Session 103

Week 3 - time to start animate! The bouncing ball - it's not as easy as it sounds..... I'm still sketching like crazy, trying to come up with an interesting excitement-pose. The Q&A with Greg was great, got lots of tips on thumbnailing and planning.

The community is awesome, feedback is crucial to grow and in this school you get a lot of feedback from fellow classmates and mentors - it's amazing how I just after a few weeks have a desire for people to comment and critique my work! It's supercool!

The assignment this week is to animate a bouncing soccer/basket-ball and to sketch and pose Stu in an excitement pose.

Session 102

Now it starts :) Our first real assignment. It's all about observation and the animation principles this week. That means a lot of sketching. Inbetween all the sketching, I read the Illusion of Life and practice the principles with a simple bouncing ball.

I started the week sketching like crazy from magazines, tv and movies (without pausing), just to practice. Then I went to a shopping mall. I had a hard time sketching in public, but I got some poses that I took home and pushed and refined.


After a lot, A LOT of sketching I started to pose Stu in Maya.
Here's my poses for the assignment this week.




We had a Q&A with Bobby Beck and Shawn Kelly this week. That was great! The energy and enthusiasm that those guys have are incredible. At the end of the week we also had a great Q&A with Michelle Meeker. She animated on Lord of the Rings and Shrek!

We also get to see all the critques from all the mentors in all the classes...every singel student in the school. This is a learning source beyond anything I ever imagined before I started! It's awesome!

Session 101

The first week at school is all about getting to know the website and my classmates. We have no particular assignment, but watched a introduction lecture by Shawn, Carlos and Bobby. We also had a Q&A session with our mentor, Greg Kyle, who is a really nice guy! AND he worked on Star Wars :)

I have mostly surfed around the campus, watched the lectures, made some contact with other students and practiced my drawing skills as well as made some poses with the character Stu.

So far my impression is.....WOW!! This school is awesome! Next week we get our first assignment. Looking forward to that!

Counting down to Monday January 9th

Hi, this is my Animation Mentor Blog. I'll post all my work here as I go along to keep a kind of a diary for myself and to show my friends and family what I'm doing.

I got my login yesterday and made my profile. I feel really excited! I've went through the orientation videos and the expectations and excitement are even higher now than before.

My Mentor for the Winter 2006 term is GREG KYLE, an experienced animator with 7 years at ILM (Hulk, Jurassic Park III, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets etc). He's currently working at Vinton Studios on the short film Moongirl.

This is going to be great!!!!