AM Alumnus Reporting for Duty!!

Well, it's officially official! I graduated from the greatest animation school on the planet! Lots of: sacrifice, hard work, loooong weekends, late nights/early mornings, lectures, notes, filming, drawing, chatting, forums, coffee, 5 hour energy shots, iTunes, key frames, posing, polishing, struggle, QnAs, feedback and animating!! What a life changing experience. I can't believe it's over, one more chapter done, and another one starting!

It's a great feeling to be done, a major sense of accomplishment and pride... now time to relax for a few weeks! Margaritas and Jager tonight!

Till next time.

It's a final!!

Whew... that was a the longest/fastest 18 months of my life! But, I persevered and graduated from Animation Mentor (well, not officially till Friday at 1pm). I pretty much completed my short film. I want to go and add a bunch more to it, and could keep adding to it till I am 80 years old. I want to do an intro scene with the opening credits that I still might do, but then I have to build another set, an outdoor set... we'll see how time permits. I still have some final polish and one more once over to make sure that all the splines are smooth and everything is rocking! Then I get to light it, render it and put it together in post with sound effects...

All in all Animation Mentor has changed my life, I'm so glad that I went. I'm looking forward to relaxing for a few weeks, then hitting it hard again! Got to get that demo reel done by January!

My Mentor (Sean Sexton) last night for our last QnA showed us his student work and told us his animation story. It was an interesting one to say the least, but a great one none-the-less. Then he showed us his current reel.. Wow. He's an amazing animator. It really inspired me to work hard to get my reel as finely tuned as I can to get an amazing job doing character animation all day long! I probably wont get to a major studio out of the gates, or even work on motion pictures... but that's my goal for the next 5 years. I mentioned before that I have a connection to a pretty big studio out in California... I'm going to start there and see what happens!!

It's been an amazing journey with Animation Mentor, but this is only the beginning. I'm planning on posting the progress of my short film, once it's all finished to look back at the creation process of it and see the transformation... stay tuned.

Till then.

Whew, one week to go!

Man oh man... where did the time go!? Well, I have one week left at Animation Mentor and can't believe how fast the time went. Looking back I learned so much, and looking forward, I still have so much more to learn. I guess that's a good thing, it will keep me on my toes, fresh and inspired. Going to AM I have met so many wonderful and inspiring people I will never forget and hope that I never lose contact with! Even though I have accomplished a major goal by completing the program I am far from being ready to begin my quest as an animator. As far as the animation goes for my short film, it's pretty much complete. Now I have add some final touches/polishes. Light, render and then put it all together in post production with the audio. Then I'm going to begin construction on my demo reel. I pretty much have all the artwork done, I just have to get the content. I'm going to put between 5 and 8 shots so I have to go back to some older work and clean up and add some more polish. Then in January for graduation I should be set to go.... Wish me luck.

Moving right along...

Well, I'm halfway through my final class at AnimationMentor.com, and I can't believe it. How fast it went, how much I learned, how much I don't know about animation, how many great students and Mentors I've been lucky enough to come across. One chapter is closing and another opening I guess. It's still sad to think it's coming to an end so quick. Yet, I don't remember a time I wasn't in school. It's been a rough year and a half, learning/studying animation, learning how to be a dad..... needless to say, I'm completely exhausted.

As far as my short film goes, it's coming along nicely. I'm on pace to finish it up in the next month, being 38 days out I confident that I can finish it. Then the reel work begins... literally, my goal is to have my demo reel, resume, short film and website completed by December so I can start the job hunt come 2010!! Exciting I know. I did find out that a friend of mine here in Denver knows John Hughes (not the late great director/writer from the 80's). The president of Rhythm and Hues Studios.... So what a great contact that is, once I get my reel completed, he's definitely getting one.

I just finished blocking out the entire short film, 3 passes roughly and it's ready to moving on to splining. I've gotten some great feedback/ideas from my Mentor and other students. Very helpful and it's good to know that if I ever get into an Animation Studio that I'll get the same feedback from my director, supervisor and other animators each day. There are so many things that are overlooked when it's your scene, it's so nice to get other eyes on it. It's about a minute long now, with animation, that doesn't include credits. I'm still not sure how much I'm going to do for the intro credits.

I'll post my progress as soon as I can upload it to youTube. Till next time.

Some new movies...

That are getting me inspired and excited. I went and saw Up and Ice Age 3. Up was truly amazing, I can't wait to see it again! The story, animation, effects, environments, everything was mind numbing! IA3 was their best yet and the fact that 51 students, Mentors and alumni worked on it says a lot for Animation Mentor. Enjoy.

Here are a couple trailers for movies coming out that I can't wait to go and see:
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs:



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Toy Story 3:



Despicable Me:

Slacking on my Blog...

Okay, so I'm already in week 5 and haven't posted any updates. It's moving right along and I graduate in under 60 days! Wow, I honestly can't believe how fast the time is flying by! I'm sort of sad that I'm not going to be a student at Animation Mentor no longer, but it sounds like you still get access to the site as an Alumni. So that's pretty cool. But, it will be nice to get my life back in order, spending more time with my awesome family and friends.

My mentor is awesome. Sean Sexton is his name and he's been animating at Dreamworks for some time now. He's worked on all the big-time movies they've produced over the past decade: Shrek I, II, and III, Bee Movie, Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda (by far their best movie yet), Sharks Tale, and Monster's vs. Aliens. He showed us some shots that he worked on in Over the Hedge and Monsters vs. Aliens. What an amazing animator. I couldn't imagine working at a company like Dreamworks or Pixar and animating these amazing shots everyday, all day!! That would be awesome.

My short film is coming along, I made some great progress and was ahead of the game coming into class 6, so I'm still confident that I'll finish up by week 12. There is still so much to go, but baby steps is the key. I converted it from blocking to linear this past week, trying a method that I've picked up since attending AM. Sean said that I should have more breakdowns before I convert the keyframes to linear. So I'm going to go back this week and go back to blocking, add some more breakdowns, then hopefully next week it will be ready to go to linear and I can start polishing the sucker! Then the plan is to start putting together my demo reel, art work,resume and website by December and start looking for work in 2010. Now that I'm in class 6 and graduation is right around the corner people are asking 'what next?'. I've thought about it and yes, I'd love to work at Pixar, Dreamworks or Blue Sky (any big time studio) but realistically I don't think that I'm ready... I know that I just want to animate, whether it be video games or movies. Spending a couple years in the video game industry would be great to learn more about physics and body mechanics. The thing about that is you don't get much experience in acting shots, and if you want to get into the big studios you have to be a strong actor (well, at least your characters do). So I'll have to keep up on that with the 11 Second Club contest each month. Still trying not to think about the future too much, focusing on the present. Finish up my short film to the best of my abilities, polish up my previous shots for my demo reel, and then I can worry about where I'm going.

It's a long journey, stressful at times, but a fun one none-the-less. I plan on posting my progress for my short film soon.....

Till next time.

On to Short Film Production!! Wooohoo.

Well, I made it through class 5 doing very well. My Mentor was great and I was glad to have gotten him. His name is Cal Brunker and he's an animator up in Toronto Canada at a studio called Red Rover. They mainly do commercials for TV. He had a lot of great ideas to make my short what it is today! I learned a lot in the class, but I feel like I haven't animated anything in a really long time. I do feel a bit rusty, but hopefully it's still fresh and I'll be fine. I was pleased with my grades this class, and based on those I feel like I really succeeded. I'm really excited to start blocking out my shots. Total of 16 shots, right around 1000 frames, so it's not too bad. The tricky part in actually finishing the animation by graduation in 3 months is the amount of animation that is done. When you're animating full characters in a scene it's going to take more time than if you're just animating the upper body, or just the face, etc. In my shot there's some full body acting/animating, but I'd say 65 percent is just portions of the body. So I think planning it out like that makes it more feasible to actually finish it in the time allotted, but also making it quality animation so that I can submit it to festivals if I want and have some strong pieces for my demo reel.

Here is my layout. I still have some minor changes to make based on my final critique from Cal.... and sound FX are still rough too.