This is really cool! Animation Mentor has been hosting webinars (online web conferences) covering things from information about the school to tips and tricks and there’s more to come. On July 16, Bobby Beck (AnimationMentor.com CEO & former Pixar animator) will be hosting and webinar and talking to former students about their work on films since graduation.
Shawn Kelly (animator at ILM and AnimationMentor.com Co-Founder) has recently started an Animation Tips & Tricks blog. Be sure to check it out because it has loads of useful information about animation and the industry!
I haven’t updated anything here in a long while. Bit slack of me there, but here’s a quick update just to say that I’ve moved on to Class 3 now and everything is going awesomely well. Class 3 is an introduction to acting and I’ve just started on the first assignment which is a pantomime excercise. They say pantomime is the hardest thing to animate, so I’m looking forward to the challenge.
So with a new class comes a new group of classmates. I think there’s about 6 Aussies this in class (out of 16) which is really cool. Also, I’ve got a new mentor,T.Dan Hofstedt. He’s got a wealth of experience under his belt so I’m looking forward to learning a lot from him. He’s worked on a lot of cool projects including The Smurfs, Aladdin & The Lion King; you can check out more at his IMDB page.
I didn’t actually mention it before, but Shawn Kelly ran a QandA (live question and answer session) for those interested in animation and Animation Mentor. What was great about this was the fact that those who aren’t students of AM got a glimpse of how things run inside the school and were able to get time to ask Shawn Kelly (co-founder of the school and animator at ILM) anything they wanted! If you want to catch a replay of the QandA go to http://www.animationmentor.com/tipsandtricks/replay.html. Be quick because I think it will be gone soon.
Into class 2 (body mechanics) now and I can feel that it’s already stepped up a notch. My mentor is Chris Derochie and he’s been awesome so far. His eCritiques are extremely helpful and make sure I really pay attention to the details and push my shots as far as they can go. I can feel and see my progress as the weeks go by, it’s quite amazing. Just when you think you’ve perfected something, you soon see that there is much more that can be done. I guess that’s why animators and artists never feel like a shot is finished. Anyhow, we’ve just finished up a 3-4 week assignment. I animated a 180 degree turn which you can see below. It’s not rendered yet but I’ll get around to doing that soon.
I have just finished up Class 1 in the Winter term and will be starting
Class 2 for the Spring term tomorrow. Once again I will be in a new
class with a whole new group of people and a new mentor, so I’m very
keen find all of that out. I’ve compiled some of my work from
the first class, so check it out below.
We’ve been looking into the dynamics of walks all week and there’s been a fair bit to take in. Walks aren’t as easy as they look and it’s almost like I’m learning to walk again, except on a computer
Here’s my blocking for the ‘vanilla’ walk from week 8.
We’ve been really getting stuck into the 12 principles of animation here in Class 1. Each week we have been focusing on the principles and building on each of them, learning so much more as we go. I never really considered how much these principles are used and how important they are for animation, but they are used everywhere and all the time! By the way, if you are interested in this, I recommend checking out the ‘The Illusion of Life’ by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas. It talks about these principles in chapter 3. This book is pretty much the bible for animators.
Anyway… we’ve been building on our knowledge of these principles each week with assignments and I will be posting these here later, but for now I will put up last week’s assignment for anticipation and squash & stretch.
Victor Navone, an animator at Pixar Animation Studios and Mentor at AM has posted some sketches on his blog for the Wall-E Super Bowl ad he did. Click on the image below to view the rest. There are also some more sketches that he did for The Incredible’s and Ratatouille. Very cool!
It’s also worth checking out the official WALL-E web site and taking a look at some of the videos. It’s going to be a great film.
