Class2, Week4!!...

Ok so this week was pretty crazy!

I can't say I didn't see it coming, my plan in week 3 to take my assignment past Blocking plus turned out to be a godsend, without doing that I very much doubt I would have been able to make the deadline with a finished piece.

As always our lecture was great, this week it was hosted by Ethan Hurd, prior to the lecture I had never heard of Ethan but after a quick background check it became clear this guy has some serious animation skills. He has worked on an awesome variety of films and currently works at Disney Feature Animation.

My plan for this week was to polish up my shot in the first half and then work on the planning for the next shot towards the back end of the week. As expected things didn't quite turn out this way. It was more like polish 90% of the week and spend 10% on planning for my next shot, which is NEVER a good thing.

One thing I have learnt at AM is that the planning of a shot is seriously important, it builds the foundations of the shot that will follow. If I went to work and put down a 25mm layer of hardcore and covered it with 100mm of concrete and then stuck a house on top I would have some serious explaining to do when the owners woke up in what was left of the kitchen.

Most of my time was taken up going back and forth from polishing my shot to receiving feedback and then going to polish my shot that little bit more, I just wanted it to be the best I could!.

On Saturday I got around to the planning of my next shot and first of all chose which picklist shot I was going to try and animate. Initially I was going to go for Parkour because it would involve some really awesome movements and had potential to look really cool but after some thought I decided to step out of my comfort zone and go for something a little more subtle that wouldn't involve such fast paced action. "Step on sticky gum" was what I opted for in the end and my first task was to obtain some reference footage.

After I shot my reference footage and arrived back home I had received some more feedback on my Triple Jump shot and I just couldn't resist tweaking it so my planning got placed on the backburner and I found myself back in polishing. At about 10:30pm I headed off into town, it was my Birthday afterall.

Planning resumed on Sunday and after a bit of a last minute rush I managed to hand in before deadline. I have definatly learnt from this experience.

Thanks for reading everyone! Heres what I came up with - Adam

Class2, Week3!!...

My post titles are now officially lame :( and I apologize for that.

Have to make it quick this week, got a pretty busy week ahead and I am kind of stuck on my current shot at the moment and need to get it sorted ASAP.

This week we had to take our shot through blocking plus which is basically finely tuned blocking and one step before taking it into splined. Our mentor said we could take ours into splined if we so wished.

As Week 4 would involve both finishing our current shot and planning for our next shot I decided for me to survive at AM I would have no choice but to take my shot into splined this week. I didn't quite get as far as I would have liked but for the most part I was happy with what I had got done.

Anyway as I said I have to make it quick so heres what I came up with, thanks everyone - Adam

Class 2, Week2!!...

Well AM really isn't showing any signs of slowing up. It has continued how it began, fast!!!

Our assignment was to take our planning into Maya and work on blocking out our shot. This week really has hammered into my head that good planning make things so much easier when moving into blocking! I maybe should have known this already but this week it really seems to have clicked.

Its great to see more familiar faces around campus aswell, I maybe should have mentioned this before but just as I was about to start AM a fellow applicant (Pascal Zirn) started a facebook group called the EagerBeavers which is basically a hub for AM applicants to share ideas/thoughts and just about anything animation related. It's an awesome group and it really has taken of since day 1, it has over 100 members now.

This is how I already know a whole bunch of people who have just started Class 1 including Pascal himself. I highly recommend anyone who has applied for AM to join the group, I wish it was how it is now before I started AM it would be an awesome place to solve any worries or thoughts about all things AM!.

Anyway heres what I came up with, thanks everyone - Adam

Class 2, Week 1!!...

Here we go again!,

It only seems like yesterday was week 1 of Class 1, its crazy how fast the time went and even more crazy that I have managed to keep this blog going!, if it's of use for just one person I will call it a success.

I have to say I am totally gutted that my time with Anthony Wong is over I really could not have wished for a better mentor to kick AM off with, any future students who have the pleasure of being mentored by him are extremely lucky.

I found out who my new mentor was this week and I am happy to tell you that it is Chad Stewart. Chad has been an animator for the last 19 years with half of that time bieng 2d traditional animation and the other half bieng 3d. He recently ended his time working in the studio system and became a fulltime freelancer in order to spend more time with his family. He has an extremely impressive portfolio of work which includes Surf's Up, Open Season 2, Fantasia/2000, The Simpsons, Tarzan, Stuart Little 2 and The Polar Express to name a few.

We had our first Q&A on Wednesday and I have to say Chad seems like an amazing guy, I cannot wait to learn from him over the next 12 weeks.

This weeks assignment was to upload our progress reel for our new mentor to view and choose what our next shot would be that will be worked on over the next 4 weeks. We were also required to gather reference and plan for our chosen shot.

I would just like to say it's much appreciated to those of you who have followed my blog throughout Class 1 and I hope you continue to follow me through Class 2, that is providing that I manage to find the time to keep it updated, I understand a blog with no updates would suck! ill try my very best!.

I will save the embarassment and keep my reference to myself but I am more than willing to share my planning :), heres what I came up with, Thanks everyone - Adam

Week 12...

Week 12 already seems a long time ago! this could potentially be the most overdue blog post of the term yet its been one of the weeks in which I've had the most free time, how does that make sense?! Infact I have actually recently started Class 2 now but I'll do a separate post for that at the end of the week.

The truth is that during our break week I tried to stay away from the computer as much as possible. I think for most of us the week off was a godsend! It felt great to get a decent nights sleep and not have to stress over the weeks looming deadline, that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy doing the assignment though!

I spent most of the time just chilling out on the afternoons during break week, I managed to get away for the weekend and had a great time, anyone who has me as a friend on facebook might have seen that I slightly over indulged in Krispy Kreme doughtnuts! Its great that they have made it over the pond and into the UK! lets just hope they do as well as Subway have and if I'm lucky we might end up with one closer than a 2+ hour drive away! Its just a shame I didnt have the week off work aswell really.

The assignment for our final week in Class 1 was to compose all of our shots together into a progress reel and fill out an end of term survey. This seemed pretty straight forward to me and I was looking forward to having an easy week. The so called "easy" week soon turned on me and transformed into a bit of a grind as I left things late and at the last minute decided to polish up a few of my shots, especially my personality walk.

Before starting at AM I put alot of thought into whether or not to also hold down a full time job. Now after completing Class 1 whilst working 6 days a week doing 50+ hours I am totally happy with my decision. I would highly recommend it to anyone starting AM to approach it this way.

The main thing I found was that it helps with your overall focus and really forces you to get your time management in check as you know that when you get home from work you really need to crack on with your assignment. Sure it adds to the overall pressure a little bit but the positives far outweigh the negatives, think of the money for one. You would sometimes find that students who didn't have a job tended to procrastinate a whole lot more and alot of the time were found handing in their assignments at the very last minute. At the same time there would be a student who held down a full time job that would have theirs handed in the night before. Obviously this wasn't always the case but it was great to see.

Anyway, heres my Class 1 progress reel everyone! can't wait to start posting up some new content in class 2! - Adam

Week 11...

What a week its been!

Were almost at the end of Term 1 and I cannot believe how fast it has gone, it seems like only yesterday I was surfing the campus and thinking to myself "wow, week 4... nearly half way through".

This weeks assignment was to take our personality walk from blocking to final and to sketch and pose Stu to show balance.

I started the week by getting my sketches done so it would leave me free the work the rest of the week in Maya and offer less of an opportunity to get sidetracked and end up taking a serious dose of procrastination.

I started by making the changes to my walk that my mentor suggested, this was a whole lot more time consuming than I thought as it involved adjusting the main body of Ballie which in turn screwed with the legs and feet. It wasn't much fun re-doing it all but I got there in the end, even though the end was 2am.

On my second night it was time to click the dreaded spline button which pretty much unleashed hell onto my screen, that night sucked and the whole nights work went down the pan along with a rather large chunk of my confidence.

The third night went alot better but it was Friday and the deadline was fast approaching, I started to feel the pressure as I had a whole load of work to do and I was surviving purely on Monster™ at this time.

Saturday came and by the time I had finished work I got a couple of hours done in Maya before the many late nights over the past few days caught up with me and I had no option but to sleep. I woke up pretty late, opened Maya and realised I was getting no where fast as it felt like I had no more animation left in me for the day. I took a quick playblast which I thought at the time wasn't too bad and decided to head into town for the night, which at the time also seemed like a good idea.

Sunday morning I was back on it, slightly fuzzy from the night before but I knew what I had to do to get it to an acceptable level. The only problem being that I only had a matter of hours to do it. I didnt quite realise what I was up against and as time went on more and more problems started to stand out.

To cut a long story short I ended up having to force myself to stop animating even though I wasn't finished because I only had 15 minutes to spare and still had my pose to do. I quickly knocked a pose out and my exact hand in time was 11:59:46 PST so thats 14 seconds before the deadline = 14 seconds before I would get a whole grade deducted from my assignment!!

Im not proud of this and I seriously dont recommend it to any of the upcoming AM students in the future but it comforts me knowing there were a whole bunch more who were in the same boat as me!

In short, that was my week, how was yours?...

Heres what I came up with, I know theres a whole load of things that need fixing on the walk and I am quite looking forward to sorting them out this week, Thanks everyone! - Adam

Week 10, This time it's personal...

Couldn't resist this weeks post title, I've held back on the puns lately and had to let one go, it is the first stage of our last assignment in Term 1 afterall!.

Anyway this weeks assignment was to block out a personality walk of our choice in 50 - 100 frames. We also had to sketch poses showing exhaustion and as always pose our favourite out in Maya with the Stu rig.

Carlos gave us a cool lecture that showed us the importance of studying reference footage and how to utilize it for the best results. He also went over a bunch of other awesome, invaluable stuff that I wont go into.

Again I persevered with the Wacom tablet for my sketches this week and quite enjoy using it now im getting the hang of it, I've also created a custom palette of brushes in Photoshop that has really helped speed up my workflow. My Wacoms just a little A6 size Volito2 version and I was wondering if its any easier to use a larger A4 size one?, I'm half tempted.

This week I got a taste of how it feels to be burnt out, I animated pretty much all Friday night straight after work until 2am, then all Saturday night after work until 1:30am and it didn't help I was just recovering from a mid week cold. It resulted in a hellatious headache this morning but it was worth it as I was pretty happy with what I had come up with.

It was also a pleasant surprise to wake up to a working internet connection this morning and not having to cope with the extra stress of finding somewhere to upload my assignment.

Heres what I came up with this week!, Thanks everyone - Adam

 

P.S. AM's student showcase gets unleashed on Wednesday! Im so excited. If my good AM friend Kevin Taylors work isn't on it I'll eat my hat! He is an awesome animator and has been a huge help to me since the day I contacted him when I was considering applying for AM.