The DakotaKid Corral

Latest demo reel and new blog

2010-12-02T23:04:00.003-06:00

For those of you that have wondered what has happened to me the last months..well, I've been working hard on trying to get myself into the animation studios. Still job hunting, but if you wanna see my latest reel check out here: www.aliengraphicx.com

ALSO, I have started another blog to track a personal challenge I have started. it's called "Lamont's Project 365" and it's basically me doing a drawing every day for a year. Check it out here: http://lamontsproject365.blogspot.com/

thanks for checking in!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Done..AGAIN!!

2010-06-21T01:08:00.004-05:00

SO..those followers who might still be checking in on me may realize that it's been about three months since I've posted anything on my blogs. Well..in those three months, I have been working on learning how to get my work to a feature film polish stage, along with trying to get the best demo reel I can at this point in my career. It was an added three months past my graduation and was even tougher at times then any other time of my AM time, but in the end...it was well worth it. Sean Sexton was an amazing mentor and he truly helped me realize what POLISH really is. My job is to now take that knowledge and keep working on my film, as well as working on new acting/dialogue shots, as I continue to push towards feature film character animation!

but for now..here's the demo reel I ended the class with. Because some of the shots aren't fully polished, I'll edit this down to a more solid reel adding to it as I finish shots or create new ones. But for now..here ya go:

Thanks for all the support the last two years from my followers and I hope to make the blog a little more active as more "LIFE" happens to me!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: REFRESHER!!!

2010-03-30T23:45:00.003-05:00

Well, I know some of you thought I was done and finished with Animation Mentor. But you were WRONG!! Yes, I finished up last Friday with the 18 month course, but I am now taking a Polish and Portfolio class which was not part of my track. My plan is to get work more on my film, yes, but also to get my other AM shots demo reel ready. Some things I work on this term might not be noticeable to many of you viewers, but to the people that might hire me, they will see it. SO, this begins my FINAL, final push at AM. Nothing NEW will be created this term, but much of my previous stuff shall be pushed to new heights (hopefully).

My new mentor (fourth one who is working at Dreamworks and third one who worked on "How to train your Dragon") is the AMAZING Sean Sexton!!! (click here for his film bio) I had my first Q&A with him tonight and besides having MASSIVE issues with the internet and the stupid AM site, it's gonna be a GREAT term!! More to come...

until laterz!

Animation Mentor DONE!!!...kinda

2010-03-28T21:24:00.004-05:00

I'm an ALUMNI!!! FINALLY!

The last 18 months have been so many things. Amazing, exciting, long, educational, long, fast, long...so many things. I haven't seen much of this thing called the "outside world", But now it's come to a close. Well, it's not fully closed. I have decided to take an extra class and do the new POLISH/DEMO REEL class. Many of my AM friends have taken this class and their work shows amazing polish. I'm hoping I can have that same level of polish in my demo reel when the class finishes in three months.

Thank you to all of you loyal viewers. I'll try to keep updating with my work both in and out of AM. But for now, FREEDOM!!!! well..at least until Monday at noon.

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 612

2010-03-26T20:54:00.014-05:00

Week 612

Part of our final assignment for Class 6 is to post our progress reel from our time at Animation Mentor. We needed to compile all our work from Class 2-6. As you might be able to tell, I have really enjoyed putting together my work. My actual demo reel won't be this crazy, but I have fun with this progress reel. Each term, I've taken the AM "Spike" logo and created a version from the film each mentor was working on (or recently had worked on) when I had them in class:

Victor Navone: "Alien Song"

Rebecca Perez: "Bolt"

Marek Kockout: "Shrek 4"

Jon Collins: "Toy Story 3"

Mark Pudleiner: "Meet the Robinsons"

Greg Whittaker: "How to Train Your Dragon"

You won't see the Class 1 icon, because we weren't to put that class on this reel. But the rest are present. I kinda had a blast designing these icon's and love this style of design. It's leaning towards the Mary Blair style, which I love. I wish I was trained better in color like Mary Blair. Still gotta work on learning more. Google "Mary Blair" if you wanna know more about her.

But back to my progress reel. Not much to say, so I should just show you. Here's my latest AM progress reel:

if you want to see a larger version click HERE

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 611

2010-03-21T20:48:00.002-05:00

Week 611

well...it's finally arrived. The LAST assignment upload of Class 6 and my Animation Mentor course. It's been a crazy, hectic, LONG six months. My film has gone through some major changes, but still manages to stay true to the film ideas I started out with. It's not finished, not even close. I have tons of technically issues that haven't been addressed, let alone finishing up the animation and doing some major polish on the shots. But I am really happy with where it's at. I wasn't always feeling good about it, but after some time to digest it all, I feel it's a good point.

Here's the latest version of my short film:

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 610

2010-03-16T00:04:00.001-05:00

Week 610

so yeah...the last couple weeks has been CRAZY. In week 8, I was laid up sick all week and had to furiously get my work done and handed in a couple days late. Then I was still recovering in week 9, but got my work done. Now that week 10 was semi normal, I could get some major work done. This week we were suppose to be working on the first HALF. This is probably the last time we'll get any feedback on this part of our film. I worked my TAIL off to get stuff as far as I could, but still feel like I didn't get anything done. I know that I took on a HUGE task with this film. I have this love/hate relationship with it. But mostly, I love where the film is at. Unfortunately I won't have a fully finished animated short at the end of this class. But I'll have the makings of some awesome shots for my reel, I hope!

anyways..here's the latest version. ENJOY!!:

Animation Mentor: Week 607

2010-02-21T18:13:00.003-06:00

Week 607

This week brought us back to the first third of our films. If you've been following, you'll notice that my film has changed quite a bit from where I started. I'm sure it's not done changing, but I do think it's pretty close to being locked down...at least in the area of the shot numbers and length.

I combined all three of the shots from this third into one, per my mentors suggestion. I really feel like it's working better and am happy to not have to deal with all the cuts and the hook ups and just simplier is better, I find. Not sure why I can't remember that point when i START these things. I'm learning!

The color parts of the film are the parts I've worked on this week. The b/w parts haven't changed from the previous weeks. So..without further adue...here's the latest version of my film:

Animation Mentor: Week 606

2010-02-14T22:28:00.004-06:00

Week 606

Well, it's three weeks later and I'm halfway through my final class at AM. The last few weeks we've been taking our films to the "Blocking Plus" pass. Basically that's just continuing to push the animation forward, making sure the mechanics are working, along with all the acting beats and timing. You'll notice there have been some big changes, and the next time you see the film, it'll have changed more. that's life! but it's all for the best. Now, without any further ta do..here's the Blocking Plus pass of my film:

Thanks for continuing to follow my progress. Next SHOULD be the spline pass. Time will see!!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 603

2010-01-24T22:19:00.004-06:00

Week 603

okay..if you are following, you'll see I'm not posting every week. That's in part because I'm swamped with my film, but also because we are working on thirds at a time. I decided I'd just post the full film after each full pass of each third is done. So, here's the first blocking pass of my film:

I'll be back in a few weeks with the next pass of the film.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 601

2010-01-14T23:23:00.001-06:00

Week 601

Well..I've made it to the final Class of Animation Mentor! WHOO HOO! This week means the start of the last push on my short film. I started the week with discovering who my final mentor was going to be. And the winner is...GREG WHITTAKER!!! He's an animator who has been at Dreamworks from the start, I believe. I'm super excited to get on with this term and to learn from this fantastic mentor.

This week we needed to take the first third of our film and get it blocked out. Since my previous mentor had pushed us to really get our films blocked out during Class 5, I had most of my ideas in there. I really had to work on the entrance of the boy character, as well as him walking through the shot in the second shot. I also fixed some issues from my final Class 5 notes on shot 3. This was the first time our new mentors had see our films. Greg told us in our first Q&A that he didn't want to know anything about our films before he gave us our crits, that way he would have a fresh view of them.

here's what I handed in for the blocking of the first third:

Animation Mentor: Week 511

2009-12-13T23:37:00.001-06:00

Week 511

Last graded week of Animation Mentor Class 5!! Here's the "final" layout/"roughest rough" blocking of my short film "Snowfight of Fancy". Man, have I bit off a ton. I've still kept it basically at around 30-40 seconds. Some of that "over 30 secs." is because of my end credits. All the main animation ends around 30 secs. But I've packed in a TON to this little ol' short. I really REALLY can't wait till I get in the "real" blocking into these shots, but for the most part this is more then what was basically required for this class. But from what I've been told by many people who have been through the course already, I should be doing as much as I can over the next three weeks before my Class 6 starts. I guess it flies by fast!

without more ta do...here's my film in it's latest state:

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 508-510

2009-12-10T23:16:00.006-06:00

Week 508-510

Hey loyal followers! My lack of posts the last few weeks is because I've been working on the layout phase of my short film. Back in Week 508, our assignment was to create the layout for the first third of our film. For me, that meant creating the set and building a snowman (along with some other props that have been deleted now from the final version) and figuring out how to create "kids" outta the Bishop rig I was going to use. After all that, I then had to figure out my cameras in 3D space and then begin to block out some really rough poses. On top of that, my mentor pushed us to really start to think of our performances and basically begin to block out our shots.

In week 509, we had to create the second third of our film. We weren't suppose to go back and do any corrections on the first third, unless it effected something in later shots or was a massive correction effecting our film. I also started working on the scarf aspect of my film. An AM friend volunteered to have a go at rigging a scarf up for me. I'm still working out the kinks with it but hope to figure something out with it soon. It's really only a big deal in one scene. But I still need to figure out all the technical aspects at some point. This week, I also was able to add a scratch track of audio. I have a buddy that is a music producer who is helping me out with this area of my film.

Then in week 510, I finally got to clothing my two characters and then getting the last third of my film (which actually is just one extra long shot) laid out and started blocking. Once again, we weren't to really get to fixing the first two thirds of our film till week 511.

So here's the film I handed in for week 511. Most of the first parts are terrible poses and even worse blocking, but hopefully in the final week of the term, I'll make all the fixes from my mentor and even push it a tad further.

but until then, here's the film:

Animation Mentor: Week 507 — Final Animatic

2009-11-15T20:57:00.004-06:00

Week 507

Hey loyal viewers! I'm trying hard to keep you all current with where I'm at on my short film. This week our assignment was to take all our mentor notes and finalize our animatic and storyboards. I was really struggling with my boards. That being said..I really have done WAY more then would be required to do for my animatic. Many other people are doing fast thumbnails and they are really clear. I put in the time on my boards for two reasons:

ONE, to get a chance to just draw. It's been so long..and yeah..I'm extremely rusty, but it was still great to grow stronger in my digital drawing skillz!

and TWO, I was trying to work out my performance ideas now, so I had a head start on what was working and and what I might need to adjust. For me, that meant putting in some extra time to make everything read.

Then I also just really like having nicer boards. I wanted the viewer to really get the feel of the film. At least for where it is at the moment.

All that being said..I am feeling way better about my film and animatic then I did this same time last week. I had some amazing (although tough love) help from a couple close AM buddies. And in the eleventh hour, I had some awesome help from my director/film maker roommate with figuring out some better ways to work the last couple shots together. As of this post, I haven't gotten any crit from my mentor, so all this great feeling could be premature, but whatever. I feel good about it.

Next step is starting our 3D layout of our short film. Next week will be the first third of our film. Should be fun...whoot!

For now, here's the final animatic for my short film "Snowfight of Fancy":

until next time, loyal readers!

Animation Mentor: Week 506

2009-11-09T23:51:00.002-06:00

Week 506

Last week's e-crit was a little tough to take. Mark, my mentor, really ripped my animatic apart. It was all for the best, but I'd be lying (and those that were around me this week know the truth) if I said I wasn't a tad frustrated. But it's part of the industry. So, picking myself up, I made the adjustments to the first half of my storyboards and then started in on the second half. The second half was actually a little firmed up in my brain, but I had to take into consideration some of Mark's comments from the first half. But in the end, I got it all done and handed in.

Here's the full second pass of my short film animatic:

Next week, finalizing the storyboards and animatic!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 505

2009-11-09T23:38:00.000-06:00

Week 505

Having taken the feedback from my last e-crit from my mentor about my video pitch, I started in on my storyboarding. Our assignment this week is to create an animatic of the first half of our short film. The animatic is suppose to help figure out the timing and pacing of our shots and to help us plan out everything we'll do with our short film. I've been looking forward to this part of the process for a long time. I decided to use Toon Boom Storyboard to help me produce these boards. Then I use After Effects to create some motion and any needed effects. I'm still working on music to go along with it, but hopefully my composer will be able to get something together soon!

Here's the first pass of my animatic:

Next week is onto the second half.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 501-504

2009-11-09T23:19:00.000-06:00

Week 501-504

Class 5 of Animation Mentor is fully dedicated to the pre-production of our short film. This is the part of AM I've been waiting for. I had a few ideas even before school started, but still was trying to come up with more. Some of the ideas were a little too long to get completed in the six months given to doing the film. The first four weeks are all meant to narrow down our ideas to one. We then take a few weeks to create our storyboards and animatics. Then we spend the last few weeks working on our layout of our short film.

We had to write out three short ideas for our films. The school pushes for our shorts to be just that, short. A 30 second max time limit is pushed, but by the end of school, many people's short films have gone much longer. The whole goal was to get my shorts to fit into this limit. I worked my ideas down to as far as I could and submitted what I thought were the best three. From my mentor's notes, I decided which two ideas to do video pitches. And then after taking my mentor's notes based on those two video pitches, I picked the short I thought would be the best choice to both be great on my demo reel, as well as keep me engaged for the next six months.

Here's the pitch for the short film pitch I'm going with:

With the story idea figured out it's on to the storyboards...

until laterz!

Fall 2009 Demo Reel

2009-10-17T22:05:00.002-05:00

Here's my latest demo reel for Fall 2009

Animation Mentor: Class 411

2009-09-13T17:03:00.001-05:00

Week 411

Two months ago, I began my most complex animated shot I've ever done. At that time, I didn't know how complicated it was..it seemed rather simple. Oh, the things I've learned in the last two months...and the loss of sleep! 8 weeks ago, I started work on my 2 character dialogue animated shot. The goal was to have a complete, mostly polished shot within those 8 weeks, with lipsync, facial animation and smooth body mechanics. A few things made that goal a little tougher then it should have been. But all in all, I'm really excited for where I got this shot. I will continue to work on this shot to get it demo reel ready, but for now...I need a break. For those of you that either are animators or have an eye for picking out problems, you will see where I'm still needing polish and smoothing (especially in the second shot). But...over all, I think I done well, but why don't you decide for yourself.

Here's my "final" shot for "Twice in every song":

well..there you have it in all it's slightly polished glory! thanks for all the support these last few weeks!

next stop...SHORT FILM!!!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 404-410

2009-09-07T01:00:00.000-05:00

Week 404

This week our assignment was to find three audio clips that contained a two person dialogue, which was between 11-14 seconds long. I found more then three choices, but decided to submit more to give possible options that I might not have seen. I had my favs..but I wanted to hear what my mentor would say. After this assignment, I am thinking about maybe doing one of the clips that didn't make the final cut. But for now, here are the clips I submitted:

Week 405

This week we took the notes Jon gave us and chose the clip we were gonna spend the next 7 weeks with. I was really stoked about one audio clip. It is from the Broadway Musical "Spam-a-lot". I had noticed that I'd NEVER seen an acting shot from Animation Mentor that was a musical. It was a long shot, but Jon liked the idea of the clip. He said it was gonna be a challenge...but I was willing and wanting to tackle it.

We now took our clip and the character rigs "Bishop"/"Brussels" (a green version of Bishop) and created a layout of our shot. Basically, we just place our character in rough poses to get the basic idea of position in the shot. Our requirement for this animation was to have 2-3 shots to help tell a story. So, we also used this pass to figure out the best camera angles. I had messed around with some different angles, but decided on two angles. Here's the layout pass:

Week 406

Now we move onto actual blocking of our shots. This is where we start to flush out the ideas and move into animation. This is the first time we've had a full rig of Bishop to block in both body AND facial expression.

Halfway through this week, I went back home to South Dakota for my family reunion to celebrate my parent's 50th Anniversary. This meant I was gonna have to balance family time and school. It won't be easy. Here's my first blocking pass:

Week 407

For this week, we continue to push forward on our shots. I tried to take the notes from my mentor and push further. I'll be honest, this week was the toughest of my whole AM career. I was on vacation with my family and having to find time to really get my ideas solid for this shot. I did my best, but I was most certainly behind from last week...and most likly for the whole time. With my last blocking pass, I had not really made it clear what I was going to do for the final shot. I had to make sure that idea was clear. A tough week, but here's what I submitted:

Week 408

I'm back from my vacation and ready to rock this. My mentor made a major suggestion with the last part. He suggested I do a dance move to move the female character over compositionally to the other side of the screen. He said it'd be massivly hard, but he said it would REALLY be a cool shot if I did it. Sooo..of course, I decided i had to do it. This put me back even more in my progress. But all I can do is just push through. Here is this weeks pass:

Week 409

This week, we are suppose to be getting into polish....HA! yeah...for me it was just pushing on and getting whatever I got done! I tackled a MASSIVELY hard shot and I'm bound to finish it...just not sure it'll happen before the end of Class 4. But as long as I get a finished shot..I'm happy. Frustrated...but happy. Here's my progress from this week:

Week 410

I actually trashed last Saturday's work and went back to the blocking stage and tried to really get more key frames and breakdowns to define more of the animation. I spent over 50 hours between Wednesday evening and Sunday morning trying to get this shot even remotely close to be ready for polish. I want to get the most out of having my mentor's help, and with only one more week/critique left..I have major work to do. Here's what having no life and a ton of caffeine (and lack of quality sleep) helped produce:

With two more weeks of class (one assignment week), I have a ton of work to get done, but I'm super excited for Class 5! SHORT FILM!!! WHOOT! but that's for a future post. Check back soon to see just how far I actually get this shot....

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Facial Expressions

2009-09-07T00:00:00.004-05:00

Besides the animation assignments, some weeks we also had to recreate facial expressions with the Bishop model. We had to find photos from magazines or the internet that portrayed clear expressions and then pose Bishop in those expressions. This was suppose to help us learn how to exaggerate poses and to learn how to work with the character rig to produce the desired result.

Week 402

Week 403

Week 404

Week 406

Week 407

Animation Mentor: Class 401-403

2009-09-06T01:04:00.000-05:00

For those of you that have been following my blogs, might be able to put together that it's been about three months since I posted last. The funny thing is that before starting at Animation Mentor, I would search of blogs of current AM students. Funny enough, most of the blogs I found would start off with posts every week or multiple posts in a week. Telling of all the amazing stuff the school has shown them. But as the weeks and terms went on....fewer and fewer posts. I said that if I did a blog, I would keep it updated. I personally hate when you follow someones blog and they go MIA. Makes it hard to keep followers thirsty for whatever your "selling".

Well..I now realize WHY the posts of those blogs were so sparse. One reason is that within the current Class 4 curriculum, we only work on two shots. We finish up the one person dialogue piece and then complete a 2 person assignment. So there isn't as much to report on progress. Most non-animation people aren't going to always be able to tell what has changed from week to week. Heck..sometimes I don't even know.

The other reason posts are so few is because the Advanced Acting class at AM is TOUGH. It is really hard to finish one character, let alone a 2 character acting shot. SO, I have fallen into the same trap as many previous Animation Mentor bloggers and missed a TON of blogging. Instead of doing my usual week by week update from this last term (because honestly it is a huge blur), I'm simply gonna do some highlights. so here goes..

Week 401

This first week of Advanced Acting we really jumped right back into our shots. Besides getting to know my new mentor and classmates, we had to start planning out more in depth facial and lipsync animation. The one thing I have discovered about dialogue animation is how LITTLE importance the lipsync is actually given. Now, it IS important, but whether or not the body performance and facial expressions read are more important.

Here's some planning sketches:

We also began breaking down the actual dialogue of our shot. Figuring out what sounds were the most visible and NEEDED to be seen in our characters. I've done lipsync before, but to be honest, this was a brand new way of approaching it. Animating lipsync is not as scary as it once was. It's still scary..but not as much! here's some of my working out the dialogue:

We then took our sketches and started implementing them into animation. Here's this weeks facial/lipsync blocking pass:

Week 402

The second week of the term was just moving further with our animation. The final polished shot was due in Week 3, so we needed to take the notes from last weeks e-Critique and push further. Here's this weeks progress:

Week 403

This week we needed to push our shots as far as week could. One tough thing about this shot was trying to get the body performance to connect with the expression performance. Overall, I think I have been able to pull out a pretty good polished shot. I know that as animators we never stop finding things we could polish on our shots. But our goal is to get the animation as far as we can by the deadline. And then move on. Here's my final polish pass on this shot (for now...).

So there's the progress on my first three weeks of Class 4: Advanced Acting here at Animation Mentor. As for my mentor and our live Q&A's, they have been great. Jon is a relatively young animator, with I think about 5 years within the studio system. He's been an awesome mentor so far and really pushed us hard, but will encourage us when we need it. Now onto the big shot..the two character dialogue shot!!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor — The Fourth Class!

2009-07-01T11:40:00.001-05:00

Halfway through my amazing Animation Mentor journey, I'm just started Class 4. This class is Advanced Acting. We are gonna finish up the lip sync on our last shot, then also complete a two person dialogue. This is the last "class" I will have until I start on my short film. Classes 5 & 6 are all about producing our short.

For Class 4, I was given Jon Collins for a mentor. He is currently at Pixar, working on Toy Story 3. I hadn't known Jon before this class, but have had several AM friends who have had him in previous classes. This is his first time teaching Adv. Acting, but I think he's gonna be great! We had our first Live Q&A last night and it was the most active class I've been in since Class 1! There are a couple people who are repeating the class and a few fellow LA-ers! All in all, I'm stoked to get going in this term. I have most of this week off from coaching (for the Independence Day holiday), so hopefully I can get my work done earlier this week and enjoy the weekend!

Check back to see how the week finishes up and to see my animation jump to the next stage. And thanks for continuing to join me on this quest toward my dream and passion of being an animator!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 312—Progress Reel

2009-06-19T00:26:00.003-05:00

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

2009-06-19T00:00:00.002-05:00

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

2009-06-18T23:22:00.000-05:00

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!

Animation Mentor: Class 308

2009-05-26T20:15:00.002-05:00

Week 308

This week, I reworked my blocking pass of "Merry Christmas, anyway". I started putting in more breakdown poses and tried hard to start showing the personality of the character more. Based on Marek's comments, I tried to push the wrists to lay down the ground work for some smaller movements later on in the process. I also really went in and tried to get the body mechanics better. I realized from my first pass, I had some poses that didn't feel right. Hopefully now, they are feeling better.

I also tried to get the eyes going in a better direction. I have to admit, the eyes (and what to do with them) has been a battle for me. I still need to work on them this week. I'm not sure if I have mentioned it or not, but the basic BISHOP rig we are given doesn't allow for facial controls. I will worry about facial animation in the start of Class 4, along with indepth lip sync.

But for now, here's the re-blocking of my shot:

We also had a second part of this week's assignment. We had to pose Bishop's hand in an "ANGRY" pose. We were told it should be a pose the character in our shot would have if they were angry. We only needed one position, but I just couldn't decide which best portrayed my character being angry.

Here are the poses:

Check back later to see more of my adventure into acting and character animation at ANIMATION MENTOR!!!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 307

2009-05-17T16:28:00.006-05:00

Week 307

This week is the week many of us here at AM have been waiting for. Well...actually LAST week was the start, but this is the first COOL shot we've been waiting for. The one character dialogue shot. We had to choose some pieces of dialogue between 5 and 10 secs long. We are going to be working on these pieces for the rest of this class (total of 6 weeks) and then we actually will be focusing on the facial animation and lipsyncing the first four weeks of Class 4. Last week I did my planning for three possible audio clip choices. After hearing my mentors comments and suggestions, I chose one of them. I had been going back and forth between my ideas, but finally went with my gut feeling of the clip with the most potential (and hopefully hasn't been over done by other animators!). here are the choices I had submitted (I put up six, but only planned out three of them):

I sketched out my ideas along with shot some reference footage.

Audio Clip #4

Audio Clip #5

Audio Clip #2

Then after my e-Crit from Marek, I decided to scrap my idea for Clip 5, and go with what my gut had told me the shot should be. I had to do some preparing of my "character", but after taking the basic "Bishop" character, I turned him into a 1920's socialite. This took a TON of time and effort to get it to look the way I was looking for. Unfortunatly, that took away time for my blocking. I had to put in a huge push for my blocking pass Friday and Saturday. After a LATE, LATE night/morning of work on my shot, I got it finished and handed in my assignment. Here's my blocking for "Merry Christmas, anyway!":

Just so you understand, the second part of the clip is simply to see how the silhouette of the character reads. And I just think it looks kinda cool! lol

It was a long week, but now it's time for some good R&R and some movie viewing of the new Star Trek feature!! Thanks for checking in on my animation journey and be sure to keep checking in to see if I can actually pull off this dream of mine!

until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 306

2009-05-03T22:40:00.003-05:00

Week 306

This past week of Animation Mentor was the final week on our pantomime shot. I had slightly gotten into polishing the week before, but this was the week I'd really wanted to make sure I had time for.

POLISHING in animation is the final stage..that extra 10% that really makes a shot move from good to GREAT! I worked on things like hand and "mitten" positions..trying to add life to the small details. Among other things, polishing is also making sure the life never stops flowing from the shot. Even though I feel I really pushed the polishing, I know there is probably more I could tweak. There's ALWAYS stuff I can tweak! But sometimes..you just gotta say "I'm done" and move on. Hopefully I've done enough for my mentor to feel I pushed this into "professional" range!

Here's the polished version I submitted this week:

Now I start working on my first dialogue shot. I'm gather audio clips to then pick three to plan out for this next weeks assignment. This is an assignment I've been looking forward too for a while. Finally a "real" character rig with eyes and a nose and mouth! this is gonna be a long shot, but I'll try and update you as it goes along.

Thanks again for joining me on this animation journey of mine!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor — Class 301-304

2009-04-27T03:42:00.001-05:00

Class 301

So this is the first class of Intro to Acting. We didn't have a week break between Class 2 and 3, so I didn't really get a break from school. But that was okay, cause I was/am SOO stoked to get into acting, especially since acting (built upon solid body mechanics) is what the feature film studios look for in reels. The point of all this is to be able to show a performance, or bring life to the character. To really show the character is actually THINKING and not just moving across the screen.

This first week of class is a planning week. Our assignment is to have a shot that has two distinct beats or attitude changes. So, happy/sad or calm/scared. Honestly, coming up with an idea was tougher then I thought it'd be. I had some ideas, but finally decided on a character with a jack in the box. Like always, the first step was planning and shooting/finding reference footage. Here's what I shot for my footage. Enjoy!

After shooting the footage, I worked out some sketches for poses and story ideas based on my reference footage. Here's some of that stuff:

I wanted to be totally certain my mentor knew what my plans were for the shot (and I wanted to be sure myself), so I decided to do a rough 2D pass of the shot. This really helped me sort out some of the timing and ideas of the shot. It also helped make figure out the acting and beats of my shot. Here's that shot:

Class 302

This week's assignment was to take our planning and reference footage, along with our mentor's notes, and put our shot into blocking stage. I have a guy cranking a jack in the box, simple right? Wrong. I have a really good buddy of mine here at Animation Mentor. Jeffrey has been along for this ride since the beginning of AM. He really came through for me with this shot. I modeled the "Jack" box, but he rigged it for me and made it so I could make the hand holding the crank LOOK like it was actually the thing moving the crank, instead of the other way around! This shot wouldn't have happened without his skills! Thanks man!

On a side note, this shot doesn't have the actual "JACK" of the Jack-in-the-Box yet. I was having issues figuring out how to actually create the spring and animate it. You have to imagine what it'll look like! Take a look at this pass:

Class 303

This week we continued pushing our shot further and further to be final. This week, we were suppose to take out shot outta the blocking stage and into spline, creating a smoother shot. We also were suppose to take the mentor's comments and make any adjustments to our shots. I had some blocking changes and really had to work on nailing some poses and timing. But after another LONG weekend of work, I got my shot at least into spline before the deadline.

I also got the JACK head modeled, but still not sure how the spring is gonna work, so I just animated the head where I THOUGHT the final might be. Here's that pass:

Class 304

We have a total of 5 weeks for this first acting shot, so this week was all about getting it as far as I could so I would be able to spend a week on polishing. Polishing is something I've never really gotten done in all my shots. I want this to be different. I can make it to 90%, but polishing is that last part that will sometimes push your shot from good to great! I had an off week and really didn't get into my shot until Thursday. And it REALLY didn't start flowing until Friday. So I had a lot to get done. But I think it's coming along really well.

Finally, I figured out a way to do the spring and JACK head (thanks in huge part to Jeffrey and Neil). It's not the BEST way to animate a working Jack-in the-Box, but for this animation test it works fine! Take a gander:

Well...there's the first four weeks in a fast overview. My Q&A's have been great and continue to be a great place to gain knowledge about my craft, as well as getting to know my mentor as a person AND a fellow animator. My crit's have been good (even if a couple weeks I didn't get them until late on Tues. night). Marek is up there with the toughest graders...but I'm holding my own and learning from it. And I think my work is showing that. One more week on this shot and then it's time for some fun...the first dialogue shot! WHOOT!!

Thanks for checking in with me..and hopefully it was worth your time! Check back soon to see some more work...and check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor — Class "San-ga"! (also known as Class 3)

2009-04-06T02:30:00.001-05:00

With one-third of my Animation Mentor schooling finished, I have begun Intro to Acting. Now starts the fun stuff. Last class was the taking the basic animation building blocks (the Principles) and using those in creating animations with body mechanics. Now we are taking those blocks and foundations and adding onto it a performance, or acting. Cuase remember, animators are simply actors who are camera shy!

For Class 3, I've been given Marek Kochout as a mentor. Marek is an Aussie who has been animating since 1990. He started out doing traditional animation for Disney and then came to the states to work for Don Bluth. For the last 10 years, he's been working at Dreamworks Animation. He's currently animating on Shrek 4. I'm really looking forward to learning a ton from this guy, and from what I can tell, he's gonna be just as tough on us students as my last two classes. I've also got a couple returning fellow classmates this term. One friend, Dustin, and I have had the same mentor EVERY class so far. We're gonna aim for a complete 6 for 6 by the time we graduate!

I'm already behind on posts, so I'll try to get caught up soon! I hope you keep check in and just maybe you'll learn a little something about one of my favorite artforms Character Animation!!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 212: Progress Reel

2009-03-26T02:20:00.004-05:00

Class 212

In every Class at Animation Mentor, Week 12 is the week AFTER the final shot is due. There is no grade for anything, simply a final lecture reviewing the class and our final Q&A with our mentor. The other final thing we have to do before the Friday noon deadline is to piece together a progress reel of all our AM work. Many people just piece the shots together, put a name plate on the front and call it good. I started last term with creating a name plate with some "character". I continued that character into this term's name plate. AM has a mascot named "Spike" and one of the AM logos has a Mary Blair (an amazing Disney designer...wikipedia her!) or 50's style inspired Spike in it. I took this logo, recreated it and have added references to the mentor from each Class. Class 1 was Victor Navone. The animated short, "Alien's Song", got him a job at Pixar. I used that as the reference to his logo. Class 2 mentor, Rebecca Perez, has worked at a few studios in her short feature film career, but I chose the most recently RELEASED film to use for her logo, Bolt.

Besides the name plate, the main reason for this assignment is to have a record of our AM progress. It's always so much fun for me to see this put together. And now you can see it too!

Here's my Class 2 Progress Reel:

*music credits for "DakotaKid Theme" (the music in my Reel) go to my amazing buddy, Caleb Dirnberger!!

Thanks again to Rebecca and all my buddies at AM for helping getting me to this point!

Animation Mentor: Class 207-211

2009-03-25T23:49:00.000-05:00

Class 207: part 2

This week is the crossover week. Meaning I have to finish my second shot and start my third shot of the class. I chose the "baseball throw" pick for my third shot, but I wanted to do more of a story and something I hadn't seen really at AM for this assignment. Also, I was REALLY missing my snow, so I chose to do a snowball throw/fight. I went to my place of work and set up a mock snow fort and grabbed some foam pit to be my snowballs. You can see my first attempt at reference footage and sketches at the end of my Class 204-107

Class 208

Week 8 started with reworking my reference footage based on Rebecca's e-crit comments. Here's that reworked video footage:

I also really didn't feel my sketches were anywhere NEAR what I needed to block in this shot well. I also was inspired by a buddy of mine from AM, Jeffrey. He sent me a video of his favorite Donald Duck cartoon, "Donald's Snowfight". I realized I had this short on DVD, so I used this for some reference. It was a HUGE help to flesh out some of my poses. In the end, it was worth taking the extra planning time for this shot. Here are the new sketches:

Once I got the planning part done, I started blocking in my shot. This part took a LONG time..and in the end, I actually spent an extra week or so in the blocking stage. But it all helped make the end shot better!

Here's my week 5 blocking assignment:

Class 209

This week, I really took the notes from Rebecca's critique and continued to work on the overall timing and pushing the key poses to really read well.

Here's the blocking PLUS pass:

Class 210

I finally got my shot pushed into splines this week. For those of you that are already lost with my animation terms, that basically means the shot now starts to smooth out and feel like more fluid motion. I also tried to add in some touches like squash & stretch and drag.

Here's the Week 10 refining assignment:

Class 211

Week 11 brings us to the last push on this final shot. We are to polish our shots as far as we can. This is the most time consuming and draining part in my mind. I don't know that you can EVER stop polishing a shot, at least that's what Rebecca has told us many times. Every shot I've done, I go through this time of "I'll never get this shot done" and every time I end up with a finished shot. Rebecca had said earlier in this shot how this was going to be a really good shot. I tried really hard to get this to be as good as she had said it could be. I still feel like I've got some more work to do on it to add that final 10% that will separate my animation from the majority of other animation reels, but it's coming along.

Here's the final shot of Class 2:

Overall..I'm super excited about all the growing I've done over the last couple months. I have learned so much from my mentor and my fellow Animation Mentor students. After Week 12, we only get a weekend to rest and we start right in on Class 3. Honestly, I'm soo excited to get on into my next class, Intro to Acting! Check back to find out who my new mentor will be and to see my Class 3 work. Also, check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Assignment #2 Revision

2009-03-02T00:55:00.002-06:00

Week 207 Revision

I got a great review of my final FLIPPIN' shot in my e-crit from Rebecca this week. I wasn't sure I'd get the revision finished, but I got it done in the wee hours of Sunday morning. I tweaked it even more and she really thought it had come soo far. Of course, she found a few more things to tweak, but in the end said to just set it on the shelf for a few weeks and then come back to it with really fresh eyes and look at a couple parts that still need some minor, nitpicking tweaks. But overall, she said it was really good. Always great to hear from your mentor!

Here's the revised version I am submitting this week:

One more shot in Body Mechanics..and I picked a doozie! The blocking pass went well..so now we'll just see if I can push it even more in the quest for another killer shot!! Check back for more info and samples of that shot!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 204-207

2009-03-01T23:00:00.005-06:00

Class 204: part 2

This week was both finishing up my last shot AND planning out the next one. I chose to do a tough pick from the list and did the "jump on to a post and balance". Now those of you that know me..I couldn't just do a basic jump...no, I had to give myself a little more of a challenge. I thought it'd be cool and DIFFERENT if I had Stewie (who doesn't have arms, by the way) not just jump, but do a "NO HANDED CARTWHEEL" or aerial onto the post. But it doesn't stop there..I then also decide to have him then do a back tuck flip onto a second post. Most are thinking about now..wow..that's a ton. But wait..I ain't done! I then wanted him to do a bigger back layout flip onto yet a third post. After he did this, he was then gonna do a crazy flip. Easy, right?? WHAT AM I THINKING?????

Luckily, I coach gymnastics and also participated back in the day. I took my wonderful Christmas gift mini-dv camera and asked one of my level 7 gymnasts to do an aerial for me. I would have loved to have just filmed myself..but I didn't want to break my neck. I then asked a couple other gymnasts to do some back tucks and layouts on the trampoline. I had wished I coulda video taped my girls back in South Dakota. I know they would have loved it..but the girls here are great sports and good kids too!
So yeah..the reference footage. I also took some of myself doing the "acting" parts of the shot and maybe even a couple flips..dang..old, outta shape guys CAN flip!

Here's what I submitted for reference footage:

Along with the reference video we needed to have a few pages of our sketchbook for our mentor to see our planning process. This is really important for us to work through our poses to get the clearest ones, along with working out timing and some story. Here's what I came up with for that part of the assignment:

Class 205

Week 5 of this class was my birthday week! I turned a year older on Monday and spent the day at Disneyland...FREE! A good friend of mine with a season pass went with me and we had a blast! But after the fun and games of Disneyland..I had to come back to reality and get down to my blocking of my second shot. I got some good feedback in my Week 4 e-crit from my mentor, Rebecca, about my choice and she was supportive that I could meet the challenge. I just hate that she's trying to push to make me a better animator! LOL (in case your wondering..that was sarcasm..)

Here's my week 5 blocking assignment:

Class 206

Week 6 started with my e-crit from Rebecca. It wasn't as glowing as I'd wanted, but part of that was my own fault. As you saw in the previous week's assignment, I had created the shot in a perspective view to get the LONG shot into a closer view. I was trying to make the poses work towards that camera view. I thought it would be a good decision to add the profile view so Rebecca could really see the arcs of the action. I was really proud of my flips. This was not smart. When Rebecca was giving me her crit, she couldn't read the poses as clearly because my camera angle was too drastic. So she went to the long profile view to give feedback. This is where everything went down hill. I had animated all the poses in this view to be nice clean lines of arcs..but wasn't worried about the silhouette of each pose, so she started really rippin' into it. In the end...I learned a ton and learned NOT to give additional views of the animation that aren't as cleaned up as the main one! Lesson learned!!

I took the crit and applied the comments to my shot. This pass is suppose to be a BLOCKING PLUS. Which means...well..it can mean alot. But the basic idea is that you push your blocking pass further and maybe that includes starting to smooth out the motion into splines. You'll notice that I have added a camera move. I was really stubborn and wanted a better camera angle that showed off my animation. I didn't like how small it was when you saw it in the profile, so I tried my hand at a camera move. It took some work, but I finally got my mentor to see my point and in the end she agreed that the camera angle DIDN'T distract (like she had thought it would) and it does make it better to showcase my animation!

Here's the blocking PLUS pass:

Class 207

My FLIPPIN' shot was due this week. I worked my butt off to take the comments in Rebecca's Week 6 e-crit and implement them into my shot. I really tried to track the arcs in as much of the body as I could. Arcs are in EVERYTHING in real life. Nothing organic moves naturally in a straight linear action..it all has an arc to the path of action. This can be tough..and is something I'm STILL working on. I really worked to polish this shot as far as I could by the Sunday noon deadline.

Here's the finished shot:

The other half of this weeks assignment is the planning for our third and final animated shot for Class 2. I decided to tackle the "throwing a ball" pick. But I decided to have it be a snowball fight, in honor of my missing actual winter in this WAY TOO WARM southern California! I once again used my place of work and shot the reference footage using some camera tricks and some foam pit!

Here's the video footage:

I also then did some planning for the shot. I'll admit..these are rough and in the end I ended up redoing them..but here's what I handed in this week:

I think this is enough to please you hungry, faithful readers this time around. Thanks for checking in with me..and hopefully it was STILL worth your time! Check back soon to see some more work...and check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Assignment #1 Revision

2009-02-06T00:12:00.000-06:00

Week 204 Revision

Once again, I got a quick and well received e-crit from my mentor, Rebecca Perez. She felt I really did a great job, especially with the shorter amount of time to do the assignment because of my computer issues. She had a couple tweaks to push this shot even closer to being signed off on. I took those tweaks and tried to address all of them. After the first pause and his turn to look down at the stone, I had never really liked how that felt and Rebecca had commented on something in that area. I ended up doing more of a change to this area, and took out the big step and made it more a slide step.

Here's the revised version I am submitting this week:

Now gotta just get further on this blocking pass for Assignment #2! It'll be pretty sweet if I can get it worked through! Check back to see how it goes...

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Class 201-204

2009-02-05T23:59:00.001-06:00

Class 201

So far Class two has been flying by. It started out with my first week of class happening while I was back in South Dakota, still on vacation for Christmas. All we had that week was planning for our first of THREE animations we'd be doing this quarter. We had three options: 180 degree turn, a big step to the side and to kick a ball. For this assignment, we have our old friend, Ballie to animate. If you remember, he's the character of a ball and two legs we used in our Class 1 Vanilla and Personality walks. I thought about it all week, and decided to go with a simple side step. I didn't really do much in way of work until I returned to LA the Friday of Week 1, but hit the ground running when I got home. Our assignment was to shoot some reference video (thanks to Santa, I have a mini DV camera now!!) and then put up two sketchbook pages of our planning. I worked most of Friday night and pretty much most of Saturday on planning out the shot. Luckily, I didn't have to work ALL night long on it, and was able to work on my social life a tad. But here's the reference and sketches:

Class 202

Week 2 started out pretty good. I got my e-crit back from my mentor, Rebecca, pretty fast. She really liked my sketches and planning and video reference, but she thought it was a little too simple for someone of my skill level. Soo, she suggested adding in some diffiulty at the start or finish. I took that and decided to have Ballie walk into the shot from off screen and then add a turn and walk off at the end. This was all doable, but my computer decided to make it harder for me. I woke up on Tuesday morning to find my computer wouldn't start up. I took it directly into an Apple Store and got a spot with the Genius'. I was then told that it was the logic board and that it needed to be replaced. Now, this isn't new to me, I've had two or three logic boards go out on me in my years of owning laptops. I just didn't need this right now. In the end, I sent my computer in to be fixed (seven to ten day turnaround)and told the school and my mentor my situation. Week 2's assignment was to take our planning and do a blocking pass in CG. A blocking pass is when we put in all the Key story-telling poses of our animation. In a good blocking, you should be able to understand the complete animation.

Because of my computer issues, I decided to do this weeks assignment old school: traditionally hand drawn, baby!! Now, this isn't new to the school and many others have done this, but I talked to my mentor and she agreed that it would be good if I was able to get this done and it'd fill the requirements of the week. So, I got my light box out and started taking all I have learned and relearned here at AM and drew out my key poses and actually did more then was needed for this pass. But I wanted to use this opportunity to really work out all the timing and spacing issues, along with poses. Here's my week 2's assignment:

Just as Murphy's Law would have it, the minute I got a nice, shiny, new computer (been needing to get a second computer for a LONG time), I get a call from the Apple Store telling my laptop was finished...five days early! After I had a chuckle about Murphy and his law's, I got my assignment uploaded in time for my deadline. All was well with the world!

Class 203

Finally after the uncertainty of last week's computer issues, I have to get my 2D blocking pass to translate into Maya. I got some great feedback from Rebecca about my work so far. She thought I did a really good job in 2D and she thought this would be easy to transfer into Maya. She just mentioned a few things like deleting the signs because it blocked the beginning too much and she didn't know why they were there (even though it was in the 2D version). She also talked about "story beats". She suggested I change the second step to go back screen right and then turn and walk off screen. This would help add to the texture of the shot. It all made great sense. I often wonder if they'll be a time I actually KNOW this stuff...and some days I don't think so..but the days where the light switches on, I feel great about my understanding.

So after the e-critique, I got Maya running on my new computer and got to work. This week's assignment was a Blocking PLUS pass. Now this term is pretty vague, but I knew I had to take it as far as I could to make up for being behind. I blocked out my shot, and then when that was looking good, I started pushing it into splines, making the shots start to smooth out. I wasn't sure how far they wanted us to go with this week's work, but took a chance on it and took it pretty far. Here's what I submitted:

Class 204

I was really nervous about this week's e-crit, because I just didn't know what to expect. If I totally missed the mark, I'd have a huge load of work to do this week. But if I nailed it, I'd just have to keep pushing it to close to finished. Luckily, Rebecca thought I had it and gave me some suggestions to make things better and keep going with it. So all week long, I tweaked this part and then tweaked another and then another and back to a previous one..and so on. I had a few moments of "what am I doing" but after some late nights and some much needed family time with my sister, I got the assignment finished to a point I was happy with. Here's this week's submission:

Not only did we need to finish up our first shot, we had to do the planning for our second animation. From what some buddies tell me..this is pretty much how it is in the studios...multi-tasking and time management, baby! Once again, we had a few choices to pick from; animate a run, have a character jump a large gap, have a character jump up onto a box and off and have a character jump onto a post and balance. I chose the biggest challenge one, the post assignment. I decided to try something I hadn't seen in past Class 2 student's work and take advantage of my gymnastics training. Here's the planning and the video reference along with it:

So, you can see the first four weeks of Class 2 have flown by! I've been pretty happy with the class so far. I know Rebecca is really pushing us to be our best and challenging us to take on bigger projects each assignment. I also like that she's tough with grades, and I'm still pulling in good ones...even though it's NOT ABOUT THE GRADE LETTER! (gotta keep remembering that!) Thanks for checking in with me..and hopefully it was worth your time! Check back soon to see some more work...and check out my other blog DakotaKid's World to see what non-Animation Mentor stuff is going on in my life.

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor — CLASS DEUX!!!

2009-01-06T13:42:00.007-06:00

After a LONG two week Christmas and New Year's break...the Animation Mentor campus was opened back up to us students and I logged on, impatiently wondering who my Class 2 Mentor would be...and what class time I would have...and who my fellow classmates would be. I was excited to see that this term's mentor was Rebecca Perez. I had recognized her from some of the introduction videos for Class 1. Not so long ago, she was ALSO an AM student. Since then, she has gone on to work at Disney (Meet the Robinson's and Bolt), Blue Sky Studios (Horton Hears a Who) and currently is at Sony Imageworks working on the upcoming film "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". I'm looking forward to learning some amazing stuff in animation this term and hopefully producing some animation that I will be proud of! :)

I know I was behind keeping up on bloggin last term. I'm not gonna promise I'll be better, but I will try my hardest to at least post some of the work...but not sure I'll have the in depth commentary I previously had..but ya never know! :) I hope you keep check in and following me along this amazing journey into Character Animation!!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 112 - Studying Different Walks and Class 1 Review

2008-12-20T13:56:00.003-06:00

It's finally here..week 12 and the end of Class 1 of Animation Mentor! It has been an amazing trip and I am so greatful to all my fellow students and buddies at AM, but most of all to my Mentor Victor Navone! He has pushed me and my animation more then I ever thought. I have been honored to be mentored by him and look forward to maybe working with him at Pixar one day! :)

ASSIGNMENT

This week was really only about organizing our animations and poses into a Class 1 Progress reel (or demo reel!!). We only needed to piece together our shots together and put a name card on the front and be done, but I wanted mine to look professional and good. So I took a little more time to re-render the shots out, along with trying to make some more fixes to some shots Victor wanted changed. I think i did some fixes, but still not feeling I've nailed all the ball bounces down. I also re-rendered the STU poses so they all had the same feel and color. I actually wanted to do some more with the poses to show the process I went through, but time got away from me. I also had to pack to fly home to South Dakota for the holidays this week...along with some holiday fun with some friends..SO..I did what I could do..but I'm feeling really good about this Class 1 progress reel! :) So without further a-doo...check it out:

Well, there you have it. Class 1 was amazing and I can't wait to get started on the next step on my journey to my animation dreams! Bring on CLASS 2!!!!!!

Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 108 - Introduction to Walks

2008-11-23T12:51:00.024-06:00

Hey all! Week eight has come and gone...and man..was it a biggie. I had some more corrections to make on previous work and of course new animation to produce. Here's an overview.

WEEK 8

This weeks lecture and assignment introduced us to Walks. I have had some experience with walk cycles, but still, I was reminded of some important things and shown some new things. All in all, reminded how walk cycles are truly some of the hardest things to get correct in animation. Partly because they use ALL the principles of animation. Once again, the week ended burning the midnight oil on Saturday night...but then again..what's new!!

NEW ASSIGNMENT

This week had EVERYONE doing the same VANILLA WALK. We were given BALLIE this week. He is a ball (never can get away from the ball and it's bouncing...NEVER!!!) with TWO legs. Ballie is the more fortunate older brother of ONE-LEG from last week. I just happened to wait until after the Q&A this week to start on my actual blocking. I sketched out the planning thumbnails, but that's about it. Here are the plans:

This week's assignment was to animate two complete steps with Ballie, in a side view and in Stepped mode. Basically the blocking stage of the walk. The other thing was that the walk was to be as mechanical and the same...VANILLA. There was to be no variation in anything from step to step. Sounds simple, right??? Wrong...VERY WRONG!!! Luckily, Victor gave us a Vanilla Walk Demonstration in our Q&A. I had been recording our Q&A's for a few weeks now (for my own review and not for distrubution, of course!!), and was SOO glad to have this one recorded. I had to go back and watch it a few times since my notes were not as strong as I'd have liked. Here's what I came up with for the blocking pass that I handed in:

After a couple weeks off from creating poses for the STU character, this week finds us creating a PHYSICAL STRENGTH pose for him. After the difficulty of the DEVASTATION pose..I was kinda glad to get something that was a little easier to visualize. But it also gave a little problem to come up with poses that weren't overused in this Animation Mentor assignment. Here's the sketchbook page of the pose choices:

Here's the pose I chose to put STU in. I had a few poses that I kinda liked..but wanted to a gymnastics pose..once again to use the years of participating in the sport. But the biggest challenge I had in choosing this pose, was the symmetry and "twinning" of the pose. So, I went against my better judgement and made the pose a little more off balance and tried to add interest. Check it out:

REVISIONS

Along with the new assignment, I worked on making revisions to the previous weeks stuff. In his E-Critique, Victor gave a more corrections on my REVISIONS of my Week 6 assignment, the Pendulum. This assignment is truly proving to be the bain in my Class 1. Here are the corrections from these latest comments:

I also then had some revisions for the TAILOR animation from last week. Overall, Victor liked what I did and I think I showed some good knowledge of what the assignment was getting at. As per usual, Victor tried to give me some tweaks that would make the animation better, and fix a few things with Tailor's tail. Here's what I did with his corrections.

Well..there's the update on Week 108 for ya. Next week we'll really get into the cleaning up of the walk and making it really look like a VANILLA walk...come back and check out what happens!!!

Animation Mentor: Week 107-Arcs & Path of Action

2008-11-16T12:50:00.019-06:00

Hey all! Week seven has come and gone. My workflow is getting refined (which means I just have booked Friday night after work through the deadline of noon on Sunday as my main work time! Here's an overview of Week 7.

WEEK 7

This weeks lecture and assignment dealt with Arcs and Path of Action. Our featured character this week was a ball with a tail named TAILOR or ONE-LEG, which was a ball with..you guessed it..ONE LEG!! This really is the first week that we get a character that has "character" possibilities with it. We have another week off from a new emotion pose for STU, so my full attention could be given to the animation assignment. Once again, I worked right up to the deadline, continually finding tweaks to try and make the shot better. Sometimes it was really hard for me to ask others to look at my stuff, especially my circle of good bros..cause they ALWAYS could find something I missed or could change to make it better in there eyes. But in the end..USUALLY it was for the good!

NEW ASSIGNMENT

We had another choice this week; choose ONE-LEG and have him do a single jump or choose TAILOR and have him bounce a minimum of three bounces. Some fellow classmates chose One-Leg to get ready for the future character we'd be using for our walk cycles. Others chose to use Tailor..since they were use to the bouncing ball which Tailor is created. Still others, like me had set out to use BOTH characters. I soon learned this was more then I wanted to take on, so I just went with Tailor..but decided to finally use some of my gymnastics knowledge to good use. Here are the plans:

I originally blocked in a version that had Tailor doing a flip AFTER he jumps off the mini trampoline. After getting some feedback on this version, I decided to take out the flip...but later added in a smaller flip ONTO the mini trampoline. I have to give some massive kudos to my bro, Jeffrey, for his hard-nosed crits...and for his amazing work on his Tailor animation. It turned out awesome..I'm both inspired and jealous at the same time! :) Check out my final submitted version here:

REVISIONS

I had some MAJOR work to do on last weeks PENDULUM shot. This was actually the worst e-critique for me. I was really bummed out. I had thought I was really getting overlapping action, but Victor had a drawing on almost every frame of my shot.

So, after walking away from the e-crit and computer totally, I came back and made the needed changes. This is another reason I was glad we didn't have a pose for this week, so I could spend some of my time on these revisions. Here's this weeks revision on the Pendulum assignment:

He also made a few more minor suggestions on the DEVASTATION pose. Here's that RE-revised version:

In this weeks Q&A, Victor was at the wrap party for the "Cars Toons" shorts he'd been working on recently. Because of this, we were honored to have a sub in our Q&A time. Morgan Kelly, a Dreamworks animator and campus mentor, was said Substitute. It was kinda cool hearing from another mentor. He gave some great info on the weeks topic of Arcs and Path of Action, along with answering some of our questions about his time in the animation field. It was kinda interesting, cause Morgan had been an animator at Dreamworks for as long as I'd been doing animation since leaving AI..about 5 years. After hearing from a "veteran" like Victor, it was great hearing from someone that was a little closer to my time in the industry...the only difference was his was at a big time studio..and mine was at slightly smaller, little known places! But overall, great Q&A with Mr. Kelly! I hope to hear and talk more with him in the future...either through Animation Mentor or elsewhere.

Well..there's the update on Week 107...once again..a few weeks late, but hey...it's at least up on here now for all to see! Week 108 is next..and it's the start of walk cycles...WOOF! One of THE hardest things to do in animation! Bring on the torture...and FUN! ANIMATION MENTOR is moving along and I'm LOVING it!! Until laterz, faithful viewers!

Animation Mentor: Week 106-Overlapping Action

2008-11-09T14:22:00.002-06:00

Hey all! Week six meant I am halfway through my first class of ANIMATION MENTOR. I've started getting into a workflow..or trying too get into one. The assignments are going deeper into animation and also building in difficulty, but that's partly my own fault. I want to really challenge myself. I just gotta make sure I am fulfilling the assignment and then not making mistakes in those advanced decisions. But let's get into this weeks stuff!

WEEK 6

This weeks lecture and assignment dealt with Overlapping Action. This weeks "character" is a pendulum, a root object with a three joined tail hanging below it. This week we have to choose outta two assignments, one harder then the other. Being the glutton for punishment I sometimes am, I chose the more difficult one, but not before I did the first assignment to get some of the basics. The pendulum is to help teach us the principle of overlapping action..which is seriously not as easy as it looks!

NEW ASSIGNMENT

The assignment I went with was to show the pendulum move through the shot with some movement, such as a figure 8. I wanted to do something that was fun to watch (and animate) and took the idea of the falling blocks from the obstacle course.
Here are the thumbnails and plans:

I modeled the blocks and then started animating the root of the pendulum. When I had the blocking of that done, I started on the tail part. Luckily, I was given a link to a blog that gave some helpful insights on overlapping action. I had some awesome help from some fellow classmates. Every time I thought I had it right...I'd have something pointed out to me that wasn't quite right..but, by the end of a long Saturday of working on it, I uploaded what I had in time for the Sunday noon deadline. Here's that version:

REVISIONS

This weeks e-critique had a few small changes to my DEVASTATED pose...

...and then there were a few changes to make the obstacle course better. I was really glad to have a good response to this assignment. I was really worried I was gonna get nailed for going soo far away from the usual obstacle courses most everyone else in the course do. But overall Victor liked what I did.

Here are the changes based on last weeks crit:

Well..there's the update on Week 106 for ya. Some of you might have realized this is a few weeks late...but I have good reasons. Those reasons would be the lack of time between coaching and each weeks assignments workload..I haven't even had time to hang out with friends or see any recent films. Hopefully that'll change..or not. lol! But now we are onto Week 7 and all the fun that brings! Check back soon for the 107 week in review! Until laterz!

Animation Mentor: Week 105-Anticipation and Squash and Stretch

2008-11-02T11:15:00.028-06:00

Hey all! Week five has happened and was it ever hard. Between battling a cold and sore throat and coaching and this weeks assignments, I wasn't sure I'd make it. I got a really late start on work. Sunday wasn't as productive as it should be. Then a buddy of mine came into town from back home on Monday. I spent much of Monday with him and another friend. I spent much of my week working to get my animation done by the deadline. It didn't help that Halloween was Friday night and I was invited to many parties. I did take a couple hours to attend a friend's party, but then came home and continued working. After a full day of work on Saturday, I got everything uploaded in time. I'm just glad this week is done! Here's an overview.

WEEK 5

This weeks lecture and assignment deal with anticipation and squash and stretch. We are now given controls for the ball that allow us to add squash and stretch to our animation. This weeks animation assignment is to take the ball through an obstacle course. The ball is to show anticipation and squash and stretch as it jumps into the course.

NEW ASSIGNMENT

We had three different courses we could choose from, or take elements from and create a new course. Of course I couldn't just do the basic courses. Early in the week, I came up with the idea of a video game type feel, inspired by Super Mario Bros. or Sonic (although Sonic was a reference that came up after people started commenting on my work). I started out with the planning stage along with constructing the course. Here are the plans:

I had a whole course planned out and built..even had the animation finished, but then I started getting feedback that "it's great, but I don't think it fits the assignment." I really liked what I had completed, but started really looking at the assignment. One thing about Animation Mentor is how interpretation of assignments really comes down to each mentor. Here is the first version I created (I realize that the timing on a couple things don't quite match..but this is the last playblast I did of this version..so this is what you get!!):

I decided to try to create a shot that was closer to the assignment, but still felt like mine. I loved the beginning part, but some close AM buddies suggested making the ending more like a basketball. After some huge stress moments and some real frustration about what I was doing and why I had chosen such a huge idea, I completed the shot in the wee hours of the night on Saturday night. Here's the final submitted version:

I'll see how Victor goes for it and make any changes next week!

After a week off from creating poses for the STU character, this week finds us creating a DEVESTATION pose for him. This was much tougher to do then the excitement one last time. There are so many cliche poses and ideas that have been done, and I tried to stay away from it. But also, I really didn't spend a ton of time on the pose this week. The animation took priority for me. So, I'm glad that I got what I did this week. And I didn't get very much feedback on the chosen pose before handing it in, so I'm hoping the crit isn't too harsh! Here's the sketchbook page of the pose choices:

Here's the pose I chose to put STU in. Not the best work..but still think you get something close to devestation, at least:

REVISIONS

Along with the new assignment, I worked on making revisions to the previous weeks stuff. In last weeks E-Critique, Victor gave a couple tweaks on my Week 3 EXCITEMENT revision, so I took those tweaks and RE-revisied the pose.

Here's that RE-revised version:

Then I also got some feedback on my weighted ball assignment.

I have tried to make the corrections that were pointed out by Victor. We'll see what he says in this week's critique. Here's that revised assignment:

In this weeks Q&A, Victor gave a Squash and Stretch lecture showing examples from several films, including the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and the butler, Edgar, from Aristocats (the scene where Edgar hears about his employers plans to leave all her wealth to her cats and not him). He also gave examples about Anticipation. He used some footage of a squirrel and the bird that chased Flick in "A Bug's Life". He also pulled some live action examples from George Clooney in "Intolerable Cruelty" and Jack Lemon in "The Apartment". These examples were more facial anticipation then full body stuff. And then of course, the examples of some of the BEST Anticipation/Squash & Stretch, Wile E. Cyote and the Roadrunner! Victor then gave a Squash and Stretch demo for us. It's always great to get a demo from Victor, if only to see how veterans would approach the assignments.

Well..there's the update on Week 105 for ya. It was a massivly stressful week, and I'm amazed I made it through without a major breakdown (there might have been minor ones..but no major!!). Hopefully Victor will have some good feedback in the E-Critique. Make sure to check back and see how Week 6 goes! NO MORE REQUIRED BOUNCING BALLS!! Bring on the PENDULUM!!! Thanks for joining me on this journey closer to my passions and dreams, and this adventure called ANIMATION MENTOR!!

Animation Mentor: Week 104-Intro to Timing

2008-10-26T23:11:00.001-05:00

Hey all! Week four flew by super fast. I was able to keep the late nights to a minimum, but it was still a tough week. I did get everything finished on time..with work all night long on Friday and pretty much all day Saturday. Here's an overview!

WEEK 4

It was the first week without a STU pose to do. Besides revising last weeks pose, our only assignment was to create two balls bouncing. One that showed heavy weight and the other light. I chose a cannon ball and a playground ball (which turned into a beach ball). Of course, I couldn't just do the basic ball bounce..I had to find more to do and make life harder. Doing more then the basic assignment isn't advised, unless you can nail the basic mechanics of each assignment. I have found myself doing above the assignment more and more, and I feel like it might backfire sometime. But here's the planning of the assignment and the final animation I submitted to my mentor:

I got many comments about the creative idea, and the weighted ball was good, but I had a major issue with getting the ball to do what I wanted and come to a complete stop within the frame limit we were given. This is a huge thing to understand and be able to do. Because in a studio, animators will be given a set number of frames to create the shot. I'm not sure directors really like when you can't make it happen within that time frame.

Sunday night, Victor got our E-Critiques done and uploaded. He liked my poses and my choice to pose STU..and he picked out "Singing in the Rain" directly! :) For the most part, I was on track with my bouncing ball, but still had some things to fix.

Here are the revised Pose:

And here's the revised bouncing ball assignment:

Week 4 has ended and Week 5 is starting. Next week is gonna be crazy with another pose for STU and the famous Obstacle Course. Check in again to join me on my journey through ANIMATION MENTOR!!!

Animation Mentor: Week 103 - Planning & Blocking Methods

2008-10-20T11:30:00.001-05:00

Hey all! Week three has come and went and I'm starting into week four. It was a really long week for me, with a few nights of early morning bedtimes, but I got my assignments finished and pretty happy with them! Here's an overview!

WEEK 3

Sunday was the start of my week, but I had some work to do up in Pasadena in the afternoon, so I didn't get as much done as I'd wanted too. Monday, I watched the lecture and looked over the assignments for the week. I also watched the video news to see if there was anything of importance for my class or the program in general. The video lecture was given by Bobby Beck this week, talking about good planning and blocking in your animation. When I got home after work, I went to work sketching out poses for the "EXCITEMENT" pose we had to put STU in this week. Here is the page of my sketchbook of those poses (Click on the image to see a larger version):

As in last week, I took two poses I thought were strongest (and others supported too) and put CG Stu into them. I was really wanting to get a pose that wasn't your typical cliche poses for showing excitment (hands up, pump fisting..etc..) One of the poses was a little of the cliche poses, but still loved the pose. I also wanted to make sure that if the other pose didn't fully work out in the CG world, I had one that would for sure hit the assignment requirements. I was just wanting to really push it and not take the easy route. After much tweaking and some AMAZING critique and ideas from some future co-workers, I decided on the strongest pose (and this week was my favorite pose to begin with). I uploaded it, along with my sketches, to my mentor. Here is the pose I submitted, Pose "F"(which I just realized is the same letter of LAST weeks submitted pose!):

And here's the safer pose, Pose "I":

I also took Week 2's STU pose and made improvements based on Victor's e-crit. I've also figured out how to use mental ray to render out the images. gives it a nice "endless background" feel. I also felt the fence posts were too distracting (even though I loved having stuff in the picture to play with depth of field with), so I took them out and made him lean on a single post. We'll see if my mentor feels the changes were for good or not. Here's the revised pose:

This week we also had our FIRST ANIMATION assignment...the one..the only..the BOUNCING BALL!!! The assignment was to create in a side view (no perspective) a basketball or soccer ball bounce, within 50-100 frames. I shot some video reference of a basketball bouncing in my room and out on the porch. Here's an example of that:

Then I took that footage and planned out the shot on paper. The only real bummer was that this particular ball character AM gives us doesn't allow you to add squash & stretch to your animation yet. So, even though my sketch has given some reference to it, I wasn't able to actually add that. In a week or so, we are given more controls of the ball, but right now they wanted to keep us limited, so we didn't get overwhelmed. Here is my planning of the shot:

And after some major procrastination with this part of the assignment, I finally jumped into Maya and worked this out. Here's the final animation I uploaded to my mentor:

In our Q&A session with my mentor, Victor, he gave examples of his planning on some of his shots at Pixar. It was an amazing thing to see his work flow and to see how the "big dawgs" do things. Victor then went through a bouncing ball demo to show how he would do the assignment. I was glad I hadn't gotten into doing my ball before that, because his guidance allowed me to have a better grasp at doing it. I've done this assignment before back in my AI days (both traditional and in CG), but this time I understood so much more of the CG process. Hopefully it will be well received and I won't have a ton of corrections from Victor's e-critique.

Well, Week 4 has already begun and I have some reference footage to go shoot! Come back next week to find out how my journey through ANIMATION MENTOR is progressing!!!!

Animation Mentor: Week 102 - The Principles of Animation

2008-10-11T23:55:00.001-05:00

Hey all! It's been an amazing first two weeks of Animation Mentor. I didn't post anything last week, cause there wasn't a ton to show...but tons to tell!

WEEK 1

The first week's assignment was simply to explore the AM campus and to fill out our profiles and post a photo so we could start to know people by there faces. We then also needed to introduce ourselves to our mentor. Did I mention that my mentor is Victor Navone, an amazingly awesome Pixar animator! First quarter and I hit the lottery. My weekly Live Q&A with my classmates and our mentor is on Weds. nights. The first one was amazing and we just each introduced ourselves and we got to know more of what we would be doing in this Class 1. I spent much of my extra time last week, getting to know other Class 1 students and reconnecting with people I'd met who are in higher classes. I also watched MANY Maya training videos and other videos around the AM campus.

WEEK 2

Sunday afternoon found the beginning of Week 2! I watched our assignment video and the weekly news video. I spent Monday watching people at coffee shops and at my work (a gymnastics club) and sketching poses that I would then choose the strongest poses to then pose our CG character STU in. One of the big things about AM is the ability to give and get comments and critiques on the work students do. I took full advantage of this feature. I was posting my sketches Monday night and asking for feedback from fellow students. Tuesday morning, I woke to find many comments and "votes" for my poses. I began taking a tally of what poses people thought were the strongest. With everyone's comments, I would then try to comment on their work. Here is the "one page" of my sketchbook of poses (click on the image to see a larger version):

This process went on throughout the week as I took the pose sketches through to a few CG Stu Poses. I kept going back and forth between a couple poses. One that many people really liked and one that was a close second..but one I liked better. I was getting tons of great feedback from other "freshman" as well as some "upperclassman". I felt early on I was pretty close to pushing the pose as far as I could, adding as much "life" as I can in the pose. This is key to a good animators job. Finding those golden poses and making them read clearly. Finally after a week of tweaks and comments and more tweaks, I decided on one of the two poses, uploaded it onto the site and wrote my mentor a note to go along with it. Here is the one I submitted, Pose "F":

And here's the runner-up pose, Pose "D":

Now I have a few hours till the start of Week 3!! Come back next time to see the next step on my journey through ANIMATION MENTOR!!!!

Until laterz!

Sketchbook - Week 1: Alien Pet

2008-10-04T00:26:00.001-05:00

Here's my submission for a forum on Animation Mentor. Each week there is a theme for sketches. Anyone that wants to (totally optional) put up there sketches. Keeps our creative juices and drawing skills going!

(Click on the image to see a larger version)

Until laterz!

And the Mentor is.....

2008-10-01T22:30:00.003-05:00

..."Alien Songs" creator and Pixar animator, Victor Navone!!!!

After the longest wait in my life (or what felt like it), I finally am an Animation Mentor student. I have started Class 1 and am in the middle of the first week. I just had my first Live Q&A time with Victor and the 9 other students under Mr. Navone's guidance. It was fantastic. I thought I wouldn't be able to take part in the webcam aspect of the Q&A, but at the 11th hour, I was shown what was wrong and made the change. So at 8:30pm, I joined the other animators in introducing myself to our mentor and each other. It was a blast and super surreal. I'm sure I've had moments like this where I feel like this is truly the next step in my life, but never with the ability of being able to actually SEE the next step..and then the next. So amazing and I wasn't the only giddy one. We all were in this "dream" state. I can't wait for next Weds night's Live Q&A, along with getting on with the assignments. This week is really easy. Just update the profile, upload an avitar photo and then talk with my mentor. All of which I have done. So now I just need to explore the campus and get to know other students and see the "older" student's work.

I'm gonna try to give updates weekly, but I've seen others greater then me say the same thing about their AM journals and fail after Class 4. But I'll try hard at least until Class 3 or 4!

Thanks for your loyalty in my humble blog, all seven of you! Hopefully you'll enjoy seeing this animators dreams come closer to being reached!

Until laterz!

The Drawing Club x2

2008-09-17T12:52:00.004-05:00

I'm two weeks behind with posting from the Drawing Club. So I'm posting two in one post, from Sept. 4th and Sept. 11th. The Sept. 4th theme was the 80's Aerobic Instructor. The music was classic 80's music and they had Jane Fonda's workout video going on in the background. Here are what that produced:

(Click on the image to see a larger version)

The Sept. 11th theme was the gangster fall guy. I'm not sure what music was playing and can't remember what the movie was exactly. But the model was an old guy that appeared to be the guy the mobsters had on call to do the dirty work. He was physically different then any of the other guys we've drawn. But his choices of poses weren't that great. I really didn't have that many drawings from that night. But here are what I do have:

The Drawing Club - Aug. 28th

2008-09-04T13:20:00.003-05:00

I know I'm late in posting these, but with the holiday weekend I just didn't get around to it. So now I am. This week's theme was a Japanese Gangster. It was the same guy from the Kung Fu Master. He did a little better, but not sure I'll go the next time he's the model, just don't feel his poses are worth the $20. But I tried to do the best I could with them. Anyways, here're the results!

(Click on the images to see a larger version)

Until laterz!

Another Animation Great Passes Away...

2008-09-03T13:11:00.001-05:00

The animation world lost another great member yesterday. Bill Melendez started his career at Disney, working on Pinnochio, Fantasia and Dumbo, went on to create the animated versions of the beloved "Peanuts" characters. I remember growing up with the classic Charlie Brown shorts like most people from the last part of the 20th Century. Since I was a huge fan of both animation and Snoopy and gang, I loved any "making of" segments about the Melendez creations. I still have recorded TV specials that have Bill Melendez showing the animation process. Wonderful childhood memories! I am saddened more by not getting a chance to meet another animation master. Now that I'm in LA, I hope this is one of the last greats that pass on before I am able to shake their hands and maybe have some of that greatness passed on to me!

My prayers and thoughts go out to Mr. Melendez's family.

The Drawing Club - Aug. 21st

2008-08-21T23:45:00.007-05:00

Tonight's Drawing Club theme was the "French Maid" with the classic comedy/who-dunnit "Clue" playing in the background. The model was really good. I think she was a previous character (Audry Hepburn). Each week I have extremes of "I'm getting this stuff figured out" to "I'm freakn' never gonna figure this stuff out" while I'm drawing. But it never fails that when I get home and scan the drawings in, I find positives that I didn't see before. I'm really trying to just develop as a draftsman and do realize there are things that need to become second hand when I draw.

Here are tonight's highlights: (Click on the images to see larger versions)

Until laterz!

ps. This is also my 100th post for my "DakotaKid Corral" blog!! WHOO HOO!! Here's to 100 more!

The Drawing Club - Aug. 14th

2008-08-18T19:30:00.009-05:00

This last week's theme was Circus Ringleader, with the movie inspiration being the Oscar winner, "Greatest Show on Earth". It was a tough week for me. The model was almost always straight forward and really didn't do much. Thus, most of my shots are the same angles..even when I picked up and moved around. Frustrating..but whatever. Move on to next week!

Here are some samples: (Click on the image to see a larger version)

The Drawing Club - Aug. 7th

2008-08-07T23:45:00.005-05:00

This weeks theme was "Accidental Tourist". There was a lot to the costume and character, sometimes too much for the time with each pose. But after the beginning sketches, I got into the groove. I had a few drawings toward the end that I just really got into. All in all..some more good choices for my portfolio.

Check them out! (click on the image to see a larger version)

The Drawing Club - July 31

2008-08-01T00:25:00.003-05:00

Tonight's Drawing Club was "El Luchador" the Mexican wrestler. It was slow at the start for me. I was afraid it was gonna be a repeat of two weeks ago..but he started getting into better poses as the night went on. But even better was my understanding of form. I know...that's something I should have gotten through my skull back in undergraduate. I guess it's true, if you don't use it..you lose it. Good thing you can get it back!

Anyways..here's some sketches from tonight! Enjoy!
(click on the image to see a larger version)

Until laterz!

The Drawing Club - July 25

2008-07-25T11:55:00.004-05:00

This week's Drawing Club theme was Audrey Hepburn in "Roman Holiday" & "Breakfast at Tiffany's". I felt much better about this weeks time. Last week was a tough one, but last night proved that with a good model, you can get some decent work. I'm still working on getting the face details to work. I'll be honest, I was aiming at a traditional Disney heroine look for the face..some worked..others not so much. Take a look! (click on image to see a larger version)

Until laterz!

Going back to school

2008-07-22T18:18:00.002-05:00

I'VE BEEN ACCEPTED!!!! WHOO HOO!

For those of you that haven't heard, I've decided to further my character animation skills (and ultimately up my job options!!). I recently applied to the Animation Mentor program. I am scheduled to start the Fall '08 term at the end of September. This is an online course that has been gaining more and more recognition and respect in the animation industry. It's an 18 month course that consists of six 12-week sessions. And the BEST part of this program is that each quarter you have a different mentor training you. These mentors are actively working in the industry and truly WANT to further the students passion and career. So, over the next two years, I'll post updates on the classes and the good and the bad (but hopefully more good!). Keep checking back.

Until laterz!

The Drawing Club - July 17

2008-07-18T17:50:00.001-05:00

This weeks theme was "Kung Fu Master". This was a harder week for me. Many of the poses just seemed to be the same. The model had some good poses at the beginning which I would have loved more time on. But by the longer 10-15 min ones, I was bored and frustrated. But it was still worth it. It was a challenge in design. Still working on faces...they are my BAIN!!! I usually end up with a realistic body and a cartoony face. We'll have to work on that.

Here's this weeks drawings:

Until laterz!

Thursday Night Drawing Club

2008-07-14T16:30:00.002-05:00

Before my move to LA, I had stumbled upon a drawing class in the LA area. It was different then any I'd seen before. This one meets every thurs night, has pop and refreshments for the students and has a variety of artists from the greater LA area that attend. But the biggest difference for me was the fact that each week is a different theme. This past week was James Bond, circa Casino Royale. It's run by a guy named Bob Kato, who teaches at a local college. I was awed by some of the artists work that I saw on the site's blog. Great stuff!

So, I get an email when I arrive in LA announcing the next weeks theme. I look at my schedule and decide I'm going to attend. The day comes...I'm both excited and unsure. Normal feelings for me when I am entering into an unknown situation alone. I sit in my car for a few minutes, because of course, I'm early by 15 minutes. Another thing that I happen to do when I'm new to a situation. I then decide on streamlining my art supplies, and opt NOT to take in my entire "art store" supply and just take in some trusty pencils and erasers and pencil sharpner, as well as a cheap pad of drawing paper. I walk into the industrial type building and up some stairs. There are props and things along the stair, such as a holiday lawn snowman. I get to the top of the stairs and find a large room with a desert scene surrounded by drawing horses and chairs. In the back, a few people were sitting on couches talking. A man stands up and walks towards me, introducing himself as Bob Kato. After some small talk and directions to the refreshments, I found my chosen station and started to set up. Soon, the model arrived and more and more artists walked up the stairs. With each new face, I was feeling more and more unsure about being here. It's been months since my last life drawing session and years since the ones before that. Rusty would put it mildly. But no stopping now. When the model struck his first pose, the James Bond soundtrack was playing in the background and the film "Casino Royale" was being projected on the wall.

Three hours and two cokes later, the movie finished and I had roughly ten 5-10 minute sketches. Through the time, Bob had given suggestions to those that wanted them and even had some mini teaching times with others. He was really friendly and helped make the time really worth it. After the first couple 5 minute sketches, I felt a little more free. A little more confident. When I went into this I was searching for someone to tell me what I needed to do to create drawings that studios wanted to see. During the session, a light flipped on. I started to understand more of what my drawings were lacking and even getting a better idea of how you have geometry and form in any drawing. No matter if your goal is realistic or totally stylistic. I didn't want the time to end..I was just getting into my groove. I was feeling like I could hack it with these people. I didn't want to wait a week to come back. But this is something I have to do...wait.

Until then...take a look at some of my sketches. Like usual, click on an image to open up a larger version.

Until laterz!

Updated Portfolio

2008-05-05T13:30:00.001-05:00

I've been working the last few weeks on a total re-haul and update of my print art portfolio. It's on my website and here's a link straight to the portfolio page.

Check it out if you like!

Until laterz!

ps. HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO!!!!

Stuff...

2008-04-16T12:50:00.000-05:00

I'm currently working on updating my printed portfolio, which I realized was VERY outta date and was in much need of work. As some of you know, I can be a perfectionist and am always thinking I should do something more to my work. Sometimes this isn't needed and other times it is. After my trip to LA last November, I got a real kick in my pants for my printed portfolio. As I was having my stuff CONSTRUCTIVELY criticized by some Disney recruiters, I was pulling my hair out on the inside as I realized I had so many better pieces back at home that would have shown more of what talent I had. Just proves you ALWAYS need to put only your best work in. So, that's why I'm working on my portfolio and not so much on my short film..but believe me, I am ALWAYS thinking about my film and know I have a few readers who are anxiously waiting to see it finished and hitting the festival circuits!! Fear not!! I shall return to my film...I SHALL!!!

Until laterz!

Adding a little music!

2008-04-10T10:55:00.002-05:00

I've had a super talented guy working on music for my short film for a while now. He's actually been getting on me to give him more scenes to compose to. The film has been put on the back burner more then I wanted, in lue of updating my printed portfolio, as well as job hunting. But I have to say, seeing my animation with a rough soundtrack gives me a new energy to work on my piece. Now..I'll take any thoughts or comments as long as you keep in mind it's not a finished soundtrack..but more of a starting point. so..bring on the comments!

Until laterz!

Up Coming Art Show...

2008-03-28T13:12:00.001-05:00

Hey all!!

I've been frantically (even though I've known about this for a LONG time) trying to get my pieces together for a local traveling Cartoonist Art Show that gets installed this weekend. I've been thinking about it for a long time..and had a few ideas floating around in my head...but just didn't get to work on them. NOW, two days from the installation, I've been flooded with new ideas for pieces. All my work this round is based on my short film, "The Quest for El Capitan's Crunch" and loosely influenced by one of my favorite pop artists, Andy Warhol. I'd like to keep doing work with my Dakota Kid character, but in more on the POP ART style while I continue to work on the short, which I WILL be doing in the future!! I MUST! lol

so anyways..I thought I'd post an image to tease you with. I'm not sure if this will make this show or not, but for now I'll post it on here. I'll have pictures of the show to post next week. Until then...

laterz!!

the next Pixar hit!

2008-03-14T18:13:00.002-05:00

In case some of you haven't seen the last trailer for Pixar's next sure to be mega-hit, WALL*E, check it out here: http://www.apple.com/trailers/disney/walle/

A robot hasn't come to the big screen with this much appeal since Short Circuit! I'm really excited to see this one. And of course, the animation is stellar! Pixar is still king when it comes to CG character animation...at least in my humble opinion!

Until laterz!

The envelope, please....

2008-02-26T11:14:00.000-06:00

Even without everyone's favorite Oscar party happening this year, I did still have my prediction contest. We had several returning contestants competing for the coveted braggin rights for the next year!

The winner is...

KERRI VOGEL with 16 correct predictions! And here's her award:

Anthony Vogel was close with 15 predictions. Ian & Lara Bronson followed with 10 correct picks. Ellie Saxer fought for third, but pulled in fourth with 9 correct predictions. Myself and my nephew, Justin, were 5 and 4, respectively. But we both were pushing for upsets with Sweeney Todd and Juno!! One of these years more of MY choices are gonna win and I'm gonna win this contest! ha! Maybe when I'm a voting member of the Academy!

Thanks for everyone that participated! Those that missed the deadline or just forgot..there's always next year!!

Until laterz!

It was a RAT race!!

2008-02-26T00:25:00.000-06:00

RATATOUILLE brings on home the lil' golden trophy home to Pixar and Disney!

Even though the awards show was nothing to really talk about, and I didn't have my annual party...I did have my Oscar Prediction contest and the results will be posted soon! And the awards given as well!

The BEST day of the YEAR!!!

2008-02-02T19:36:00.000-06:00

*and it's my birthday, TOO!!*

Celebration of Emilia!

2008-01-30T16:30:00.000-06:00

It's my youngest niece, Emilia Jia-Xin's 1st Birthday today!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY EMILIA!!!

Storyboards

2008-01-30T15:00:00.000-06:00

Here's some of my storyboards for the second two scenes of the short.

More art and animation to come!
Until laterz!

Daniel-san's got nothin' on DakotaKid

2008-01-09T02:37:00.000-06:00

Hey faithful viewers! I have not forgotten you all and come today bearing gifts! Gifts of some more NEW character gestures of some Ninja action poses. After a month away from animating on "The Quest", I decided I needed to strengthen some of the poses and add some more action to the Ninja scene. These are the start of those changes! So for now...enjoy!

More drawings and animation to come in the next weeks!

Until laterz!

WICKED!!! — A Side Note

2008-01-05T16:32:00.000-06:00

I've been waiting a LONG time to get to see this musical...and now it's gonna happen. I'm heading out to NYC to visit some friends and we have tickets for this hit show! I'd thought about sketching out the two main characters for some time and thought this would be a good opportunity to do just that! So here it is...

Until laterz!

New Year....new changes!!

2008-01-01T19:55:00.000-06:00

2007 has flown by and now the first day is almost gone too. I'm not one for New Year resolutions, but more for just continuing with what needs to be done. I've slacked off this last month and I'm now ready to kick this animated short into high gear. I have a TALENTED composer working on the music for my short and I've been blown away by the little bit I've heard. He's an up and coming musician and I'm really excited to see him jumping into this new challenge. Plus, it's going to make my short all the better. Keep watching for further updates on this next great short coming outta DakotaKid Animation Studio.

Until laterz!

White Christmas

2007-12-26T22:20:00.000-06:00

Well..as 2007 comes to a close and our house gets quieter as my sister and her family return back to the Netherlands after a six months stay, I realize I've been a bad blogger and now stand here vowing to make 2008 a better blog year! :) Hopefully it will be just simply because I'll have more things to blog about. Along with more drawings and animation. Those that have been following my blog for the updates on my current short film, I have not forgotten you or my film. I will be starting back into it, full speed maybe even before the clock strikes 12 on New Years Eve! But until then, I wish you all a wonderful Christmas (past) and a kick butt New Year (to come!!). Keep checking in...

Until laterz!

Vacation and holiday..

2007-11-28T16:53:00.000-06:00

Hey loyal readers!

I know it's been a few weeks since I've posted, but it's not all for lack of work or whatever. I first was out in LA getting the feel for the land of my future home and career. And even though the photo makes it seem like my dream job at Disney came to happen...not quit yet. But I did have some good meetings with a few people at Feature Animation. Then there was the grand Turkey Day holiday, and add in a nasty cold that kicked my butt for most of last week, we're up to this week. I've got a ton of stuff going on, but fear not I will be continuing to work on my much anticipated short! Please keep checking for future posts!

Until laterz!

A Teaser...

2007-11-12T01:03:00.000-06:00

Welcome back loyal readers!

Well, I'm in the final stages of prepping for my trip to sunny Cali. As far as my animated short, it's not as into the story as I'd have liked it, but I realized I needed to go back to the "drawing board" and take more chances with my animation and really use every shot as a chance to get create some amazing animation...or at least good animation. SOOOO, here's the teaser for my short, "The Quest for El Capitan's Crunch".

Until laterz!

Slow week...

2007-11-09T22:40:00.000-06:00

Hey wonderful viewers!

I'm trying to get things ready for my trip to L.A. next week...which means tweaks, rough animation, clean up and more tweaks on my film. As well as trying to get some meet and greets lined up with some industry peeps. I'll of course have more updates on THAT part of my life when I get more post worthy stuff. Buf for now, just gonna show some stills. Hope that tides you over some!

So...until then..here's a couple CLOSER to finished stills:

Until laterz!

A little more Ninja action...

2007-11-04T23:21:00.000-06:00

Welcome back, ya'll! The end of the weekend brings a post I wasn't sure I was going to put up. I don't want to show my WHOLE short before it's done. I want that "OOHHH" and "WOW" factor when everyone sees it. So those that have been watching my progress, the test is going to be if I can STILL get those reactions from you all when the film is finished! Sooooo, here's ALMOST the entire second scene. And thanks to my bro, Saxx, for the help with the MUCH needed transition INTO this scene. I have some more changes I want to make to add some more personality, but I guess I want to share how this whole thing is coming together. I hope you all enjoy it!

Until laterz!

Still here....

2007-11-02T18:49:00.000-05:00

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to post to let you all that I'm STILL hard at work on this short. I've just not gotten any post worthy stuff recently. I want to give you some little tidbits, but don't wanna give away ALL the sweet shots! ha! I'm on schedule to be "done" with the first half of the short by mid-Nov. I say "done" because I have this feeling I'll be going back to some of the early shots and tweaking them, maybe adding a shot here or there..but I wanna see everything together and THEN tweak. Anyways..I'm still alive, still working daily...and still can't wait to see this short come to completion!

Until laterz!

Rough Cut...pt. 1

2007-10-28T04:17:00.000-05:00

Here's the first unvailing of a rough edit of the first couple scenes of my short film. Could I fit any more prepositional phrases in that sentence? Now, of course there are many things I'm going to fix/add/create/re-do before the final version, like the backgrounds aren't final colors, the atmostphere and special effects in some shots will be added, and some timing issues will be addressed, as well as finishing the REST of the film! I simply wanted to let my loyal readers in on more of the story and cleaned up animation, so hopefully seeing some shots put together will do that. As always, comments and critiques are welcome. Enjoy!

Until laterz!

Cat Clock

2007-10-25T16:00:00.000-05:00

I know it's been a couple days since I've posted anything, so I thought I'd put up this simple animation of Dakota Kid's clock. This is part of the first scene. I kinda like the design of it, and think it will fit in wonderfully to his bedroom...as soon as I finish it!

Until laterz!

Scene 1, shot 2

2007-10-23T04:04:00.000-05:00

I've been working on the background color and style, as well as starting to figure out camera, compositing and such. Here's the first look at what this lil' film may look like, only with some more tweaks. Hope ya'll enjoy this glimpse!

Until laterz!

A little background

2007-10-18T04:58:00.000-05:00

Tonight was all about backgrounds. I realized I needed some new backgrounds for some scenes that got shots added or reworked, so I've been spending some time creating them. Plus, I have one or two that need those tweaks to make it really work.

This is a hallway shot, but it's also a glimpse of what the completed bedroom will feel like, but MORE.

Here's a longer hallway view from the ninja scene.

And yet another hallway shot...

I am still figuring out the final colored look for the backgrounds, but when that gets figured out ya'll will be the first to see!!

Until laterz!