anthea hearts animation mentor

New Planet 51 Trailer!!

2009-01-16T05:18:00.000-08:00

The movie I am currently working on in Madrid Spain has just released our new trailer, check it out!

WATCH TRAILER

Awesome United Airlines Commercials

2008-08-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

A bunch of great artists from around the world were hired to do these beautiful commercials for United Airlines. Here's the article from Cartoon Brew, it has links to the pieces.

Bolt! In Russian!

2008-08-14T11:19:00.000-07:00

The Princess and the Frog

2008-07-30T10:06:00.000-07:00

Plant 51 Behind the scenes

2008-07-29T10:22:00.000-07:00

Hellboy 2 VFX Wold Article

2008-07-21T15:41:00.000-07:00

Interview with animator Jay Davis of Double Negative

Bolt Trailer

2008-07-09T11:08:00.001-07:00

Releases Nov 2008!!

Planet 51 article

2008-07-09T10:53:00.000-07:00

Wall E Cupcakes

2008-07-09T10:52:00.000-07:00

Update: L.A.

2007-12-04T14:42:00.000-08:00

I've moved back to LA to work on "Bolt" It's a great opportunity and I'm really excited to be back here to see all my old friends, and meet all the new faces. It's going to be exciting.

Update!

2007-05-30T21:36:00.001-07:00

WATCH THE "Horton Hears a Who" TRAILER

I've accepted a position at Blue Sky to work on "Horton Hears a Who" and I'll be back in NY for a bit. I start in a couple of weeks!

Closing Time

2007-05-20T12:18:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. Lately it's been few and far between when I have ocasion to post. So, I've decided to close this blog. I just don't have much to write about anymore. It has been an amazing ride. I started this blog way back when Animation Mentor first opened in 2005. And since then I have met so many amazing people through the school, my experience at Disney was so much fun, and now I'm onto a new adventure. Thank you to all of those who have read this over the last 2 years, and I wish you all the best of luck on your animation journeys.

Hot Fuzz

2007-04-24T07:49:00.000-07:00

...so much better than Bad Boys II

Viajando pelo Brasil e Argentina com a Fernanda

2007-04-20T17:31:00.000-07:00

-Rio de Janeiro
-Sao Paulo
-Campos do Jordao
-Buenos Aires

Featured Short Film by Fernanda

2007-04-19T19:39:00.000-07:00

Check out Fernanda's new short film featured in this month's newsletter.

it's a wrap

2007-04-18T06:04:00.000-07:00

The MTR wrap party was about a month ago but I just found this picture from the party of me with Tracy Watada. I wish I had more pics from this ginormous, spectacular event, but I don't. My bubble photos with 3 handsome men are still MIA...

Seres Queridos

2007-04-17T19:19:00.000-07:00

All chaos ensues when a woman takes her new man home to meet her family. Irresistibly funny and filled with eccentric characters. "Seres Queirdos" (Only Human) is a must see.

Meet the Robinsons Test Animations

2007-03-30T08:57:00.000-07:00

Watch my Robinsons Test Animations

At Boardner's last night

2007-03-28T00:16:00.000-07:00

The Happy Hollows

Radio Free Silver Lake

i love ny

2007-03-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

To visiting friends at Blue Sky, Psyop, and M2 Post, to arts and culture at MOMA, and the Brooklyn Museum, to dining and nightlife at Buddakan, STK, The Gansevoort Hotel, Sway, Haru, the W, Mizu, Honey, Plumm, Cafeteria, Mercadito, Obivida, and Room Service. It was a great time. I miss you nyc!

pics

All signed up!

2007-03-13T10:23:00.000-07:00

You've been "Muskered" !

2007-01-21T18:20:00.000-08:00

me by John Musker

me by Larry Wu

me, Nik Ranieri, Scott Robideau and Jason Anastas by Scott Robideau

--------------------------------------------

The caricature show we had a work a while back was such a blast. I finally got around to taking some pics to share with you. It was such an honor to have one made by John Musker, I was so completely surprised and flattered. There was also one of me in Rebecca's "Meet the Robin-Simpsons" group of caricatures which were amazing as well.

--------------------------------------------

Ed

2007-01-17T11:41:00.000-08:00

Ed Catmull came in my office today! It was totally awesome! He asked me about my walls!

My Bang improv group

2006-12-05T16:36:00.000-08:00

Here is the first photo of our improv group. We have been practicing for 6 long months and are about to start performing games onstage in January. Within a few months we will be performing the Harold every Friday for many many more months. Wish us luck!

1 Year at Disney

2006-11-07T09:57:00.000-08:00

This Halloween was my official one year anniversary at Walt Disney Feature Animation. The year has flown by, I almost can't believe how fast. So many things have changed for me both professionally and personally over the last year and I couldn't be happier. I now have a great group of friends here in LA and it's beginning to feel like home. I've also learned so much from all the amazing animators here, and I am very lucky to have their feedback. I can only hope the coming year will be just as amazing and that I will continue to grow and learn. All in all a great year.

Cool "art" from Banksy

2006-09-14T11:30:00.000-07:00

BANKSY WEBSITE

Notorious for his Paris Hilton CD incident. Check out his site for some cool artwork.

overheard in the denny's restroom last night...

2006-09-11T18:16:00.000-07:00

"...oh my god to call Rob, I have to like scroll past Ron Jeremy in my phone...and you know even with that whole "adult filmstar" thing, he's like so smart, and like so chill, and like so rad..."

I just saw Selma Hayek

2006-09-11T12:57:00.000-07:00

wow.

Who loves "the State" ?

2006-08-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

Me! I do! It's been a while since I thought about MTV's The State sketch comedy show, but for some reason these scenes keep popping into my head. Maybe it's all that pudding or tomato sauce I've been rolling around in, call me crazy but I can't stop thinking about the State. Last year I got into such a frenzy for the State that I found a person selling DVD rips of video tapes of episodes on ebay and bought them all. Just thankful to have any last drop of that long ago show. I remember in highschool my friend Andrea and I used to be totally obsessed with it. And looking back now, there are just so many great episodes. Monkey torture (purely psychological), the popa, $240 worth of pudding, Doug, restaurant signs. All classics. Enjoy!

One great "The State" episode
bad quality, I know, but beggars can't be choosers

Amazing Student work

2006-08-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

AM STUDENT SHOWCASE

I saw this at comicon and I was completely blown away! The progress of the students has been stunning. I couldn't stop staring at the screen. I was so excited to see all my friends work that they had been laboring over these past months. It has been tough not getting to see the weekly progress like I used to, but this totally made up for it. Thanks for putting this together so we can all get a peak inside. Great job to all the students involved. And there's only more goodness to come, I can't wait to see the short films in a few weeks!

crazy comicon peoples

2006-07-27T09:38:00.000-07:00

This year was my first time ever at the crazy comic book convention Comicon in San Diego. I drove down bright and early Saturday morning to avoid traffic and headed over to my good friend Lauren's house. We went over to the convention center with the swarm of other Comicon people. When we got there the line to buy passes was ridiculous, luckily I had applied for a free pro pass and the line was much shorter. I saw some of my work friends on line, then we headed into the craziness of the convention floor. It was system overload from the first minute on, everywhere you looked was either a crazy costume, some nutty art work or exhibit. We walked around the floor a few times and then headed over to the Animation Mentor booth since Lauren was volunteering. The booth was packed with non stop traffic, later that day Shawn and Bobby gave reel reviews which made for even more excitement. Later that night we met up with other Am students for a night of San Diego socializing, here are the pics:

Comicon San Diego 2006 afterparty pictures

Bang, Sabrina's level 1 improv class karaoke graduation party

2006-06-29T11:09:00.000-07:00

I can't believe my first class at bang is already over. Sabrina was such an awesome teacher and I think we all grew leaps and bounds. At the end we were all trying really hard to learn, and I think we kept pushing ourselves as individuals and as a group. We definitely found some comraddarie, and decided it wouldn't be right to go out without a bang, or a party for that matter. So that's how my second karaoke party for the week happened. We met up at Amiagi's in the Gower Gultch which is this weird fake western strip mall on Sunset, you would never find anything like that in NYC. I sang a few songs, and everyone was up on their feet for my "Blister in the Sun" rendition. Stacy surprised us all with her amazing singing ability "You're the right kind of sinner! " Rock on Stacy. And even though Sabrina couldn't be there, we know she was there in spirit. Much fun and sake was had by all, I can't wait to continue to level 2 w my new bang friends in our group, "Where's James"

pics

Pictures!!!

2006-06-21T20:13:00.000-07:00

2nd Annual AM BBQ

2006-06-20T08:31:00.000-07:00

This weekend I flew up to San Fran for the AM BBQ. What a trip! It was filled with new and old friends, lots of eating, drinking, and karaoke-ing. Thankfully my friend Lauren in class 3 was there with me otherwise I don't think I would have ever made it to the bbq since I do not know my way around those parts. Friday after I arrived, Lauren and I headed over to the AM Headquaters for a tour by none other than Taylor himself, it was awesome to see the actual office. I had never been there before and only seen it on the video news and in the lectures. Friday night we met up w Sternio, Matt Kelly, and Shelley at a local bar. Saturday was the world famous AM BBQ where about 150 people showed up!! It was so exciting to meet all the students I've been hearing about. There was lots of vegi burgers, beer, and animation talk, and even a few mentors dropped by. Then Saturday night was the much hyped Karaoke party at the Mint. It got pretty crowded in there but we were still able to sing a few tunes. Then we headed to another bar down the street to meet up w more AM folks. The night flew by, and after a slice of San Fran pizza we headed home, Matt W and Eric (Bakerboy) were kind enough to give us a ride. Then I flew back Sunday, I'm so glad I made the trip this year. There are tons of pictures floating around (and possibly some video??) I'll try to get my pics up this week, but in the meantime:

Kenny R's pics

Sternio's pics

Jay's pics

Freddy's pics

ask the AM students, recorded

2006-05-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

Watch a recording of the AM students flash meeting

How cool, the very first unofficial ask the AM students flash meeting hosted by Aja, Benjamin DS, and Freddy. It's so nice you guys took the time out to answer some questions of new and prospective students, like how does grading work, the workload, the rigs, the short story classes. There was tons of great information and advice in there, and plus I miss y'all so much it's just nice to see your smiling faces.

*the session really gets up and running about 11 mins in, so feel free to hit the fast forward button

**there's also a "chat" button where you can see the live chat going on, and the corresponding responses of the AM students

double dose of bang

2006-05-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

In the second class at bang, we worked on spacework, making a pantomine action realistic and interesting while at the same time not letting the action take over the scene. We started off playing in a huge field of dry leaves, then a room full of cotton candy. It was interesting to attempt making walking and wading through these 2 different objects believable, not only because of the different weight and textures of the two, but all the difference in attitude each substance conveys. Then as a group we created a room full of objects, the trick was to remember what each of the objects were and to keep the integrity of the room structure. For instance if someone has created a counter top to use, the next person cannot just walk through the space the countertop inhabits. It was sort of a memory challange as well. All in all the idea of spacework is new and interesting to me, it also seems really hard to come up with objects or sets since there is such a wide range of possibilities open to you as the creator. Another important factor is making the action as simple, clear, and readable as possible this is not only for the benefit of the audience, but also your scene partner as well. This is definitely an area where animation overlaps.

In addition to my level 1 class, I also signed up for an improv class at work on Friday afternoons. Hopefully this double dose will give me an infusion of creativity to improve my animation and improv skills.

Harold and Maude

2006-05-13T09:19:00.000-07:00

An absurd existential life loving dark comedy. This is the first time I've ever seen this 1971 masterpiece of life affirming hilarity. Definitely recommended for comedic timing, and contrast of characters.

quick sketches from about 5 months ago

2006-05-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

compare and contrast

2006-05-06T21:07:00.000-07:00

For my first dialogue piece in AM Class 3, I choose a clip from My Fair Lady. I ended up getting a full time job midway through Class 3, at the same time we had to start up a second dialogue piece which meant I had to move on even though I wasn't completely satisfied with my final animation. I had always wanted to revise my Queen of Sheba animation, but haven't had much time since, so I thought the best decision was to lay it to rest and not look at it for a few months. A few weeks back I found myself with a rare free weekend and had a go at a spirited round of revisions on this old animation. In only 2 days I think I was able to fix a lot of the major problems. Although this animation is still far from perfect, I definitely think it's better now than what I handed in for my final assignment in October. This Bishop model has a muppet mouth and limited facial, but since then I have learned so much about lip sync that I was able to make the best of the limited rig. At that point last year I didn't even know that Bishop had teeth and a tongue that you could animate, I didn't even know what to do with them so I just left them, but since then I've learned the major importance of the teeth and tongue for lip sync.

Queen of Sheba: What I handed in as final in Class 3, Oct 2005

Queen of Sheba: New Final after 2 days of revision work

watching the master classes at Bang

2006-05-06T10:37:00.000-07:00

Last night I stopped by Bang for The Big Show, a show where a bunch of the master classes get up and perform on a weekly basis. I had a few friends from work who had gone through the program and were in the show, this was the first time I had been able to go check out a show at Bang. There were 4 different master class groups, these groups are formed by who you end up in classes with as you move through the program, it's scary to think that the people I just met on Tuesday may be the people I will get up there on stage with one day, we hardly know eachother now, but I guess after months and months of practice and getting to know one another it might be easier. I thought all the groups did really well, and it was really funny. At the beginning each group asked for a suggestion from the audience, and then the entire improvised performance was based off of that first suggestion. Fascinating to watch, but also really scary to think I may have to do that one day.

I also bumped into my old AM pal Brad Bradbury who was also in the audience. Brad is in Level 2 at Bang and already a seasoned improv guru. I will have to go to him for all my improv advice from now on. Does it get any less scary as the classes move on, Brad? It was also great chatting about the assignments and students at AM, I miss all you guys so much!

first class at bang improv studio

2006-05-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was my first class at Bang Improv Studio. I had originally intended to enrol about 6 months ago but had to cancel due to my work schedule at the time. Since we have had a little bit of a breather I thought it would be a great chance to get back into improv, so I enrolled in the level 1 class.

I had taken 1 improv class back in NYC at the Upright Citizens Brigade. It was really interesting to see the different approaches of the 2 teachers so far. Some of the exercises we played seemed familiar but also very different approaches. For instance one exercises we played last night was an activity game, a person was to start an activity on stage and the next in line was to begin acting out the activity in sync with the person, when you realized what they were doing, you said "we're brushing our teeth" or whatever the activity was, then you begin a new activity of your own. In NY we played the "what are you doing?" game which was sort of similar but quite different. In "what are you doing", a person would start by doing an activity, say brushing their teeth, then the next person after realizing what they were doing would ask "what are you doing?" the person would then respond something totally different like "I'm stretching for a marathon" and the next person would have to take on that activity.

Last night it seemed a lot of the exercises were to try to get us to be on the same page at a subconscious level, we did this mirror exercise where you are supposed to match your partner's every move as if you were one. It was really interesting to see how in touch with one another you can become with the right level of concentration. We also jumped right into scene work, and did our best. I was really nervous, but I think most of us were. It was really fun overall and I can't wait for the next lesson.

A great thing is that Bang students get into shows for free, so I will definitely have to take advantage of that great offer.

more quick sketches

2006-05-02T16:59:00.000-07:00

quick sketches

2006-04-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

5 mins

1 min

3 mins

5 mins

workshops and more learning

2006-04-25T14:43:00.000-07:00

The Anatomy workshop I took this Sunday went really well. t was a lot of information to take in all in one day, especially for me since I had absolutely zero prior knowledge of anatomy. We covered every area of the body and I think I understand the skeletal and muscular systems a lot better now. here's no telling if this will help improve my drawing ability but I think there's a good chance it will help. It is so amazing how much this stuff just clicked listening to the instructor go over all the muscles that are in all of us, and now all I can see are the muscles underlying each form I encounter. It's almost like seeing bodies and faces in a new light, in a different way. No wonder all my drawings before looked like body suits, I had no idea of what was actually going on under there. And then I started to wonder why in all the schools I attended that anatomy wasn't required, it's a shame I've gone on this long as an artist without any anatomy information.

As a follow up I am going to attend a drawing seminar with Karl Gnass at the Animation Academy this Saturday on Using the Force: The Dynamics of the Figure. I am really excited for this jump start in my drawing education, hopefully I will have some good sketches to post soon.

Intro to Anatomy Workshop

2006-04-19T13:30:00.000-07:00

I just signed up for the Intro to Anatomy 1 day workshop this Sunday at the Los Angeles Academy of Figurative Arts. I've heard lots of great things about the instructor Rey Bustos, and can't wait to learn more. I feel that my drawings skills are still lacking due to my unskilled knowledge of the human anatomy, I've never taken an anatomy class before and don't know much about the skeletal and muscular systems under the skin. That may be why all the people I draw in the lunchtime drawing class here at work never have any muscles or definition, and why Karl Gnass keeps telling me I draw "bodysuits" He's right! They never have any muscles! Hopefully I can learn something about the human anatomy and improve my drawings.

Meet the Robinsons Trailer

2006-04-17T09:14:00.000-07:00

The release date of the movie has been extended to March of 2007, this will give us enough time to make the movie the absolute best it can possibly be and I'm really excited to see the outcome. For now you can view the "Meet the Robinsons" trailer. The character design, lighting and overall look of the movie is breathtaking. The animation department has been doing an amazing job, and so far it has been a great experience getting to be a part of it.

Watch the "Meet the Robinsons" Trailer

The great outdoors

2006-04-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

Living in California is so different than NYC. For one thing when you are "outside" in NYC you mostly just see buildings are high as the eye can see, there's never really any open space, unless you go to Central Park which is nice but essentially a "nature cage" Here is LA there are so many more outdoor activities to take advantage of like hiking, going to the beaches or mountains. So much is right within your grasp, and that is something I'm thankful for. And you can enjoy a meal at an outdoor cafe with an actual view, so different from the concrete jungle of NY. Yes LA has it's own problems and pitfalls but overall I am liking it much better than NYC. It's weird because I heard lots of bad things about LA, mostly from New Yorkers that moved here, that I didn't know what to expect, but I've been pleasantly surprised so far. There are a lot of compromises you have to make, and you do have to give up lots of conviences of NY but overall I think it's worth it. LA is also so spread out that I hear it sometimes takes years to find your niche and the area you like the most, it takes a lot of experimentation. I was just wondering if anyone else who's made the big move has had a similar experience, good or bad. It would be nice to hear some more perspectives on the subject.

What the Bleep!

2006-04-13T08:38:00.000-07:00

It's the movie that asks you "how deep into the rabit hole do you want to go?"

I have been taking a night class on meditation here at work, and the movie "What the Bleep?" came up. I had never heard of it so I immediately netflix'd it. It turned out to be the most fascinating movie/documentary ever, it's basic premise is that all life is connected. There are some really interesting parts on emotions and their neural transmitter connections to our brain, and how we can get addicted to our emotion patters. In a weird wild way, it totally makes sense. There was this one part on the effect of thoughts on water molecules that was really powerful. There was a study done on a few different glasses of water, some of them were blessed by a Buddist monk with thoughts like "friendship" or "chi of love" and also this message was written on the glass. Over night the water molecules changed completely, supporting the claim that thoughts can influence water, thereby influencing our bodies and all around us.

It's a pretty wild adventure for those brave enough to check it out.

A Flurry of Drawings

2006-04-12T17:24:00.000-07:00

Right now I'm reading "A Flurry of Drawings" by Hugh Kenner, about the amazing life and career of animation legend Chuck Jones. Jones is best known for his Looney Tune Masterpieces during his 60 year career span in the animation industry. Truly a lengend. So far the book has been a really entertaining but sometimes wordy exploration of the life and times of all that is Jones.

Also check out this DVD which explores the magic in the drawings.

***And by popular demand...Chuck Amuck, thanks for the recomendation Brad! I am going to look for this one in the library next.

Animation Birthday

2006-03-27T18:21:00.000-08:00

Today is the one year anniversary of when Animation Mentor opened it's doors for business. I can remember it like it was yesterday. So much has changed in a year it's so incredible to think about it. I had stumbled upon the Animation Mentor website about a year and a half ago. I was determined to learn animation but so far up until that point all my attempts had failed. Through grad school, internships, night classes, none of my efforts had gotten me any closer to my dream. After all that I still didn't know the basic fundamentals of animation or even where to begin.

I had applied to Sheridan a few years before, at the time the best traditional animation school, I didn't get in and cried so hard, now looking back it was probably a blessing in disguise, I was available when AM opened. I remember waiting eagerly as the time was coming up for AM to open, I remember calling Francis at least weekly to see ask "can I apply yet?". Then it happened, they announced the school was opening and ready to take submissions, it all happened so fast, I filled out my application and barely got it in on time, then the calls to Francis and Rosie began again, this time I was asking "did I make it in the school?"

I had no idea how many people they would accept and after so many disappointments in my previous attempts to learn animation, I didn't want this opportunity to slip past me. I just knew from the teaser trailer on the website that their philosophy and approach was going to work for me and I was instantly hooked. It didn't matter that no one knew what the heck I was talking about when I blabbed on about this internet school and how it was going to change animation forever, I 'm pretty sure most people thought I was nuts and didn't take me seriously, but I just knew it was something very special.

I was working a full time job in NYC at the time when AM opened, it was pretty crazy timing because I had just started the full time job about a month before and had also signed up for improv classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade not knowing that AM would happen on top of all these things. My job at the time wasn't rewarding, I wasn't learning anything about animation or any art for that matter, most of the stuff I had to do was technical which is not my fortay, and I didn't see any room to grow as an artist. After AM began I was overwhelmed, it was hard, the hardest school I've ever been to, maybe it was so hard because I was such a complete noobie to animation, or maybe it was hard because I could sense what was riding on my progress, all my animation goals, my entire future depended on my performance at this school, and the way I saw it, it was my absolute last chance to make something of myself.

After so many failures in my attempts to become a working animator, I didn't want to mess this opportunity up. So I made a tough choice and quit my job to do AM full time. I had to do it, I had no choice, I could see that I was messing up my chance by not having enough time to work on my homework, which left me frustrated and upset that I wasn't making progress. The answer was simple, just try harder, which meant spending more time on my assignments. That was the best decision I could have made to help myself, and my work began to improve.

By class 2 I had moved to LA and was deep into the obsession of AM, so much to do, so many friends, so many resources. It was awesome having so many new experiences and meeting so many people. Siggraph was a major turning point, and I had the time of my life hanging out with my internet friends. After Siggraph I was even more determined to improve, I still wasn't meeting the high expectations I wanted to achieve. So I tried even harder. The healthy competition atmosphere of AM really motivates you, there are all these amazing students, most who have much more experience than me, and when I finally felt like I was keeping up and not falling by the waste side anymore, it was a major achievement for me. I mean here I am with all these students with so much more talent and experience than me, and I'm actually holding my own, it was empowering. And in turn, it made me want to try even harder.

By class 3 we had gotten into acting, and a lot of the time I felt over my head. I was satisfied with my assignments but always knew I could do better, I knew my lack of experience was a hindrance, I was holding my own but there's no way you can make up for years and years of animation practice in a few short months. I had a long way to go. I kept focused on my assignments and got a surprise a few weeks into class 3, it was Walt Disney Feature Animation, they were offering me a position as assistant animator on Meet the Robinsons. Is this really happening? This is crazy! I couldn't believe I was so lucky. I have only AM to thank, because without them I would still be trying to figure out how to animate a bouncing ball believably.

I finished class 3 while working full time, it was a struggle but totally worth it, I wouldn't have felt right if I didn't put the effort into finishing my assignments. I wasn't able to register for class 4 because of the workload and I have been working on animation tests here in my spare time. I have been working here for 5 months so far, and every day is better than the last. I am learning so much from the amazing talent here, and it's been really fun getting to work on this movie. And that's a year, what a year.

Hey AM, I'm one year old today too because of you.

Thanks

Beyond the Word

2006-03-21T14:18:00.000-08:00

Right now I have begun reading Beyond the Word by world famous mime Stefan Neidzialkowski. The forward by Marcel Marceau has been a great read. For any interested in mime this is an essential book to have. I also just finished Bip in a Book by Marcel Marceau. This one is mostly great pictures of the Mareau as the character he invented "Bip." Both books were lent to me by my co-worker Dale, he also recommended watching The Red Skelton Show, which I had never heard of before. Red Skelton was a comedian and mime who had a hit TV show for a while. He did stand up routines and live sketch performances, he was also a master of mime and even had Marceau as a guest a few times. The art of mime has been so important to study for animators, they have the most clear staging of ideas in every performance. The audience never misses important story points because clarity is of the upmost importance in mime. It's some great reference to check out if you have the time.

Some Cool Art Blogs

2006-03-17T10:49:00.001-08:00

Animation Youngsters

2006-03-16T14:12:00.000-08:00

I've just been turned onto the website Acme Animation. It's a non-profit educational site for young teenage animation students. It's a great way for highschool and college students to learn about animation, and it's free. I think the way it works is beginner animators can submit their tests and move up the ranks, when you reach a high enough level you are eligible to get your animation test reviewed by a professional animator. The way they can earn points to be able to get their work seen by professionals is to give crits to other students. This way everyone learns and is helping eachother. I have been lucky enough to be able to sit in on a few live video confrence sessions with Acme where Clay Kaytis gives live crits to some local animation students, the process is amazing, and the students work really improves. On CG talk a few young animators have been interested in joining Animation Mentor, but aren't yet old enough to apply, this site would be a great opportunity for them to get their feet wet and when they are finally ready for Animation Mentor they will be two steps ahead of the game. Definitely a great resource, pass it along to any animation youngsters.

Lasers

2006-03-11T19:13:00.000-08:00

Today I am recovering from having laser eye surgery. Yesterday was an intense day filled with lots of new experiences. I was able to get the day off from work to go to Saddleback Eye Center in Laguna Hills, CA to get a laser eye consultation. All went well and I decided to go ahead with the surgery same day. First lots of measurements and pictures were taken of my eyes, then after visits with a half dozen doctors and nurses it was time to go under the knife, I mean laser beam. When the numbing eye drops had taken affect I was put under a laser that felt like a lot of pressure on my eye and sinus, but all in all not too painful. The second laser also entailed me having to keep my eye directly focused on a blinking red light. It was pretty uncomfortable at times but was so brief that it was done in no time at all. For the next 6 hours I slept in a nearby hotel for patients. I couldn't see much and everything was blurry. My eyes felt uncomfortable and scratchy all night. I have to sleep with these geeky sci-fi goggles on to prevent anything from scrathing my eyes during the night. Those coupled with the wrist guards my doctor ordered me to wear at night to prevent carpal tunnel make me look like such a nerd!! O well, the things we do in the name of science. Today my vision has already gotten a lot better, I will be on a strict regimin of 3 different kinds of eye drops in a stategical rotation throughout the day, in total about 30 drops per eye per day for the next 5 days, then 12 drops daily for the next 4 months. That is going to be a pain, but for the ability to see well without glasses or contacts, it's definitely worth it!

Reels

2006-03-03T07:59:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking a lot lately about demo reels since this post on Spline Doctors. I have been viewing a bunch of reels lately and it got me thinking, what is the best length for a reel? Short and sweet is the best way to go in my opinion, too many student reels are just too long. I think another problem some students have is repeating the same idea again and again on a reel. If you have done many shots for a project that are the same characters in different situations, then I would just choose 1 or 2 of the shots to show, if you show 10+ shots of a similar tone it begins to get pretty boring and monotone.

Mix it up, show as many different kinds of characters and acting as you can. You can still show different kinds of character when using the same rig, for example in Animation Mentor most of our assignments were done using Bishop, but Bishop had a million different personalities, all shown by different acting, dialogue, posture, costumes etc. As far as how many pieces you have, I am guessing around 5 pieces would be a good number. Does anyone have any tips on the best way to edit your demo reel?

Revision of "Olga" Animation

2006-02-25T20:40:00.000-08:00

Well this revision was a long time in the making but I have finally been able to call it over! There comes a point where you just have to move on to focus on your current work at hand. This animation was hard for me to let go of since I really liked some of the poses/mood of it and didn't want to throw it away. This personality walk from a stopped position was our first assignment in Animation Mentor Class 2 - Body Mechanics. I ended up not being able to finish and polish it because we had to move on to other assignments at a pretty fast rate. I decided to revisit it this year and see if I could make any improvements. I want to start getting animations together for a reel, and I found that all of them need a lot of tweaking before I can show them. Next month it's "The Queen of Sheba" animation revisited. We'll see what I can do to fix that mess up with the limited spare time I have between my full time job and also working on other animations in my spare time. I have decided to only work on each revision for a month, after that whatever I have will be FINAL.

It's interesting to know that most of the people at my work don't put much stock into revising old animations and looking back. They think when your animation is done, it's DONE and you should immedietely move on to another animation when you are trying to learn. We had a meeting with John Ripa and he mentioned to never spend too many months on one animation because each of your animation tests should get sucessively better. Trying to continue to improve is always the goal of all this hard work. I am looking forward to getting these revisions behind me so I can look to the future.

Final GPT, moving on to 3D

2006-02-18T15:53:00.000-08:00

OK, so here it is, my final grease pencil test before moving onto 3D. I am taking the big leap from the planning phase to actually posing out my 3D character. This is an especially hard step to take since there is somehow a feeling of safety in the planning phase, the feeling of, "I haven't screwed this one up yet" Lots of things can go wrong in the 3D world, I find more stuff goes wrong if I haven't put enough time in the planning and research phases. But it is time to move on.

I am also pretty scared since I am going to use one of the characters at work for this test, the rig setups are pretty complicated, like nothing I've ever worked with before since the only other rigs I worked on were from school. I am familiar enough with the rigs form my day to day work so hopefully it will go alright. Since my last semester at Animation Mentor, we had Bishop as our character, he was pretty simple and straightforward, he was really easy to use. Now all the rigs at work are of the "broken rig" variety, which is similar to ik, meaning you can move the head, torso, hips all independantly of eachother. This sounds great to me since I only use ik arms and have gotten pretty used to that system. I like having that control over every part of the body.

In class 3 at AM, Bishop had limited facial controls, a muppet mouth basically. The characters at work are full facial with a million sliders and manipulators, something which I feel slightly underprepared for. I had tried one lipsync test before about 4 years ago and nothing since then. So all last week at work I had been working on my lipsync skills. I read up on some documentation we had from Mark Austin which goes in depth on how to create believeable lip sync. And then I gave it a whirl for myself. I think it came out reletively alright for my first try with such a complicated character. Now I'm not as scared about going back in and adding more detail. I'll be ok thanks to the great help and feeback I get from my co-workers.

Harold Lloyd Falls

2006-02-18T13:39:00.000-08:00

I've been researching pratt falls, notable Harold Lloyd. I needed to gather some reference of falls for my "I Promise" animation that I am planning out right now. I went to getty images and looked up Harold Llyod, I found some great stuff. (Thanks for the tip Dale!)

More GPT revisions

2006-02-13T08:22:00.000-08:00

I got a little distracted this weekend with the beautiful weather and going to the beach. I didn't get as much done as I would have liked to. I did edit the audio the audio to add crickets in the beginning and throughout. This made the clip longer than I had wanted but I think it needed time in the beginning to get a general kid like attitude across. I also worked on some of the scared poses and made the praying poses less hidden and closed up so the audience can still see his face. I'm not sure if it is working, I think it still needs a lot of work before I can take it to 3D.

new reference and GPT revisions

2006-02-06T11:17:00.000-08:00

"I Promise"

NEW Grease Pencil Test Revision

NEW reference of me acting silly

Thanks to the great advice I got from my former classmates, and at work from Jason, I was able to go back and retackle this shot. Jason had advised that I redo the reference to explore more terrified, praying poses. He aslo suggested the inward posture and rocking back and forth which I think is going to work well. I then reworked my GPT, keeping in mind all the staging problems from last week. I decided to go with a flying bug (thanks Albert!) since that would be easier for the audience to see enter and it wouldn't cause a problem with the placement of the campfire. I also had to edit the audio to add a small beat before the "aargh!!" so he has time to "see" the bug.

I think the poses at the beginning still need more work, my friend and co-worker Rebecca also just gave me some advice to have him look more "kid-like", perhaps having his foot up on the log. I am also not happy with the timing of the scared looks around, I feel like that needs more punch to it, to make him look more nervous. Rebecca suggested having him moving his eyes before he starts to move his head, almost like he is trying to remain very still to hear the noises. The ending scared jump part feels a little off to me still, the pose in the air and the landing poses aren't working for some reason. Hopefully I will get some good crits and be able to go back and revise this again.

CLASS 2 REVISITED: OLGA

This is blast from the past, my first assignment of Class 2, the incredibly hard Body Mechanics Class, this was from our "personality walk from a stopped position" assignment. I really messed up most of this assignment, especially the walk which I decided to cut out entirely. But I thought some of the beginning with the posing in the doorway could be salvaged. I really liked the persoanlity and mood of this piece so I decided to go back and start fixing the million mistakes in it. So far I have been cleaning up balance, the spine and foot placement. The legs are popping all over the place since I haven't gotten to that part yet, and the arms are a wreck, this was back when I was using FK arms, o the horror!! Well let me know what you think, I have more work to do on this for sure, but do you think it's worth saving?

I Promise GPT test

2006-01-30T08:00:00.000-08:00

I've started gathering reference for my new personal project. I had already decided on the audio a few months ago, and since then have taped some video reference. The idea is a boy at a campfire setting, sitting on a log when he hears scary noises like a wolf. I've created this pose test using stills from my reference. For me it's much easier to look at reference footage when you break it down and look at only the key poses in there. Most of the time when I take reference footage much of it is unusable, and I am making tons of unessecary movements, but that's what comes with experimenting and trying to find the best acting reference for your clip. Editing is a major component when looking through reference.

I also just did this grease pencil test using the key poses from my reference. Any comments and crits are helpful.

Improv

2006-01-13T20:03:00.000-08:00

IMPRO
Improvisation and the Theatre
On one of our many library outings here at work I recently pciked up the book Impro by Keith Johnstone. It's a book I've known about for a while but have never gotten around to reading. I'm sure glad I picked it up that day because ever since then it's been hard to put down, and I'm almost through half of it in only a few days. I have been reading it inbetween renders here at work.

The book goes into detail about status transations and how to negotiate your way through an improvised scene, basically using all the skills in raising or lowering your status as you've learned all your life. it has totally exposed all the ways we manipulate others and ourselves in order to gain attention and sympathy in life. It has been said that all acting scenes are a negotiation, and if this is so all negotiations are ones of status. A status negotiation can be as simple as someone staring as another looks away, all the way to a long drawn out argument where the high status bounces from one to another, with alternate uses of one raising their own status to lowering their adversaries.

The book is coming at the right time for me since I am due to begin classes at BANG! improv studio. I am super excited to take another improv class, I had taken one this summer in NYC at the Upright Citizen's Brigade, and it was so fun. Mostly when you are at an improv class you are being entertained while learning acting and improv techniques and also entertaining your classmates. I remember laughing for 3 hours straight. The final class performance was a day I was not laughing though, I was terrified, but the performance went off without a hitch and then we all went to karaoke together which was so much fun.

Improv is great for animators. You learn about character development, how to develop a story, working and collaborating with others while keeping your mind totally open to every possibility. And you'll probably find out you're funnier thatn you thought. : )

Still Revising

2006-01-08T09:28:00.000-08:00

So here are some revisions, still in progress. I feel like I am almost getting near the end of this one. I have to say it is the project I am the most happy with so far at AM. My first dialogue shot (the queen of sheba animation) didn't fair so well, and I feel like that one still needs a lot of work and polish, I definetely skipped the polish stage on that one but am planning on revisitng it sometime. But on this white doves animation I am really trying to buckle down and get it to the best that I can do, that is why I am not done yet. I put the wip up on the AM critique forum and got some great crits, I also got some advice from my mentor and am thinking of taking out some of the poses.

I am thinking of really slowing down the beginning, "when I get married" section, I think there is still too much movement here, and in order to contrast the chaotic-ness of the later part it still needs to be more sublte in the beginning. I am also thinking of changing the "horse drawn carraige" hand sweep to hold the pointed finger gesture longer, I think it gets lost going into yet another pose so soon after. Overall I would say the weakest thing about this animation is that there are too many poses and action, I will really remember this when planning my next animation.

Comments and crits are welcome.

Giving up is hard to do

2006-01-07T18:02:00.000-08:00

When someone asks me what I did on New Years Eve, I have to admit that I spent that entire weekend working on my Animation Mentor revisions. Yes, sad but true that instead of partying the night away I opted to work on my animation practice. And this lead to me think about what other sorts of things I've given up in order to persue this art.

For one there are the weekends, for me I would rather spend my weekends getting in the extra practice time. If that is what is going to make my animation assignment better then that is what I need to do. And yes this does include waking up at 6am on Saturdays and Sundays. Since our homework is due Sundays it became necesssary for me to restructure my weekly workload to get the most out of my assignments, this included giving up most of my weekend.

And thinking back to this summer, when I cancelled an entire European vacation that I was planning on taking. I had been planning the trip for months, which included meeting up with a friend and a cousin on different legs of the vacation to England and Greece. The trip unfourtunately landed smack dab in the middle of Class 2 Body Mechanics, and I realized there was no way I could miss 2 weeks of school and be able to catch up. I was struggling pretty badly at the beggining of AM and needed all the practice time I could get. So unfourtunately for me and my vacation mates, I had to cancel the trip.

But oddly enough I never regretted any of theese decisions to give up my time to the persuit of learning. I knew that I neeeded to give it my best shot, that I would need to sacrifice to have a chance to learn. Animation is such a hard artform to learn and even though I am only at the beginning of my education, I already know there will be tons more hard work in the future, and I am willing to do that.

Inside Scoop

2006-01-06T15:57:00.000-08:00

With the new rush of students coming into AM at a high point during the release of V2 I have been wondering what the future holds for us AM'ers. I've met so many talented animators at AM, not just the mentors, the students too have grown into being some impressive inspiring artists. I hope that these students and myself continue to learn and grow. So much has been happening with AM in a relatively short amount of time. In less than 10 months AM has become one of the best animation schools in the world and created a huge buzz. Sometimes being on the inside it's hard to see how the rest of the non-AM world sees us.

For some people it is hard for them to believe that AM, being an online school, that there is much merrit to this form of education. For me, I was hooked from the first teaser class I saw on the AM website months and months before the school opened. I always knew in my heart that this was the exact way I wanted to learn, and the actual reality of the school was even better than I had hoped. It is also hard for some outside people to believe the kind of bonds the students have formed with eachother, and the kind of connections the students have formed with their mentors, we have way more interaction with our teachers than most "real" schools.

Andy Warhol once said "Measure publicity in inches" meaning not to look at the content of what people are saying, just to look at how much they are saying. Either way I know that AM will continue to succeed as an animation school, and there will be the proof in the pudding.

Happy New Year! Here's some Rain

2006-01-02T10:01:00.000-08:00

It has been raining for 3 days straight here in LA. I thought LA was supposed to be full of sunshine and convertibles? We got out early from work on Friday which was great. I wanted to keep working on my "white doves" animation, what I handed in at the end of the semester I felt could be improved upon, so I have been trying to fit in a few hours here and there on cleaning up the animation. That turned into an all out marathon session this weekend, due to the rain there wasn't much to do besides that and an intermittant "Alias" break.

All in all I figured I have put in an extra 25 hours of work on the piece since handing in the final. I kept trucking away at the revisions thanks to some some great feedback I got at work and school. It is so crazy but I think I have made significant progress, I guess it goes to show you that animations are never "finished."

I think all the attention to detail that I have to deal with at work everyday has totally helped in the clean up of my own animation. All day I agonize over the teeniest details, the slight overlap of a sleeve for instance, and I have to make sure every frame is perfect. Now when I see something wrong in my own work, it is much easier to pinpoint and fix, it has just taken some time. I think I am almost there, just needs a few more days of work and it should be finished. It isn't ready to show yet, that's why there's no link. But I did put it up for review in the AM critique forum, hopefully I will get some good feedback that will help me finally finalize this one. I also have plans to remodel and rig the hair to add a slight secondary action when she moves. But what else is there to do? I can't go anywhere, can't go hiking cause of the pouring rain. O well, guess I'll open maya.

V2 Shakes the Nation

2005-12-29T17:18:00.001-08:00

This week we got a sneak peak of the newest version of Animation Mentor...V2!!! Since I won't officially be a student next term, I am trying to soak up all the V2 goodness while I still have access. The current students have been granted early access in order to beta test all the functions, making sure all will run smoothly in the Winter term. The design is beautiful and very easy to navigate through. It also brings back all the elements of Animation Mentor onto one site, previously we had different sites and web addresses for our workspaces, the forum, and the lectures. The AM player is now huge so we can see every detail of the training videos section that has also been restructured to allow for more detailed 3D training movies. The cruise the campus capabilities are now perfect and outstanding, I am soo jealous that I won't get to see it in full on action next semester. Another hugely dangerous feature is the 24/7 live chat room, I can see this already becoming an addiction for some, I could barely pull myself away. With hundreds of students from around the world attending there is bound to be many comings and goings and interesting conversations in there. Well done team AM! Next semester is going to be the greatest yet!

AM End of semester Karoke Party

2005-12-28T18:58:00.000-08:00

Return of the Kong

2005-12-19T16:43:00.000-08:00

Peter Jackson has outdone himself with the stunning King Kong. More insane and disgusting creatures than you could ever imagine, and you thought you were having a bad day! Try fighting off dinasaurs, bats, overgrown crabs all in a days work. The animators did an outstanding job of conveying weight and force, those creatures looked so muscular and strong, and they even pulled off the feeling of weight in fast moves which is pretty hard. Great work!

Class 3 Over, a Sad Goodbye

2005-12-17T11:09:00.000-08:00

I have decided not to continue into Class 4 of Animation Mentor. Having a full time job and adding on the extra 25 hours a week in homework time was just too much for me. I really want to devote myself to the professional opportunity I have right now, I may never get another chance like this and don't want to mess it up by having a split focus. I wouldn't feel right doing either halfway, it's all or nothing with me.

I am going to miss the great supportive community of Animation Mentor. They have truly created a special community for us as artists, a place where we can experiment and grow all while learning from and helping each other. I know for a fact I would never have improved without all the feedback from the amazing classmates whose critiquing skills have improved tenfold since the beginning of AM. Knowing that at any time of day, some student, somewhere will be online, and able to give you that mid week critique when you need it most. I am so going to miss the ability to cruise through the campus and take a peak at how each student is progressing, being able to look at their assignments and leave them feedback has been such a amazing thing for me to experience. I hope they will keep up with their blogs so I can still be a part of AM.

Good luck all my friends and class mates in Class 4 and beyond. I will miss you!

Holiday Surprise

2005-12-13T22:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the big day, the day when all the secrets and lies finally paid off. Yes it is true, we had been lying to our beloved AM staff for months, but all for a good cause. When Bobby and Co arrived Monday morning they were greeted with a roudy gang of AM students bearing gifts and homemade wine. I would definetely been there if it was at all possible but alas, it was not to be. So I sent gifts instead, lots and lots of gifts. Some might say it became quite an obsession, first it was just one little gift which turned into 2 which turned into 6 gifts!! It was just so fun I couldn't stop myself. Rebecca made the best gift ever, a sculpture of our mascot Spike, complete with animation disk, it was so cool and Bobby was so surprised and excited. We watched the party from hunderds of miles away that was being broadcasted live via webcam and were able to chat w all our AM friends and party in spirit. I love this school!

Week 11... Final?

2005-12-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

Woohoo!! The semester is almost over, well it IS over since I just uploaded my final assignment. There isn't anything due for week 12, but I will most likely make some revisions and make that version the absolute final and never touch this thing again!! Any crits and comments are welcome. I really want to make this one a keeper so if you see anything wonky let me know.

Why is Matt G so awesome?

2005-12-04T18:14:00.000-08:00

Mr Matt G is just rocking this latest AM assignment. His work has always been terrific, when we were in Mark Behm's class first semester I remember calling him "the teach" cause he was taking us all too school. Well at the time it sounded funny. But Mat's new assignment is no laughing matter, this is SERIOUS animation goodness and I am loving every second.

LINK TO MATT G's 2nd Dialogue Assignment

Animation Mentor Week 10

2005-12-04T10:59:00.000-08:00

WATCH WEEK 10 ASSIGNMENT WIP

I am still working away at this project but don't know if I am making it better or worse. I seem to hate it more every time I look at it. It is just not looking as "perfect" as it should. I changed the ending back to the original way I had it as per Jason's request. I guess having her turn her head and whole body was just toomuch movement so I went back to an earlier version on the ending. i haven't added any thing else to the end but I eventually want her to be brushing back a hair that comes loose during the frenzied "everything!" part. That will require some work in rigging and animating the hair, something I am not looking forward to.

I tried to take Jason's advice and "work through the pose", things were looking very poe to pose in linear, but now I feel like there may be too much motion and it looks distracting or swimmy. I guess it is a fine line betw keeping the character alive and having it look like it's drifting. I still haven't figured it out yet.

This week I was trying to work on my assignment at nights after I got home from work. That tired me out quick. But it was a good thing I got some work done because on Thursday at our Q and A Jason tried out a live dailies idea. A few of us pasted in a link to our WIP so far and the whole class viewed it as Jason gave a critique. That was also a great motivator to get some work done early in the week when I tend to be lazy Sun-Wed. Seems like there hasn't been much time for breaks recently. Yawn. But this semester ends in 1 week which is good news. That also means I only have 1 more week to finish this assignment, which is bad news.

Week 9, Take 2!!

2005-11-27T11:30:00.000-08:00

WATCH WEEK 9.5 WIP

Due to server issues we get another crack at week 9. In short week 9 is a DO OVER. This gives everyone a chance to get an extra week of work done or AM said we can hand in the same assignment we handed in on the real week 9, last week. I made some changes to my assignment from the great crit I got from Anthony Wong, our sub. I am not sure if it is totally working but I think I am heading in the right direction. I am going to have to move into linear this week. That is a very scary step for me, things seem to get all messed up when you move out of blocking and into linear and then splined. We will see how it goes!

Pretty, Pretty Princess

2005-11-23T07:53:00.000-08:00

So I broke down and textured Bishop. I just couldn't stand looking at his alien face anymore so I made him into a pretty girl. I was so inspired by Fernanda's makeup session w Bishop, she was able to change the waist, add a really cool outfit and even earings. I didn't go that far, just slapped some textures on but it is reading better. I really like Fernanda's animation too, it is coming out really well, another neurotic girl, a clip from Eternal Sunshine one of my favorite movies. Another student who is totally rocking it is Brandon Beckstead, with yet another Scrubs audio, this guy is obsessed! But his animation is so great, he is sooo talented! There is so much inspiration running around the halls of AM.

The reason why I had some free time last night was because our Q and A was cancelled due to internet problems. The AM site was down for hours last night, there was no getting into the main site, forums or player page. Becky emailed us the news that our Q and A had to be rescheduled but just in case she gave us a link to try...it was the new V2!! So we got a sneak peak at what AM is going to look like there are going be a lot of ne features too. I can't wait to see more!

when is this due?

2005-11-22T18:42:00.000-08:00

Seems like somehow I got my wires crossed and we actually have 2 more weeks for this second dialogue shot, it is due on Sunday Dec 4th!!! I don't know how I screwed that one up, I even wrote the wrong date on the dry erase board, and we all know the dry erase board does not lie!!

Now that I have some extra time, I am thinking of all the extra things I can add to my assignment and the old demons creep up, I should add blend shapes, I should add clothes, hair textures etc etc into non animation oblivion. This is a dangerous path since you want to add some fine touches that make your Bishop look different and individual yet you don't want to waste all your time on the non-animating stuff. I might just play around and see what I can come up with in less than an hour, if it takes more time than that, then it's not worth it.

This week Jason Ryan is on vacation and we had a sub, Anthony Wong formerly of Disney, now at Pixar. it was so great to hear a new fresh take on my assignment. I really like all of the suggestions Anthony had, and am definetely going to change some things, including the entire ending. He is also going to be our sub for the Q and A tonight,and I can't wait to hear more about him.

I also came across this post on Seward St where Alex, an AM student shares some Wong wisdom:

SEWARD ST POST

poem for hollywood

2005-11-20T18:18:00.000-08:00

New apartment near "the hills"
Missing the slackers of Venice and our neighboor who knows karate
No lights come with you here in either room
No fridge as well? At least there's a dishwasher caddy this time...

Boxes
Moving
Pushing Pulling again and again

Elevators that need a key and a password to open
up and down a million times key in key out

Second hand smoke coming through my bedroom window

Ahh, Hollywood

Week 9, Mostly Non-Linear Woes

2005-11-20T10:21:00.000-08:00

WATCH WEEK 9 ASSIGNMENT

I realized I was a week behind on my assignment progress due to the move across town. Last week I wasn't able to get as much work done as I wanted to and had to try to catch up this week. I am still not very happy with it but don't want to rush it and mess it up. I spent a lot of time getting the original blocking poses to work before moving on to the breakdowns. The linear pass is looking ok I guess, I just know it needs a lot more TLC, like 3 weeks more! But since we only have one more week for this assignment so it looks like my whole Thanksgiving is going to be spent in front of the computer. After this semester ends I am looking forward to a much needed vacation break. Of course I will still be at my full time job, but most of the time that doesn't feel like work anyways! A lot of students are planning on working on extra assignments during the break, to get in some extra practice before acting 2 starts. I know Aja did that last semester and ended up with her great delimbing piece which totally rocked! Maybe one day I will have time to do that too. Right now I have to go catch up on the lectures, can you believe I have not even had a chance to watch this week's lecture on quadrapeds!! I have been so totally busy, plus at work we are on linux boxes and they aren't working with the new flashplayer 8 that the AM site is using now. Since we just moved in I only got the internet hook up yesterday so there is tons to catch up on.

EDIT:
I think I may have messed up! I think we actually have 2 more weeks instead of 1 week after today!! This is great news, I may actually be able to finish this one on time!

Week 8 3D Blocking

2005-11-12T23:57:00.000-08:00

Grease Pencil Blocking Revisions

2005-11-10T23:18:00.000-08:00

WATCH BLOCKING REVISION

Time management skills

2005-11-09T18:48:00.000-08:00

Time management skills.. well I have none!!! Having a full time job and doing animation mentor is going to be tricky. My hat goes off to all the students who have been doing this all along, not to mention those with families, it is truly an amazing feat. How do you do it? When do you sleep? For me it is going to take some getting used to. So to compensate I am trying to keep my animation idea to a manageable size, I even choose a shorter clip. I am staging my character sitting down, that should help a little since I won't have to worry about animating legs and feet, although I will have to pay closer attention to the eyes and fingers, a trade off I guess. I still haven't revised my grease pencil test to a level I feel good about. I need to fix that up before moving onto the 3D Bishop, the trouble is I am never home! Looks like Saturday will be my only animating day again this week, we are moving on Sunday, so much is going on. I guess time management is one of the skills we are going to need to develop to make in this industry.

This week's lecture on Eyes and Blinks was taught my my mentor, Jason Ryan!! He really went in depth to a lot of different types of eye moves and blinks and why you would use them. great stuff. I hopefully can incorporate some of these ideas into my assignment.

On a similar not a bunch of great blocking pieces from the students this week. Wow, they are all getting so much better at an alarming rate. I think will all the excitement that has been happening around campus, some people have taken a look at their workflow and really ramped up their routine. Great job everyone!

Second Dialogue Test, Grease Pencil Blocking

2005-11-06T08:02:00.000-08:00

WATCH WEEK 7 2D BLOCKING for "White Doves"

Well this week I was running low on time. Had a lot of new things going on, plus a pretty long commute to my new job. I live in Venice but work in Burbank and for those of you that have not had the pleasure of commuting in LA, lemme tell ya, it sucks!! SO taking steps to fix this, we are moving to West Hollywood, a fair middle ground betw Burbank, where I work and Culver, where my boyfriend works. So hopefully this will buy me some more time to do homework on the weekday nights after work. Otherwise I am going to be stuck trying to fit it all in on Saturday and Sunday. This week it was ok since I only needed to hand in a 2d rough version of my new dialogue assignment since my mentor is away on a business trip for Chicken Little. Next week the real maya work will start, and I can't wait to try out the new GUI Bishop picker we got, although I can't seem to install it yet, I keep getting errors.

I went to see Chicken Little last night and got to mmet up with some AM students, that was so great to meet some of the new students. And Chicken Little in 3D was an experience like no other, how cool. And we all looked very fashionable in those green 3D glasses!

Animation Mentor First Dialogue Assignment

2005-10-30T13:54:00.000-08:00

Well this is the end of week 6, the final week of our first dialogue acting shots. I wish I had more time to tweak all the mistakes I see everywhere but you do the best with what you have. As Dylan Brown would say, "add more paprika next time" It is time to take a mini breather and catch up on all the great AM lectures I have been missing. We have the final segment of Walkthrough a Shot with Delio. That is sure to be great. I love getting to watch over these great animators shoulders, we get to see all their little tips and tricks. I had a lot of excitement this week, I had to buy a car to get to my new job tomorrow. Buying a car is stressful there are too many choices, and my assignment wasn't looking as good as I would have liked. I stuck with it, ended up running out of time at noon. There will probably be lots of revisions.

And we are starting our next dialogue shot right away. I chose some funny clips, I hope Jason can give me some good feedback since I like all of them and am not sure which one to go with.

Carlos Answers...

2005-10-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

Wow that Spaniard is certainly popular. There is just so much interest, pages upon pages of questions for the one, the only, The Fingerboarder himself...CARLOS BAENA!!! I had written in a question into the forum a few weeks ago. Seems that Carlos isn't able to respond to the many "Cars" questions that were asked, but luckily he was able to answer my other question which was kind of about job placement and the relative chances us AM'ers have at getting jobs. Speaking of which....Carlos, let's go out for margaritas to celebrate!!!!

CG Talk Carlos Baena

Week 5 Assignment: Linear

2005-10-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

WATCH WEEK 5 ASSIGNMENT

Another week of working on the Queen of Sheba. We are getting down to the wire with only 1 more week before it's due. I don't even know if we will be able to hand in revisions of this assignment since they are drilling into us the importance of deadlines in a professional work environment. When we eventually start working in the industry the animation is never "finished", the producers just take your work away from you and either put it in the movie or don't, so you only have this amount of time to finish and we need to start getting used to that.

Early this week I was able to get the whole animation out of blocking and all linear, after which I had no idea what to do. I spent a lot of time thinking about what in the world I needed to do next, I knew I wasn't ready for splines yet so now what? I decided to go back over it in linear with a fine tooth comb, only looking at small sections of 50-100 frames at a time and tweaking individual actions and body parts. I also added more to the eyebrow, jaw muppet mouth lipsync and some squash and stretch in the head which was really fun to do.

At the Q and A with my mentor Jason Ryan, I got some feedback about parts of my animation "hitting a wall" it was not the first time I had heard this, my previous mentors Derek Friesenborg and Mark Behm had also mentioned this. I guess it its still something to work on. Jason told me to work through the poses to help a fluid continuation of motion, I tried to do this although I am not totally sure I get the whole work through the pose theory. I may have made some of the action wishy washy and spliney.

And in amazing record setting news, I got my Ecrit back from Jason about an hour after I submitted. Thanks Jason for the lightning fast feedback, you are truly amazing!

Next week in addition to our 1st dialogue assignments being due, we also have to submit 3 more audio clips and get right back started again on the next dialouge piece, the blocking is due for that the week after, week 7. I had been researching audio all along in between breaks in preparation for this project. I am not totally satisfied that I have found the perfect clip yet so the search continues. It will be a mad dash to rip and edit all the choices this week, I would also love to tape some reference video and possibly do a grease pencil test of the final audios if time permits. It all depends on how the smoothing goes.

why are you kicking me out?

2005-10-19T16:24:00.000-07:00

Well I've been kicked out of many bars clubs restaurants and libraries in my time, but a ring hub..well I never! Early this morning I recieved an email from the Webring saying that I had been "suspended" from the Animation Webring, for not having the proper webring required format or something. Well I added the code to my template and as you can see I have the webring stuff down there at the bottom of the page. But I am still not in the ring hub yet! I keep checking the Animation Mentor Web Ring to see, but I guess I have been banned.

Animation Mentor Web Ring

UPDATE: Thursday afternoon, Fixed Webring Code, Jason got me back in the ring hub! Ready to rock and roll again! Thanks Jason!

Jason Schleifer Likes Coffee

2005-10-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

Week 5 Secondary Actions, was another special guest lecturer Jason Schleifer. For an hour Jason jumped and danced around while explaining the finer points of animations more sublte movements. He even pulled Carlos into the mix when he had to get something off his chest, that he had killed his pet turtle!! Oh no! At the end of this super entertaining lecture came the outakes, now when I say hilarious, I mean it. Jason has so much energy and spirit that he can hardly contain himself. And a love of coffee doesn't hurt. ;-) I love this school!

Animation Mentor, Acting 1: Week 4

2005-10-16T12:15:00.000-07:00

WATCH WEEK 4 ASSIGNMENT:

This week in addition to dressing naked Bishop up with a Tux and some fancy ears, I started moving out of blocking and into a linear pass. During the week I did some work, then on Thusday night at the Q and A got some great ideas from Jason and decided to take another stab at it and deleted the stuff I had done earlier in the week. Jason showed us how he "works through a pose" to get more breakdowns, and he also clarifyed his technique of "favoring the pose" I went back and worked non stop Friday morning to Sunday morning. I've uploaded my assignment and here it is. Mostly on linear with some small areas still in the blocking phase, on stepped mode. I have some more things to work out there at the end, esp the walk at the very end, that is going to be a doozy.

Some advice from Cameron Miyasaki...

2005-10-14T08:39:00.000-07:00

" My advice to all of you is simply to work hard. Not just kind of hard, but 110% blood, sweat, and tears hard. Just think. There are only a handful of jobs out there, especially in the film industry. I don't know how many students are in AM but it seems like a lot. Now add in all the students at the Academy of Art, CalArts, Sheridan, Ringling, etc. You get the picture. I know it sounds rough but unfortunately it's the truth. You have to work hard, be disciplined, and self motivated. A quote I always liked was "discipline is defined by what you do when no one is watching." It all comes down to how badly do you want it and are willing to put in the time and effort for it?"

AM is famous!

2005-10-13T13:56:00.000-07:00

READ THE AM ARTICLE ON USNEWS.COM

WOW! AM was just featured in this article, what a nice surprise. It really illustrates the different levels of animation experience we all come into the school with, and so many people, all from different walks of life, living as far away from one another as can be. Truly an amazing feat if you really think about. How the heck did they get this amazing school off the ground and ready to run like clockwork? I myself have no idea, but I am just happy they did. :)

Cameron Miyasaki...well, he's just so cool

2005-10-12T09:25:00.000-07:00

Las t night on Strut your Reel we had a live Q and A with Cameron Miyasaki, Pixar intern turned superstar. He's done some of my favorite scenes in the incredibles, the one where Helen and Violet are having a hear to heart outside the cave, he's become known for animating the more quite sublte acting moments. The part where Violet puts on her mask for the first time, and he whole posture changes, she can see it, her future...it's in her blood. Well, just Wow!

The Q and A was great I asked Cameron if he ever feels the need to have "real actors" act out reference material for him? And he replied that he doesn't ever get other people to help him with his reference, not the same way they did back in the DIsney days at least. I guess it's more goofy reference of myself...if it's good enough for Cameron...

Not only was Cameron gracious enough to answer all our live questions with his busy Pixar schedule, he is also pulling triple duty over at AM where he is our "Featured Mentor" We get a whole forum dedicated to asking him as many questions as we can think of. This is a great new feature of the school since our animation appetites ate voracious, there is already a never ending stream of questions waiting for him...thanks so much for doing this for us Cameron.

As if that wasn't enough, after the end of the Q and A session with Cameron, Strut Your Reel posted it's new interview with the Kit Kat Man himself, AM's own Bobby Beck!

I have to go lie down now, I'm having ninja overload.

Week 03 Refining Blocking

2005-10-09T09:02:00.000-07:00

Week 3 Refined Blocking

Week 3 More Reference Videos

I decided to do more reference videos after some more movie watching research to get inspration for hand gestures and the acting that goes inside of the broad movements. I came up with a few ideas, we will see if my mentor likes them. The assignment is getting tougher and tougher as the acting nuances get more refined.

Acting is hard and scary

2005-10-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

So this acting assignment has gotten me all scared! I am having a ton of trouble thinking of how to take the next step in my assignment. The first blocking came out good I thought, my mentor told me a few ideas, but said that mostly it was working and to keep going. This week we are expected to add in more breakdowns and more acting into the performance, getting down to the nitty gritty of the performance, the acting within the main poses. Now this is where I am having trouble, what to do with his head, hands, arms, eyes, elbows, etc and ect... I have been as usual watching a lof of reference movies for character and acting inpiration and will probably tape some more reference as well. I have no idea what is going to happen.

Andrew Gordon's class on Gestures has been helping me a ton. There is just so much to take in. I have also been reading Manwatching and Unmasking the Face, so I am just drowning in information. There are so many subtle points to consider and you want to make sure the attitude you are portraying is clear and believeable. Time for more planning.

Week 2 3D Blocking

2005-10-03T09:01:00.000-07:00

3D blocking is submitted! Thanks to all the work I put in with the grease pencil tool I ended up with a pretty solid 3D blocking piece. I knew exactly what poses I needed and basically copied the timing and poses from the GPT I worked so hard on. This is a great tool and I am definetely going to use it again and again, well probably forever.

I hope this porject continues to come along. I have a clear vision of what I want, the trick is getting bishop to do what I tell him!!

Comments / Crits welcome

Grease Pencil Tool Rocks!

2005-09-30T14:38:00.000-07:00

WATCH THE GREASE PENCIL TEST

Wow, am I loving this thing. I got kicked off the labtop because my boyfriend wants to take it to his new job at Sony. So I switched boxes and things aren't working exactly as they were before. After some technical difficulties I am back in the zone hopefully. Rebecca haelped me instal the new version of the GPT. This new version kicks butt, it has the eraser mode and a new layers option. It has been a breeze to use and I am getting much better at roughing out some drawings. I wrongly started blocking my model on Wednesday without using the GPT first to get aproval from my mentor, WRONG!! I'll never do that again. All the time I spent posing was worthless since in the GPT test I ended up figuring out that those poses weren't going to work. It is so much easier to find that out now. I will never again skip this much important step. Yet another lesson in the importance of planning BEFORE touching the 3d model.

Speaking of technical difficulties, Our 2nd Q and A with Jason had a few buggie issues. It seems that Jason's computer was overheated and crashed twice during our session. Jason was trying to show us an example in Flipbook of how he would go about a dialogue shot. I think mostly the main point is to find the GOLDEN poses in your animation as related to the mood and accents of the audio. There should only be one or two golden story telling poses, and don't be afraid to hold those poses and work within them. Mosre notes on this to come in the Jason Ryan Wisdom Blog.

BISHOP

getting into it...more reference

2005-09-28T13:43:00.000-07:00

http://www.vukster.com/anthea/Sheba_Captures_Edit2.mov

Well I decided to tape some more reference and went a little nuts. I tried out different staging scenarios and in the end the original idea I had seems the best and most clear for the personality. I am still going to have the little kitten now he will be in screen bottom right.

Blocking is due on Sunday, so soon, I have to get cracking!

The Making of a Character

2005-09-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

So much thought and preparation goes into an acting performance. As we move away from the basic body mechanics of movement and into the performance of acting it has made me think more deeply about defining a character. What is a character? And how do you get one? Well for now the answer alludes me. Now that I have selected the audio clip I will be animating to for the next 5 weeks, I have begun to think about the kind of character I want to portray in this animation. I did some test reference last week, but that for me was just the beginning, I mostly used this to narrow down my choices, using the reference capture as a way to guage if the clip was usable or not. If nothing came to mind or the capture ended up boring I felt that the animation would too and scrapped that idea. I chose the Queen of Sheba clip for this project and now have to decide what kind of character performance Bishop will give, blocking is due Sunday. I spent yesterday and today pulling reference movies to look at performances and characters to insipre me. Some movies I chose to look at were Elizabeth, The Imprtance of Being Earnest, Casino, Cleopatra. I still want to look at some more like Willy Wonka, The Godfather and Silence of the Lambs. And I know what you are thinking, how could this list of totally unrelated movies help you in any way? Are you out of your mind lady? Well, no, I just have a theory that if I do my homework and come up with a unique character that I have come to know that it will show in the animation. Here's to hoping it works.

Reference is Good

2005-09-24T17:44:00.000-07:00

So I have been having a hard time with this audio assignment. Once I got going I found it hard to narrow down my choices. I didn't want to use any clips from the internet for fear of them being overused. It also said in the class 3 syllabus that part of the assignment was for us to learn to decipher a good usable audio clip from the boring dribble that is out there. I rented about a dozen movies, everything from Raising Arizona to A Streetcar Named Desire, hoping to find that one perfect audio clip.

I went through all the movies this week and ended up ripping about 30 clips. I narrowed and narrowed until I got down to 10, then 6 now finally 3 that I am really comfortable with. There were so many others that I really liked as well but decided that they might not work as well with our new rig Bishop who has pretty limited facial controls, easing us into facial animation, he only has an up and down controller for the eyebrows. But I think it is a great transition from the blank stare of Stewie.

Week 1 Assignment 3 Audio Clips
1. He's an Angel
2. Queen of Sheba
3. Apologize Sincerely

Now I have been taping reference of myself acting out these lines. So far it's not going too well and that helped me narrow down from the previous 6 choices I had before. I have come up with scenarios for all 3 of these clips and will hand in the ideas, the reference captures, thumbnails along with the audio.

Froggie is my friend, oh and I like people too...

2005-09-24T15:30:00.000-07:00

Sunset at Phelan's house (Gilgamesh) in San Diego

Rebecca, Cassia and Rocco at Phelan's house

Cassia taking Marko and I on a tour of EA

My best friend Froggie