Animazing.....

So in the past year I've been completely enthralled in animation, learning it, doing it, watching it and studying it. I just have to say, lately it's completely blown my mind. I referring mostly to the movies that I've seen in the past year. The list is as follows: Bolt, Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Horton Hears a Who, Igor and now Coraline. All the movies were totally entertaining and the stories in each movie was great and compelling. And of course the animation was completely awesome in every way. It really does inspire me to keep on learning and practicing more animation. First, let's talk about the one movie of the year that didn't impress me.

Recently, I saw Madagascar 2, although there were some really funny lines and a couple of cool scenes (like the plane crash), the story and concepts are completely played out and it was almost like they didn't take the extra time and focus on the story. Granted they did their research and went on a giant safari in Africa, that showed in the movie, but they should have spent a lot more time on story development. I think one of the major things that Pixar excels in over any other studio (especially Dreamworks) is their environments. Especially the Madagascar franchise. Their environments are too realistic. I'm not sure exactly how Pixar does it, but if you look at Cars for instance, they do such a great job in making a photo-realistic environment that is exaggerated just enough to make it cartoony and magical. The environment in Madagascar 2 was too realistic, in the special features they were showing comparison images, from what they captured from the safari and the 3D scene from the movie, it looked exactly the same. Where's the magic in that, recreating a completely realistic environment that's in a 3D movie... what's the point? My opinion in 3D is this: you have the ability to do whatever you want and make things look whatever way you want them to, total control. So why not make the trees have a little more exaggerated personality, or the rocks... enough about Madagascar. One last thing, the animation was awesome again! I love the style of the quick and snappiness of it, really cool looking and fun to watch... moving on.

Trying to list these in order from my best to worse is pretty hard, they all had such great qualities and in my opinion were awesome in their own way... but here goes: Bolt, Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, Horton, Coraline and finally Igor. Igor was decent, it was a good story and overall the style was cool, but it was lacking something, I'm not sure if it's empathy for the characters or the lack of compassion you feel for the situations throughout the movie. The first four listed are truly amazing movies; I will own them all when they become available and watch them over and over.
If you haven't seen any of the ones listed above, go and check them out....

This is getting way too long, my intention was to talk about the movies I fancied (I guess I'll save that for a later time)... so I'm going to leave you with a trailer from Coraline, which is the first 3D movie with 3D glasses I've seen in over 20 years. I forgot how fun it is.... and soo cool! Oh, plus this is the studio my current mentor is working at.....

Finally completed....

Or at least as much completed as it's going to be, for now.... By that I mean there's always something that I see, or someone else sees and points out that can be tweaked. It's true what they say, an artists work is never done. This definitely holds true in animation. This is the monologue shot that I've been working on since November 08. I was looking back at some of the early stages of the shot and didn't realize how many changes are made to these shots. From my planning/video reference to the early blocking of animation. This piece really transformed and I like the direction that it took. I think the big thing was the feedback that I got. With animation I'm always trying to be original and entertaining with the shots that make, all while trying to learn. It's a tricky situation, but challenging none-the-less. I got tons of feedback from my peers and from 2 different mentors that have different background and styles. That really made a difference in the shot. I was noticing (as well as other) that the shot looked like it was stop-motion as soon as I added the lip sync. My mentor (Greg Kyle) was saying that I need to go through and smooth out those tangents. I was really struggling with that so I asked him if I could send him my Maya file for him to look 'under the hood' and term used in animation to see what's going on in the graph editor. He did, looked at it and gave some good feedback and then fixed a small portion of it to show me what he was talking about, and holy crap just the 12 frames that he fixed made the world of difference to the shot. He then sent me back the Maya file that he worked so I could see what he did to it. I think that has been my biggest break through thus far. So I'm going to post my first blocking pass and the final so you can see what I'm talking about. It's amazing how much you learn with these assignments and how the school really does work.

First pass.


Final pass (at least for now).

Holy moly... slacker head!

Break is over... mixed in with a mini-break... Right now I'm between assignments... sort of. My first dialogue was a success, I think (I've gotten great feedback and responses to it). I feel I learned sooooo much from that assignment and want to keep going. My new Mentor is absolutely an amazing person! He's a Canuck through and through, and so real! He had mentioned that parts of my assignment looked 'choppy' almost like it was stop motion (so did Sean...) so I asked him for a bit of help. I sent him over my Maya file and he worked on about 22 frames and smoothed it out. I think that my problem was that I'm over animating, adding too many in-between/breakdowns. Like Mr. Williams says K.I.S.S... (keep it simple stupid), I need to make a giant poster that says that and hang it right behind my monitors at home! Soooo, back to my next assignment: it's doing a two person dialogue shot up to 15 seconds.... more characters and more time then before, I'm a little nervous, but I'm excited about what challenges I'm going to face (hopefully overcome)and persevere. So this week, I just have to polish up my monologue shot, and pick three possible dialogs for my next assignment, and one face pose.... pretty chill. So I'm taking full advantage of the calm before the storm (advice from my awesome Mentor).

Maddon's doing great, always smiling, laughing and babbling! It's so fricken cute!

Christmas Break.....

It's Christmas time, which doesn't seem possible. I can't believe where 2008 went, it completely flew right by! I'm on break right now from Animation Mentor and I sure am enjoying it. Seeing my wife, relaxing with her, and not feeling preoccupied with thinking about my assignment. It's hard to imagine a time before AM. I'm looking forward to the next class, and have already started working on an introduction piece for my demo reel.

I just bought a new computer, long overdue. I've had my last machine for 5 years. It's been a great machine with no problems what-so-ever but it's time for an upgrade. I found a local company here to put it together and they seem very competent. It's a beefed up machine so I'll be excited to use Maya to it's fullest capacity. 3 gigs of RAM (compared to 1) a new 250 hard drive and EVGA motherboard, with an Intel dual quad core proc, and a 1 gig EVGA super duper graphics card!! That baby's going to cook. I'm really excited to set it up and see what it can do!

Other than just going to relax for Christmas, my in-laws got a hot tub this year and live out in the mountains, so I'm really stoked to freeze my butt off then jump in the nice hot water.... then freeze again! Maddon's getting bigger, and I felt his first tooth coming in, up top. It hasn't broke through the gums yet, but it's close... OUCH!! I'm glad I don't remember that.

I'm the only one (in the graphics department) here at work so it's sort of nice, but quiet. We just got new 24inch wide screen monitors.... totally rad!

Outro to acting... time to move on!

Well, I officially made it through yet another class at Animation Mentor, my Mentor recommended me to move on.... so I'm off to class 4, Advanced Acting! Getting super excited to continue on my journey. The next class will consist of 2 assignments again, one is being carried over from class 3 and then the final is a two person dialogue shot. The only difference is they're giving us a full Bishop rig, with mouth and facial controllers. Yay!

I finally plunged and bought a new computer... money is definitely tight right now, but I figured after next class I'm starting on my short film production and need all the power and resources I can get my hands on. I got a new case, power supply, 250 gig hard drive, 3 gigs of RAM, and a 1 gig graphics card. It's going to be super rad, and like 5 times faster and better than my current machine.

Here's the last nine months of work at Animation Mentor.

3 down, 3 to go....

Well, class three is coming to an end... that means that I'm halfway there! I feel like I learned so much this class, and am feeling a lot more confident in my animation and my animation abilities. The one hard thing, that I kind of mentioned before is the fine line in animation. By that I mean 'avoiding the cliche' is something said in pretty much every lecture, being original, coming up with new ideas, jokes and animation. They also say to challenge yourself when learning animation, don't bite off more than you can chew, but have enough so you get full. Another contradiction is keeping it simple (KISS), and not over posing your animation and yet keeping your animation entertaining. The further along I get I realize that the fine line is something that comes with practice and perseverance.

At the end of each class you have to make a progress reel of all the work that you've done at AM from newest to oldest. So I went back to clean up a couple things in assignments from class 2.... I wanted to start them over. I went through and cleaned up the splines and not even knowing it, my 'style' has completely transformed in the past 12 weeks. It wasn't as if I were resplining the whole thing, but there were a lot of spots that needed some major attention. So going through that was good, and bad. Good because I'm learning and making my own style to animate, and bad because like I said I want to go back and redo them all.... starting from the very first assignment. But, I keep telling myself 'look ahead and take what you learned and apply it to new animations. My new goal is have a new demo reel by February. I already started designing the artwork and am working on getting pieces to put into it.

Another dilemma was solved today, something that is a lot more stressful than I ever remember. Buying a new computer. Talk about stress. With a budget this is not an easy feat. I was looking to spend around 600 on basically an upgrade to hardware. Seeing is my computer is about 5 years old now, it's completely obsolete, I isn't performing as well as I would like.... so it's time. I found it on tigerdirect.com for about 100 bucks cheaper than my budget, so that's a first for me. It will be about 5 times better/faster than my current machine. It's not that I'm not happy with my machine, I've never had any issues what so ever with it, it's just too old and slow.

I'm looking forward to class 4, and definitely not as nervous as I've been when starting a new class up till now.

Animation all around me....

So, it's official, I've become obsessed with animation! Not to a scary point, but I definitely know that this is my career choice forever!

Class 3 is flying by, I'm already in week 11! I've learned so much this class and want to keep trekking ahead, practicing and learning more and more!! My dialogue shot is getting closer to completion, at least till I'm able to add facial animation next class. I attempted to enter the 11 second club November competition, but unfortunately I only got to the blocking stage. I got too busy with school, and since that's my priority I had to put 11SC on the back burner. I think I'm going to attempt it again this month, I'm just going to keep it simple. I feel like the more practice the better, practice makes perfect!

We saw Bolt opening weekend and if you are into animation, or animated movie it's a must see! Definitely top ten animated films of all times for me! Action, funny, sad and the characters where awesome!

Next post I'll upload my assignment, till then.