Monday 3 October 2011

Class 3, Week1!!...

Hey everyone, another term at AM has started and were already a week down! time seems to be moving faster and faster!

The assignment for this week was to first decide whether to do 3 separate animation exercises throughout Class 3 or to do an Animjam which is 3 related shots that will tie together.

After weighing up the pros and cons of both options and eventually running out of time I somewhat reluctantly decided to go with the Animjam approach.

Another requirement of the assignment was to create a character/theme for our shot(s), we had the option to use some props/costumes provided by AM or we could create our own. For what I had in mind I needed to create my own.

Finally we had to shoot the reference footage for our shot and then thumbnail our ideas in a basic storyboard fashion.

Heres what I came up with, thanks everyone - Adam



Monday 26 September 2011

Class 2, Week 9, 10, 11 and 12!!...

Sorry for the lack of updates everyone, I literally had no free time in the last few weeks of Class2 and it was pretty hectic as you can imagine!

Right now break week is about to finish and Campus is to re-open in roughly half an hour. I should have done a final pass over my most recent shot of class2 during the break but I really felt I needed to step away from the computer and have some time to relax. That involving many hours of playing Call of Duty: Zombies with friends, Dead Island and Dirt3 (on the Xbox360 obviously! xXMajestic12Xx) I also took a trip down to London which was Great! We really didnt want to come back.

The other day I heard on the grapevine that campus had re-opened early and I couldnt resist to see if the tip off was infact true, I managed to get on for a few minutes before it shut back down but I came away with the information I wanted... My mentor for Class 3 is Dana Boadway! Right now I dont know a great deal about what she has worked on but I have watched quite a few of her critiques from her previous classes at AM and she seems to be awesome! not that I expected anything less from an AM mentor.

Another reason for my lack of posts is that I wasn't happy with my work and really didn't feel like showing it. I have promised myself in class 3 that I will stop doing this because feedback is such an important part of the development and moving forward of a shot. I am also going to hand in my work atleast and hour before deadline, Its really not worth rushing it right upto the last minute/seconds and risking the grade penalty. My good friend West Decker is also on board for this one so if it doesn't work out it is entirely his fault, right West?...

Ok, heres my belated work from the last weeks of Class2, I will start with the BlockingPlus, then Splined and then my Class 2 Progress Reel which will include the final take of my most recent shot. Overall I am reasonably happy with the final results but there is still such a long long long way to go...., like really long. Thanks everyone - Adam





Tuesday 23 August 2011

Class2, Week8!!...

Its going to be another one of those quick posts again,

This week we had to take the planning of our new shot into blocking using the full Stewie rig. The thought of struggling using no armed Stewie for the last shot didn't fill me full of confidence not to mention I would also have to tackle constraints this time around.

Like I said it was going to be a quick one this week! Heres what I came up with, thanks everyone - Adam

Sunday 14 August 2011

Special offer! Buy one get one free, Week 6 & 7!!!...

Well the last 2 weeks have been mental! My masterplan for getting ahead in blocking plus in order to give myself enough time to finish my shot the following week backfired. Blocking the spine was an absolute nightmare and I was so keen to get my shot into splined for some reason I just turned off the spine/head visibility and concentrated on the hips/feet.

The real problems became apparent after I had worked on cleaning the hips in spline and then turned the spine/head visibility back on. The hips appeared to flow quite nicely but with the upper body visible the whole lot looked like nothing on earth, they were just not working together correctly.

At this point I felt my workflow had collapsed and the only option was to grind through the animation from here on in. I really was not happy with my shot and it was partly the reason why I didn't post up my work at the end of the week. Heres what I handed in for week 6...



I really was not looking forward to Week 7 as I knew there was alot of work ahead, not only did we have to finish up our shot but we also had to choose and plan for our final shot of the term. Every day of the week pretty much involved going to work at 7am getting home at 6pm then animating from 6pm until 1am in the morning. This really sucked so somedays I went to bed an hour earlier.

For the most part of the week I felt like my shot was just going round in circles, not blocking the spine pretty much ruined me and I must have started from scratch atleast 4 times throughout the week. It seemed like a constant process of tweaking the hips then working on the spine and finding I hade to re-tweak the hips again which in turn screwed with the legs.

Nearing the end of the week I was quite fed up with the whole shot and still had all my planning for my next shot to work on which didn't help, I considered calling my Stickygum shot done with barely no spine animation just so I could work on my next shot and not get behind.

On Saturday morning after work I had a long Skype meeting with my fellow AMer West Decker and it turned out to be the best thing I did all week, he is very well trained in all things that involve time management and motivational stuff from his previous job so he set me a bunch of goals and checked up on me over the next few hours to make sure I was meeting them.

Even though I had hardly touched my shot it seemed to look a whole lot better after my meetings with West, I must have been so consumed in thinking it sucked that I couldn't really see it for what it was. He had totally saved me and cleared my mind in order to focus on what needed to be done.

I handed in my shot Saturday night under orders from West as he knew I would spend every waking hour up until deadline tweaking it and not necessarily for the better. It still needs a whole lot of work as I only really managed to find time to clean up the hips and some of the spine in the graph editor.

I spent today working on the planning for my next shot which is going to be pushing and pulling a heavy object with the full Stewie rig. I struggled terribly with no armed Stewie so I dread to think how this shot is going to play out. We have an extra week this time so hopefully that will help alot.

Other news over the last two weeks is that I have managed to go part time at work for next term which means I will be working around 30 hours a week and have 2 extra days to work on my assignments. I am also hoping to fit some rest time in there aswell.

Another massive thing for me is that I have managed to pay of my AM tuition in full, I took advantage of the USA's financial trouble and when the GBP > USD conversion rate was riding high I sent a whole bunch of Benjamin Franklin's AM's way, this also means I will save the extra $100 processing fee per term. Awesome.

Finally I also installed Maya 2012 on my system for one reason really.... editable motion trails. I am sick of switching through the many arc tracker plugins I have that very rarely work. This was one of the reasons why I didn't manage to clean up alot of this weeks shot.

Anyway heres my final Stickygum shot and the planning for my next adventure, thanks everyone - Adam






Monday 1 August 2011

Class2, Week5!!...

Another quick post this week, I have a whole load of work to do on my shot and not a great deal of time to do it.

I have to admit working full time and doing AM is starting to get a whole lot tougher recently, I am starting to think I could maybe do better in my assignments if I was to have more time to spend on them.
I know it would definatly relieve some of the stress involved and allow me to experiment a lot more.

I always said to myself before I started AM that when my job started to effect AM something would have to change, I guess it's nearing that time.

I originally thought that I would need to cut back my hours in June at the end of Class1 so I am pretty happy to still be coping up to now. I feel things like this can go both ways and if I end up with too much spare time I know for a fact that I will spend a whole load of it procrastinating and find myself with very little extra time than what I have now.

Its getting that balance of work, AM and rest just right.

I know I have said it before and I might come across as moaning a little about it right now but for anyone thinking about starting AM or already enrolled, I think it would be a huge mistake to not have a job to go to alongside your studies. The advantages far outweigh the disadvantages.

This week we had to block out our second shot of Class2 using the Stewie rig with no arms, as you saw from my planning I decided to go with "Step on sticky gum". I'm not totally happy with how it turned out but the deadline beat me to it, I knew animating a spine was going to be hard but had no idea it was this hard!!.

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

Monday 25 July 2011

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




Monday 18 July 2011

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

Monday 11 July 2011

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

Monday 4 July 2011

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


Thursday 30 June 2011

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

Monday 13 June 2011

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





Sunday 5 June 2011

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.

Monday 30 May 2011

Week 9...

So here we are, the end of week 9 and another busy week at AM.

This weeks assignment was to take last weeks blocking of the vanilla walk through to final. Sounds simple but couldn't be further from. I have probably spent more time on this weeks assignment than any other so far at AM, it seemed to be a never ending cycle of tweaking.

The main problem was keeping nice curves on all the body parts whilst preventing the knees from popping all over the place. Just when I thought it was all done I would recieve feedback and find that there was a problem in the foot rotation, this then meant I had to also alter the knees again, then I would find that the body needed a tiny bit more rotation which in turn would throw out the knees again, and so on....

The other part of our assignment was to sketch Stu to show concern and then pose our favourite out in Maya. This was probably the hardest so far for me as showing concern seems to be alot more subtle than previous assignments. I also took the advice from my mentor that I should bring my sketches 2 stages back and loosen them up making them less like illustrations.

I soon realised that for some reason I didnt allow myself to do this on paper so it was time to unleash the wacom tablet, I had no choice now to loosen things up because I had no experience and couldn't use one well enough to get the nice clean lines that I could on paper. Problem solved.

Apart from having no internet pretty much all day Sunday for the second time, everything went relatively well. The whole no internet Sunday is really annoying me now as it means I cant give any last minute feedback and I have to go well out of my way to upload my own work, my ISP needs to sort itself out!.

Thankfully despite my now usual Sunday internet drama and me being able put a stop to the tweaking I got there in the end, heres what I came up with this week, Thanks everyone! - Adam

 




Sunday 22 May 2011

Week 8...

The weeks are going so fast its crazy, I cannot believe we are 2 months in already!. Back in week 1 a student in class 6 told me the 18 months would fly by but I didn't quite understand how fast!.

For this weeks assignment we were issued with Ballie, a character who is basically a ball with legs. The idea behind it is to gradually introduce us into animating a basic character without having to worry about an upper torso/head/arms. The whole focus being on the legs/hips.

For the assignment itself we had to animate the blocking process of Ballie performing 2 cycles of a basic vanilla walk, no personality just your everyday walk. Along with this we had to do some sketches to convey strength and then pose out Stu in maya acting out our favourite pose. I really wanted to avoid cliche poses for my actual Stu pose but I sketched a few anyway for good measure :).

Thankfully the week went without any technical disasters and everything went well. As we only had to complete the blocking stage of our walk it gave me alot more time to cruise the campus and check out everyone elses work, leave comments and in turn recieve more comments, it really felt like I was making the most of the community for a change.

I think thats about all I have to say this week so heres what i came up with, Thanks everyone - Adam




Monday 16 May 2011

Week 7 Tails off...

This weeks post title really is weak isn't it, just doesn't have the same effect as last weeks. I should really work on them, atleast now they can only get better.

If you hadn't guessed already, this weeks assignment was all about Tailor, the cutest of the AM bunch and the one that every AMer wants as a pet.

Ok, so it wasn't exactly all about an introduction for the little guy, it was slightly more focussed on overlapping action and spline editing. Victor Navones kick ass lecture really helped with this, Thanks Vic!

The week got off to a great start! We had a special guest Q&A on Monday with a couple of animators from Blue Sky Studios who worked on the recently released "Rio". I havnt seen the film yet myself so I can't pass comment but from what i've seen on the trailers the animation looks Amazing! I cannot wait to see it.

I pretty much got started on my assignment straight away as I had a clear idea in my mind of how the piece would play out. Before I knew it, Friday had come around and I had only animated Tailors body. Come Saturday when I actually started to animate the tail my time managemental mistake soon dawned on me.

Even though I spent all day Saturday animating I was still extremely pushed to get it finished on Sunday for the deadline. It really didn't help my nerves waking up Sunday morning to find that the whole internet/phone system was down in my area. To my relief it was fixed with 2 hours to spare.

Luckily I did get my assigment finished in time and heres what I came up with this week, Thanks everyone - Adam




P.S. Check out my friend Jeroths blog at http://jeroth.blogspot.com/, hes showing some awesome improvement.

Monday 9 May 2011

Week 6 swings out...

See what i did there? swings out...... no?

Ok, this weeks assignment was focussed on overlapping action and the character we were issued was the mighty pendulum!. It was our first assignment with a pick list which meant we had two choices on what to do with our pendulum, they were basically keep it simple in 150 frames or get creative with 200 frames.

Now see what i did there?..... good.

Anyway I had some crazy ideas for this one, it was going to swoop, sweep and push around all sorts of obstacles, there was going to be brights lights, a fanfare, fireworks.... that was until I actually opened Maya and made a start anyway.

After roughly 10 hours animating spread over 2 days I realised my ideas were way out of reach from my actual animating skills and something was seriously seriously wrong. In all this time I hadn't even touched the pendulum part of the character, I had been fussing around with the base with disasterous results. I pretty much felt like I had failed and by Wednesday I was panicking and felt like the deadline was looming.

That night my savior came in the form of West Decker (http://blog.cleverpuppy.com/) he pretty much dragged me back to earth and reminded me of what I was actually at AM for, I came to learn and not kick ass like him from the start. He said I shouldn't be doing my animations to impress others, I should be doing them to learn animation!. I completely agreed with the guy and from that moment on I called shotgun on his wisdom.

I decided the best way to go from here was to keep it as simple as possible and then improve once I had the basics down. Things went pretty well from here on in, I decided to tackle the animation in a layered fashion. I started at the main base of the pendulum and then once that was done I moved onto the tail. To achieve the wave of the tail I used successive breaking of joints,  I could try to explain what this is but I wont as im not sure i've fully got my head around it myself yet.

Anyway heres what i came up with this week, thanks everyone - Adam

Sunday 1 May 2011

Week 5...

Ok I just realised my post titles are getting a little confusing, even im lost in the weeks and its my blog.

Seeing asthough I seem to be updating my blog every Sunday night just before the following AM week starts i'll start naming my posts by the previous week, so the past week has been week 5 at AM hense this posts title. Next week will be week 6.

This week was all about anticipation and squash and stretch! The lecture was headed up by ILM's Shawn Kelly who is known for working on a library of awesome films like "StarsWars", "Pirates of the Carribean", "War of the Worlds", the recently released "Rango" and upcoming blockbuster "Transformers: Dark of the moon" to name a few.

The assignment was to animate a ball travelling through an obstacle course using the principle of squash and stretch. We had a maximum of 120 frames at our disposal and were allowed to manipulate the obstacle course in any way we wished. Posing was also back on this week and we had to sketch and pose Stu to communicate devastation.

Luckily I didnt miss this weeks Q&A with Anthony and my graphics card turned up mid week so we're all back to normal!

We've been having a few bank holidays over here in the UK recently and an extra one on Friday for Prince William and Kate Middletons wedding so I took advantage and pretty much got the sketching and pose down by Tuesday as I knew this weeks animation portion of the assignment was going to be pretty tough!

Anyway heres what i came up with this week, Thanks guys - Adam




Sunday 24 April 2011

Goodbye week 4, Hello week 5...

This week was all about timing and spacing, we had to animate both a heavy ball and a light ball and really concentrate on getting across the weight difference to the audience. There was no sketching/posing assignment this week so that allowed for a little more time on the balls which I was extemely thankful for!.

The lecture was probably my favourite so far and who better to learn about timing and spacing from than Pixars Carlos Baena! If you watch Spanish Buzz in Toy Story 3 you will soon realise Carlos definatly has timing and spacing down.

The week didn't get off to a great start as unfortunatly I missed my Q&A with Anthony on Tuesday due to a mixture of long work hours, bieng tired and having a memory fail!, what a nightmare. I was gutted to say the least but my peers rallied and made me some great notes from the their lectures (Thanks West, Kalle and Carolyn!).

After last weekends hardware disaster I RMA'd my GFX card and it turns out it had burnt itself out, im getting a nice new shiny one sent free of charge! my old card has done me proud this week! Hopefully by Wednesday everything will be back to normal.

Anyway heres what I came up with this week, Thanks guys - Adam



Monday 18 April 2011

Week 3 comes to a close...

Yep thats right week 3 has now been and gone and I cannot believe it, where did that week go?!!

Our assignment was to plan and animate a bouncing ball in the flavour of either a soccerball or basketball. We were also required to sketch out some poses that expressed excitement and then pick a favourite and pose it out with the Stu rig in Maya.

My time management was much better this week and it made the week run far smoother than the previous. On top of that I also had a massive breakthrough with my sketches, not only did I enjoy doing them but I was also happy with the results, I even almost convinced myself that maybe I could draw a little bit!

The week was going great! I was happy with my work, then just before I was about to tweak my pose for the deadline today disaster struck and my NvidiaGTX 460 card decided its short life of 6 months was enough and issued itself with a cease and desist order.

Unfortunately for me this meant I had no means of updating my pose and had to leave my 1st attempt which I submitted mid week as my final submission, I wasn't happy but I would much rather have technical faults like that happen now than later in the course. For now im running my oldschool 7800GTX card whilst waiting for a replacement.

Anyway heres what i came up with this week:








Thanks guys - Adam

Tuesday 12 April 2011

Week 3! already?...

Time is passing fast and week 3 has come so soon! im already playing catch up with my blog updates! Last weeks assignment was to head into the outside world, observe life and sketch people. We were required to fill a sketchbook page and then from our sketches select a single pose to replicate with AMs Stu rig.

Heres what i came up with:


I've just recieved my critique from Anthony on this pose and its crazy how easily he spots mistakes and suggests improvements! I have to admit I could have tweaked this pose forever! in the end, even though I was far from 100% satisifed I had to force myself to stop and submit the assignment.

I would like to say ill post up a revised version taking into account my critque during the week but as its week 3 and I have a whole new assignment to work on I doubt ill find time right now. The guys who get to do AM fulltime are so lucky! i hope they realise it :).

Anyway I had best get back to my bouncing ball! - Adam

P.S If anyone has any Justin Bieber fan art please send it to Max at max-gariepy.blogspot.com he has severe Bieber Fever.

Thursday 31 March 2011

AnimationMentor is GO!...

Ok already my blog is lagging behind and I had promised myself not to let that happen!, I cant believe AM started nearly 4 days ago! There is so much information to take in I really dont know where to start.

Thankfully our first assignment is pretty easy going, we are just required to get to know the place, meet people and update our profile. Alot of people want to get stuck straight into animation but im thankful for this ease-in (see how i did that?) approach.

The mentor line up for class 1 this term is nothing short of phenomenal and I am extremely happy to tell you that my mentor is Anthony Wong! Anthony spent 10 years at Disney and worked on Tarzan, Mulan and Hercules to name a few and now works at Pixar where his work can be seen on Cars, Ratatouille, Toy Story 3 and coming soon to a cinema near you.... Cars 2!

We had our first Q&A session on Tuesday afternoon and Anthony is such an amazing guy! He has a relentless passion for animation and his experience really shows through in how he explains things. I was extremely impressed to see that it was Anthony who animated one of my favourite scenes in Toy Story 3, that scene bieng Woodys bathroom escape!.

My class consists of 14 students which seems the norm for this term, I can't wait to see their work and get to know them all. Amazingly one of my classmates (Lars) has not only visited my hometown but he met his girlfriend here!. That is crazy, I would have been impressed if anyone in the whole of AM had even heard of Whitby let alone visited!

Anyway I had best get going i've got tutorials to digest!.

P.S - Rango ROCKS! well done ILM!!

P.P.S - Check out my friend Wests blog at http://blog.cleverpuppy.com/ , he updates regular (for now) and has some very interesting reads! well done West!!

Sunday 27 March 2011

Its AM - Eve!!!...

Thats right, AnimationMentor starts tomorrow! I recieved an email the other day that welcomed me as an official student of AM so its goodbye to the silver fan badge and hello to the gold student Badge!.

The student website shut down on Friday so they can prepare for the start of a new term and will re-open with full access on Monday at 12noon PST which wil be 8pm UK time, it couldn't have worked out much better for me :).

As i had no experience in Maya prior to my application for AM ive been spending the last couple of months learning the basics, this was for 2 reasons:- firstly i didn't want to spend even more money on AM by taking their springboard class and secondly i wanted to get started on their 18 month character animation course as soon as possible and had i taken the springboard i would have had to wait until summer term.

For learning the basics of animating in Maya i highly recommend the book "How to Cheat in Maya 2010" by Eric Luhta (www.howtocheatinmaya.com). Eric is an alumni of AnimationMentor and also an instructor for their Maya training program. Other training sources i have used and highly recommend are www.digitaltutors.com and www.lynda.com.

During one of our recent weekly coffee talks a class 2 student was invited to share his experiences and give advice to any would be students watching. He highly recommended us to practice some basic ball animations in the run up to AM so over the past few days i've been working on some of my own as part of my pre-AM warm up, here are the results...


Bouncing Ball Test from Adam Bryant on Vimeo.



Bowling Ball Test from Adam Bryant on Vimeo.

-Adam

Friday 4 March 2011

Paid and Displayed...

Well I havnt quite displayed yet as I havent got access to the AM Student Badge but im all paid up! For the first class anyway! I dont think either me or my bank account could take the shock of spending the whole $19,000 all at once even though it will cost an extra $100 per term doing it via the term by term payment plan.

My idea is to pay the first term as I have and then pay for the rest all at once, other than the reason above I dont know why im doing it this way, its just an idea I got in my head and kind of makes me feel better about it I guess.

So far in my short time as an AM applicant ive met some great people and i cant wait to get to know them more and watch them develop as animators. Everyone comes from completely different backgrounds and its great to hear how they arrived at AM.

I dont want to put a downer on the experience already but a huge factor for me regarding the whole AM journey is the money involved, and im sure this will be the same for many current students and future students. As far as my money situation goes, AM will pretty much flatline my bank balance after the 18 months, im going to have to really put this thought to the back of my mind and not let it get in my way.  As one of the main reasons for this blog is to give an insight into my own personal experiences at AM for others considering the course, I want to let those people know that ill be 100% funding my own tuition throughout the full course.

As far a work goes ill be holding down a full time job for the whole of the first term and then depending on how things go ill make a decision on whether to leave work and go full time AM from then onwards. Whats important for me is to make sure that at no point does my job get to a point where it puts in jeopardy my learning and progression through AM.

I was always unsure on what to do regarding work when I first considered applying for AM and didnt know whether to quit my job from day one. I got in touch with a great guy called Max Hamond who is a current student at AM and he gave me a little gem of advice "make the decision to leave work after you have started AM, that way you wont make a bad decision". In the end it turned out I had no choice and I couldnt afford AM without working no matter how many spending cuts i made.

As of now, im currently waiting to recieve my orientation email for access to what i believe is an introduction to AM and some other goodies such as a Maya license and some discounts to other things, right now it still hasnt sunk in that im actually going to be a student at AnimationMentor.

Its late, im tired, work tomorrow... night - Adam

Saturday 5 February 2011

Accepted!...

Just recieved this news from AnimationMentor HQ.....

"Congratulations! We're happy to inform you that you've been accepted to the Animation Mentor program! We're excited to have you as a student and more excited that you'll be pursuing your dream in animation in our thriving community."

That came quicker than i expected! although it is nearing the deadline date so i guess there might be less applications for them to process.

Just logged into the admissions campus for the first time and im surpised at how many countries are involved, happy to see that there are 7 of us from the UK :) - Adam

Wednesday 2 February 2011

Wonderlic Test...

........ Done!, and to be honest it wasn't as bad as I thought, I was basically given 8 minutes to answer 30 questions which were based on Maths and English. The test thankfully stressed that you were not to worry if your didn't manage to answer every question.

Its out of my hands now, im left at the mercy of the AnimationMentor student enrollment team...... Watch this space. - Adam

Sunday 30 January 2011

Application submitted!!!...

Exciting stuff! just submitted my AnimationMentor application!...

"Thank you for your application! It was successfully submitted at 6:22:57 AM PST on January 30, 2011."

So the AM journey officially begins here, hopefully ill get accepted, if not ill try again in 3 months! Im currently awaiting the link for my aptitude test and to be honest im extremely nervous about it. I cant believe after all the years of following AM and staring in total awe at their student showreels that ive actually given myself the opportunity to be part of the awesomeness. - Adam

Saturday 29 January 2011

AM Application submission imminent...

Just finishing up my application for AnimationMentor before i submit it in the very very near future! I would like to thank Nic Cabana, Kevin Taylor, Donna Samuel and Derek 'Oz' Osbourne for all their help over the past few weeks its been very much appreciated - Adam