Animation Mentor: Class 312—Progress Reel

At the end of every term, we are required to piece together our assignments from each term and create a Progress Reel. It's not a really indepth thing and many people just slap together the shots they have done and add a title card with the term name and the mentor they had, along with their name. Those of you that know me better know how that just isn't me. The last two terms, I've created a "logo" for each term based on the films my mentor has worked on recently (or is known for). Then I created a title card, drawing upon my graphic design training. Well, that wasn't enough for me this time around. I really wanted my title card to be more "animated" this time around. I had wanted to go this far in previous terms, but just didn't have the time. Well, I did this term and actually feel really good about the end result. Plus, I'm really excited about how far I've come in my work, and proud to show everyone! So without further ado...my Animation Mentor Progress Reel:



Thanks to EVERYONE that has helped and supported my time so far at AM! I can feel your prayers and thoughts and keep 'em coming as I move on in this animation journey of mine!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 312

Week 312

Well..the last week of the term at Animation Mentor is usually the easiest. There are no grades given out and really all we have to do is attend our final Q&A and post our progress reel of our time at AM. So, really, this week was gonna be the start of a much needed break for me and my classmates. We didn't get one between the last term and this one..so kinda excited just to not HAVE to do anything.

When I got my e-crit from Marek, I was happy to hear that he felt it had come a long way and was looking really good. He had two main points, one being the hand tap on the banister and the other having to do with how it still doesn't feel like the voice is coming FROM the head. The hand tap I fixed up and left the head till I put in the mouth animation (even though, I guess I should have addressed this earlier in the process. Guess that's something I gotta learn from for my next shot!).

Here's the "FINAL" version for Class 3: (just to remind you..no mouth animation yet!)



This weeks final Live Q&A was a great one. It was great to talk about peoples shots and even talk about how some people were going to repeat the class to get more prepared or they were taking off a term to do the same thing. At the start of this term, Marek told us this class was gonna be tough, and he was right! I have really enjoyed having Marek as a mentor. I even got to speak my opinion about my feelings on the Shrek franchise (which Marek is currently working on the 4th installment. The comment was based on how I felt Shrek 3 was better then 2. This is not a belief held by many, I guess!!). It lead to an on going joke about how Marek is gonna blackball me from Dreamworks...but it's all in fun. I'm pretty sure...LOL All in all, I am continuing to make some great friends in this industry and hopefully those friends will turn to co-workers on some future features!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 309-311

First off..I know I've missed a few weeks. It's be hectic and that's why I'm JUST now getting to posting the last few weeks. My apologies to those still loyal followers. I will try to keep you more up to date. I didn't realize I'd been SOO lacking in feeding you some animation! well..feast away!!

Week 309

This was Memorial Day week..and after a great rested "holiday", I got to work on my shot. This week, like most, was just pushing further into my shot. I really just took the notes from Marek and tried to incorporate them. You'll notice I'm still in blocking mode. I really tried to make my key drawings (poses) to be as strong as I could. I was really trying to get this as far as I could so when I got into spline mode (where it gets smoother and the inbetween frames are created) I was ahead of the game.

But for now, here's the blocking plus stage of my shot:



This week we also had to pose our characters hand in a RELAXED pose. I tried to find a new pose that really worked well, but ended up finding the best one being one that was actually similar to one in my shot. Take a look:


Week 310

This week was the biggie. I took my notes from Marek and reworked some poses and that took most of the week. But I really REALLY needed to get into splines this week, so I really pushed to get that done on Saturday night and the wee hours of Sunday morning. It's rough, but it's coming along. Because of all the work on the poses and my breakdowns, it made sliding into splines a whole lot easier. I also really try to jump back and forth from stepped mode (what I do my blocking in) to splined mode throughout my animating process. This way I can see if arms are going to go wonky or something is really off. It also helps me with keeping my timing tighter when I make the transition.

Here's the "refining" stage of my shot:



This week, the other part of our assignment was to pose our characters hand in a SURPRISE position. This was a tad hard, because I didn't want to do the generic, cliche poses, but to be honest..it was hard when my character IS cliche! lol! But here's what I came up with:


Week 311

This week was the biggie! My final week of work on the shot before the end of the term. I needed/wanted to get the shot as far polished as I could. I know it might be hard to notice what has been done in some areas, others might be more obvious. Unfortunatly, I still had to make some corrections with the last part because my mentor just didn't think it was working quite yet. Luckily, this week I got my e-crit from Marek on Sunday (a rare thing for me!!) and I started on making the corrections on Monday. I was really wanting to get a public review up before our Q&A on Weds. I had a great work day on Tues and was REALLY feeling good about the week. I also did NOT want to have another all nighter on Saturday night, so I really worked the rest of the week to tweak the heck out of this shot. By Friday I felt I had addressed all the notes from my mentor (he'd given me some more thoughts based on my PR on Tuesday), as well as the comments from other "fresh eyes" around campus. I had wanted to really be able to just really do some fine tuning of the shot on Saturday and then submit it still Saturday night. I was able to do that..and even had time to hang out with a good AM buddy for a while on Saturday night.

Here's this weeks assignment, check it out! *NOTICE* The mouth is NOT animated because I didn't need to animate it this term and I didn't want to just start throwing a puppet mouth on my animation in the 11th hour and have it screw the whole thing up! so..next term, my little animated socialite WILL SPEAK!!



It's been a LONG fix/six weeks on this shot. I honestly didn't know if I'd be at this place on it at the start. I've still got a ways to go to add the facial and lipsync next term, but I'm ready for it! But I'm also ready for the week and a half break we have. All I have to do is hopefully fix any things Marek sees in this weeks assignment and then put together my AM Progress reel..but that's another post!

Thanks again for checking in with me...and feel free to let me know ur out there! But most of all..keep checking in as the weeks go!

until laterz!