Posing Exercises

I think my present weakness in posing. Ever since the start of AM I felt like I really understood timing and spacing quite confidently, but as soon as I started body mechanics, I was out of my comfort zone. I've come along way since then - studying video reference, reading about anatomy and sketching, but I still feel there's plenty of room for improvement.

In addition to that, you can use numerous controls in a myriad of combinations/permutations and end up with the same final pose. Hence, I'm also interested in exploring the different character controls more deeply.

I think that the fastest way to do this is by doing little single pose exercises like above. Here are 3 that I did over Christmas. I'll try to do this regularly in addition to the shots I'm working on.

Post Animation Mentor

2010-2011 has been pretty intense - studying at Animation Mentor while working 3 full days over an hour's commute away as a junior 3D Generalist for a Medical Production company. It was a struggle, but I finally finished Animation Mentor. And I'm glad I did it. It was a super awesome program. I learnt a tonne and had a lot of fun there. I now feel a lot more confident about approaching character animation, and am keen to continually refine my workflow and try new types of shots. My time character animating has solidified my desire to leave generalist work and become a professional character animator. In fact, the company I was working for just closed down, so I'm ready to jump into any character animator opportunities that may arise.

I am currently wrapping up the best of my AM shots for Version 001 of my character animator reel, and in 2012 I will start making new shots. My end goal is to become a feature film character animator creating believable, entertaining and unique character performances that serve a story - and continually being challenged to grow by the talented people that surround me. I am also open to trying opportunities in games, TV and other areas. What could be better than being paid to make CG puppets come to life?

I believe that character animators never stop learning, and I have many plans for the future to help my growth as a character animator. I am aware that many animation jobs are contract-based and that there might be months where no projects are happening. I plan to use those 'between jobs' times constructively to make new shots for my showreel, and to take some more animation classes to push me to increasingly new levels. Animation Mentor's Creature classes are definetely on the 'to do list,' and I'm also quite interested in Jason Ryan's iAnimate - with all their cool rigs and philosophy of pushing people to a feature film level.

Other things I am keen to do include more Improv and life drawing classes, as well as read up on books in related areas such as acting and anatomy.

I see a strong parallel between character animators and actors, and hence I think pursuing just about any interest and skill such as horse riding, handgliding and so on have potential to inform our character animation work. In this sense travelling and soaking up life are also valuable. It's pretty cool, I can just about justify any experience as being beneficial to my profession.

My current reel. More coming in January.



Or check it at http://vimeo.com/34207108

Class 1 Basic Foundations

Saturday at 5am was the official end of class 1 at Animation Mentor. What can I say, it was sooooo freak'n awesome. My mentor was Anthony Wong - who studied at CalArts, worked at Disney, worked in games, and is now working for Pixar! He was totally inspiring as he came across as a passionate artists who animated and draws because he loves it so much. He was also very knowledgeable, realistic about how the industry is, and just a great mentor overall.

The curriculum was great as each week built upon the next - gradually increasing our confidence with the animation foundations, sketching poses, and posing 3D characters. I feel ready to move onto class 2 and 3 - body mechanics: what I've been told is the hardest part of animating. Here is my progress reel from the class 1. I'm still revising a few things and may update it. We only have one week of break though, so I may not get around to everything - especially 'cos I gotta catch up with the world and all. They say it's best just to make lots of work - learning from your mistakes as you go, rather than spending ages on a shot or pose anyways.

I'd have to agree that one of the best things about AM is the community. You have your class mates and peers from other classes who you are able to give feedback to, get feedback from, and get inspired by. It's a great way to network and create friendships with people we're likely to work with one day. And one of the really cool things is that once you've joined AM, you never leave. You get continued access to the community as an alumni, as well as other things like job opportunities and refresher classes.

I was quite surprised that we pretty much had a live Q&A available to us most days if we wanted it. And the lectures and eCritiques are uber awesome.

All in all, after class 1, I feel more confident about approaching animation, know what areas are my strengths and weaknesses, and just feel really inspired to learn and practice more posing and animating. Yay for AM! It's by no means easy, but it's really encouraging and fun learning together with a community of like-minded people - all with the same goal.

Note: next post is likely to come at the end of next term.

Ball with Roll Exercise

I found out who my class 1 mentor will be and I'm totally stoked. It will be Anthony Wong - an animator from Pixar, who also has Disney on his resume. Class 1 starts tomorrow. Let the real animation education begin!

In the interim, I thought I should try to learn a bit about bouncing balls. My focus here was supposedly the roll, as I avoided adding rolls in my MSW exercises. This exercise has not had any feedback, so I'm sure it's full of flaws. Please do bring any weaknesses to my attention if you notice them.

I have so many questions to ask and am so pumped for the core part of AM. Here's the beginning of the point of no return, and I'm diving in head first.

Maya Springboard Progress Reel

It's now week 11 of my first term ever at Animation Mentor. Actual classes and assignments have finished, and I've compiled all my exercises done during this time (including some non-assignments) into this one video progress reel. The focus of the Maya Springboard class was becoming comfortable with the technology, so there was no mentoring of the 'art' itself. However, we were able to give each other comments, and this feedback helped immensely. From here onwards, things can only get better (sounds like a song I know....)



FYI to any non Animation Mentor folk looking at this, AM terms are pretty busy and we generally post our work internally within the AM site. Consequently, during my time at AM I may only update this blog at the end of each term.

First animation

This week we began learning the technical stuff in Maya relevant to animation. Our first task was to animate a poly sphere. This is what I came up with - trying to implement some concepts from the Jason Ryan ball tutorial. However, when I looked at other people's work, I learnt a few new tricks which I will surely apply to my next animation and which will fix any floatyness that this ball may have.

Weeks 4-6 at AM

Weeks 4 to 6 of AM was essentially teaching us the basics of the non-animation discplines of modeling, rigging, surfacing and lighting, whilst simultaneously getting us familiar with tools and concepts such as hierarchies and cameras which will help in our animations. We had to build a simple character and simple set, put is some camera shots, wack in some surfaces and lights, and render those shots. I feel that the main relevance that comes out of this exercise for AM is that we'll be confidently able to set up our shots for AM exercises. Of course a lot of this was just revision for me, but I still learnt heaps, and after barely touching Maya for a year (though I did use Lightwave for work), I felt re-energised and excited about doing creative stuff in 3D.

I know that some of the shots are a bit dark, but seeing as I am trying to be an animator, I won't go back to fix that now, but rather put my energy into learning animation stuff.









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