Animation Mentor: Done..AGAIN!!

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!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Animation Mentor: Class 411

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

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

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

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!