Class 5:Week 1

Guess what? I got Jay Davis again!!! :D Which is great cause he's such a cool guy, and he's got a great eye for animation. I feel like he's being punished though...having to see my shot for another 3 weeks :D

I know I know...2 days in to 2011 and I've given up on the whole "sketching everyday" thing. It just hit me, on the Monday I'd worked in my job for about 15 hours that day, and I was sat there for 2 hours trying to focus properly to continue sketching. It made me feel exhausted the next day so I figured it wasn't a great idea. It just wasn't feasible for me to do that every day. I'll continue drawing, but under a less regimented...um...regime :) Anyway...it's best for me right now to focus on AM. With that said...week 1 baby!!! Yeah. Lip sync. We had an awesome lecture by Jason Schleifer which opened my eyes up to things I'd never even considered before. I've only ever tried lip sync once before, years ago when I first bought Animation:Master and was working my way through their exercise book. I just watched it now and it's pretty embarressing, but I feel it's important to show it here next to my blocking for my current shot, because I think it highlights the amazing job that Animation Mentor do, how much they've taught me and how far I've come since those old days :) So here they are. Enjoy

Happy New Year!!! :D

I know I'm one day late, buy Happy New Year everyone!!! I don't generally make new years resolutions, but I saw on my friend Leon Gittens' blog that he decided to sketch every day, and post the results up. I thought this was an awesome idea. I need the practice for sure...as you'll see ;) and I'm hoping it'll show some progress. Trying to get inspiration yesterday I came across this blog by Kendra Melton who was doing a gesture drawing class held by Mark McDonnell, who I mentioned in an earlier post. I just thought..."This is how I wanna draw!" I love the looseness and quality of the lines. The character of each person is totally caught, and the poses are excellent. I think it's awesome training for animation. In fact, if I'm thinking right, Mark McDonnell is an artist for Disney. Sweet! :) So here's my first sketches. I found it hard to find something I wanted to draw. Perhaps I shouldn't be so choosey :P Afterall, the point of me doing this isn't to produce a masterpiece every time. It's an attempt to improve my drawing skills and be able to improve my planning...and to have fun :)

Other exciting news is that I start back to AM tomorrow!!! Woot :D I can't wait to get stuck into animating the face and mouth of my last assignment. AND finding out who my mentor is and my classmates. Exciting times!!! :D It's funny...having just looked at the video of my shot, it's not as bad as I remember :) haha. It's amazing how a bit of time away from your shot can change your perception. There's still some work I wanna do. I need to up the ease-ins to some poses, and I'm thinking the arm needs to speed up as he's picking the glass up, but I'm glad to have had a bit of time away from it :D Here it is...

Dialogue Shot Blocking

Who knew it would be so hard to find a 10 second piece of dialogue for this assignment?! But man...it was tough! I guess what made it harder is that it has to excite you, after all we'll be working on it for I think 10 weeks or something? Plus it helps if it contains subtext, interesting phrasing and the such. There were loads of fairly monotone, continuous babbles, and a bunch of other stuff that wasn't fun or suitable, but I settled on a piece by Chevy Chase from Caddyshack :) I made a point of not watching the clip it was taken from cause I didn't wanna get influenced by the acting at all. It's so cool because you can get to entirely create the character, the location and the situation he/she's in. Anyhoo...here's the blocking for it:

Bishop is here!!! :D

Hey gang. Exciting news. I'm just starting week 6 of AM and we finally get to play with Bishop :)


On a side note, here's the progression of my pantomime shot. The renders not great for the final, so I may upload a better one :) As you can see, it's changed a LOT from blocking to final. Oh yeah...and it's a completely different idea from my initial one I posted up last time. That was pretty crappy!







Have a great week everyone :D

Class 4: Week 1

Man alive...it's been ages (again!) since I posted anything here. So lets try and do a recap. Ijust finished class 3 with the legendary Keith Sintay. That guys so cool! Every Q&A was so much fun, and I learned a ton of stuff to boot. I'm pretty pleased with the work I did, especially the final assignment. I chose to do the animjam...which is 3 seperate shots that combine to make a scene. The first two I think are ok, but the third one I had so much fun doing. I've always wanted to do something super cartoony, and I was able to really exagerate things in that shot. I loved doing the staggered take and crazy run off to the cannon. And I just felt like everything just clicked. Like my workflow was workin :) So here it is



And now we're onto class 4: An Introduction to acting. My new mentor is Jay Davis. He worked for Disney for like 12 years, and then went on to work for Double Negative in London on Hellboy. He's done some pretty amazing stuff, and he's hilarious :) It's already been quite challenging. I found out pretty quickly that I suck at acting :) For that reason I'm not gonna post my video reference for this assignment :) But here's my planning





Have a great week everyone :D

Class 3...

It seems like an absolute age since I was last at AM. It's been like a week, but it's gone so damn slow. It's great to be back. And to make things even better my mentor for this term has worked on a ton of my favourite movies. Check this...Keith Sintay has worked on *deep breath* Pocahontas, Mulan, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, Tarzan, Spirit, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas, Sharktale, Open Season, Monster House, Surf's Up, Beowolf, I Am Legend, Open Season 2, G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen, Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief and is currently working on TRON: Legacy. Phew. I can't wait to get started!!! :D

Heroes of Animation: Norm Ferguson

It's coming up to the end of the week off between Spring term and Summer term at AM, and I thought I'd spend a bit of time learning new skills, or improving old ones. Nothing that I'd do during term time...thats gotta be 100% animation...but stuff that will hopefully add to my reel at the end. So basic modelling, delving into texturing, uv mapping and rendering. Stuff that my non technical mind still can't really get around :) The important thing though is that I've actually started reading The Illusion of Life again. I'm not much of a reader, and I've got a ton of animation books lying around almost hoping that by merely owning them they will somehow turn me into an animation superstar :)Not gonna happen. So I'm making sure I turn off the TV, sign out of facebook and get down to some serious reading. It really is a great book though. I've only just started up, so I'm not too far into it. But I thought I might share some thoughts.

Norm (Fergy) Ferguson. Not a name a recognised. I guess I never really saw much of the really early Disney stuff, but Fergy played such an important role in the future of Disney, and as a result, the world of animation. It's amazing to read how he started off as a cameraman, and one night when some drawings were missing, with no-one about to help out, Norm "had to fill in". One of his first pictures was Frolicking Fish. He animated three fish dancing at about 2 minutes in. Whats so awesome about this, as the book points out, is that for the first time the characters weren't hitting a hold and moving out of it. There was always a part of them moving which gave them real fluidity, a greater sense of weight, and made them actually feel alive rather than a bunch of pictures moving.



Next in my list is Chain Gang. This is such a funny little short with a load of great jokes in there. I love the pig who gets shot, jumps out of his trousers and the trousers are still running along with him chasing behind :) And when Mickey snaps the chain after carrying his ball and chain, only to pick the ball back up and carry it again. Loads of little gems. One of the reasons I love Disney. Whats hugely important about this short though is Fergy's treatment of the bloodhounds chasing Mickey. The intense sniffing along the ground. The little snorts. The facial expressions. Everything he did breathed life into them. The bloodhounds would later be reworked and introduced as Pluto. How cool is that?! :)



Well, it's getting pretty late and I've been waffling on. Time to hit the dusty trail. Hopefully I haven't bored anyone :) What I've written really hasn't done justice to all I've been reading. The Illusion of Life really is the animators bible :D