't have believed took place there. Each story has a sketch made of the character and the situation Kinney is talking about.  Makes you feel like you were actually there during those golden times.

AM Class 1-Week 3 Third Assignment

This week we started on our first animation! We were given a ball and we had to animate it with the weight of a bouncing basketball. We weren't allowed to use Squash and Stretch, were are suppose to focus on the timing and spacing.  The assignment also had to be under 100 frames.  The next part of our assignment was to draw 'Excitement' poses and upload our sketches.  Then we had to pose Stu (AnimationMentor character model) in an "Excitement" pose.