Session 604

Week four already. Wow, time flies when having a good time. So, my short film is progressing along. The time is catching up to me, but I'm still on schedule, barely :) Brets feedback in the weekly e-critique are awesome and I'm now working on refining the 2nd and 3rd thirds of the film.

Animation Mentor co-founder Carlos Baena is interviewed this week by CG Node. This guy is an huge inspiration and an awesome animation ninja, so go on and check it out.

Found a link to some real gold. Walt Stanchfield taught the animators at Disney and some of his notes can be found at Animation Meat, but here they are in a single PDF file. Walt Stanchfield - Gesture Drawing for Animation.

The Ratatouille release date is approaching and more behind the scene stuff is showing up. Here's a short quick-time Ratatouille Behind-the-scenes - Technical Incrediences. Also, check out iTunes Podcasts for more behind the scenes.

AM graduation invitation are received and our airplane tickets are ordered! Kari and me are going to spend almost a month in the U.S. from mid-July until after the Animation Mentor Graduation ceremony and Siggraph 2007 in August. We're gonna visit San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. It's gonna be soooo cool!!

The refining pass of the 1st third:

Session 603

It's been a slooow week. Got some changes to do from Bret on the blocking of the second third of my film, so that kept me quite busy. Wasn't able to refine as much as I was hoping for, but still barely ahead of schedule :)

There's some really great shorts coming from the students of Animation Mentor and each month some of them are featured in the monthly newsletter. If you haven't already, sign up (put your email in the bottom left corner) :) The newsletter contains lots of cool stuff.

The blocking of the 3rd third:


And here's the blocking-pass of the whole film:

Session 602

The week has been pretty good. I got a go from Bret on the first pass of blocking of the first third of the short, with some timing adjustments. I was then able to go straight into refining of that first part :)

Keith Lango has some really interesting views on inefficiency in his blog. First part here and second part here. Really interesting thoughts. Check it out.

10 weeks to go. The pressure is on :)

The blocking of the 2nd third:

Session 601

Yay!! Made it to class 6 :) Wow!
New class and new mentor. Lots of new people in this class too, but also some familiar faces. We had our first q&a on Thursday and everybody was introduced. The class is really great and I'm super excited about this final term.

I'm sooo happy with my mentor this term. Pixar's Bret Parker. She seems really really nice and has worked on, among others, Monster Inc, Bugs Life, Toy Story 2, The Incredibles, Jack Jack Attack, Mike's New Car and Finding Nemo. She's probably best known as the voice of Kari, the babysitter in The Incredibles, which she animated as well. Awesome!

Came across some behind-the-scene stuff from Ratatouille (which Bret also has worked on, I guess). Check it out. Brad Bird talks about the film.

Here's the blocking of the 1st third of "Forever Young":