Week 3

I've been a bit late posting this week...by about a week! :) But anyway, week 3 was an introduction to planning and blocking methods. Our assignment was to animate a bouncing ball (with the weight of a basketball/soccer ball). As it was our first actual animation assignment it wasn't necessary to add rotation...phew! We also had to sketch different poses to communicate excitement. Not as easy as it sounds when you consider that probably post emotion is shown through the face, and our model was faceless :) But it's a great way to involve the whole body in the pose. I've read many great quotes about posing the whole body to communicate an emotion and this was a great way to get introduced to that. I think the hardest thing was to avoid the clichéd poses. I think as a result of trying to avoid this I've chosen a pose that wasn't quite as strong as some of the others. I think it's ok sometimes to submit a clichéd pose as we're still learning. Anyway...here's my work for this week :)

This is maybe what I should've submitted? :)

Week 2

So we're just about to wrap up with week 2 and the assignment was to go out and quickly sketch people in various situations, capturing the pose. We've had a ton of snow recently...which as it turns out was great for me cos I was able to draw some guys playing Ice Hockey on a frozen lake. It was insanely hard to capture the pose even with a simple stick figure cos the action was thick and fast, so I had to turn to some photo's I took and use them as a reference. The next task was to take our most successful sketch and pose Stu like it in Maya. I've had a whole load of great feedback and suggestions from all the guys at AM, and I'm super chuffed with the result. So here it is...

It's here!!!

Today's been such a blur. Ok...so yesterday was my first "official" day at Animation Mentor...but I did a 14 hour shift at work :( So today's my actual first day at AM, and man...was it a mix of emotions. Mostly excitement with a whole bunch of nerves thrown in for good measure. It's kinda like being on a rollercoaster...you know that bit where you're slowly going up and up and up, and you know that when you slow down and get to the top it's gonna be the best feeling in the world from there on in. That was today.

I had my class 1 Q&A and got to meet my mentor and classmates. There's a lot of talent in my class. A lot of previous experience. Some animation, some modeling and texturing and stuff, but I think I was one of the least experienced people in my class. I think it's a good thing though. It's gonna push me to do my best. It's almost like the realization that "you know what...this is gonna be hard." But man...I can't even put into words how much I want this. How excited I am. It's gonna be an awesome ride!

So my Class 1 mentor is Eric Lessard. He's a real nice guy, who's worked on such recent epics such as Antz, Shrek 1, 2 and 3, and Madagascar 1 and 2 amongst other things. I just know I'm gonna learn a whole load of stuff from him. Bring it on... :)