So its week 2 of the term. Things were a bit crazy the first week with homework and Jesse's brother visiting. We went to Disney Land and an Aquarium where I got some awesome footage of birds diving and swimming under water and river otters swimming. I swear when the float on their back it looks like the move their shoulders to be in front of their chests instead of on the sides.

So related to animation I'll start with the creature class. I managed to do all my work for that class in 2 days and asked Jason for an early critique if he had time. He was able to and I did well for the assignment though I will admit the dragon rig was ridiculously intimidating when I first opened it up.There were several ways to approach the wings (the fingers in the membrane being the most difficult to decide on). This site was essentially my bible on flying ( http://www.brendanbody.co.uk/flight_tutorial/index.html ) . A lot of reading! But all of its awesome, down to them telling us why an owl shot in harry potter is wrong lol. Heres what I submitted for week 1.

Video Reference: http://youtu.be/hXmWcPMcjK8?t=40m31s
The flight over the water was my base for the kind of flight I chose.



So the overall critique was to get a little more curved shapes on the wings in the half way area, and to be aware that the choice in flap will naturally create a size of the dragon in the viewers mind and that my dragon was close in size to an average human.

Intro to Acting
Nick Bruno is my mentor for this class and to be honest the first class/critique was kinda intimidating haha. Hes not mean or anything but hes blunt, honest, and has high standards (as mentors should) but I realized in that moment that I had got too comfortable at AM and needed to get my shit together. He mainly had an issue with my staging so I shot reference footage over and last night I did my blocking pass. Here's what I have.

Tonight was the last day of Class 3. Pretty sad, Drew Adams is an amazing mentor. I feel like at AM when you enjoy your mentor you wish they were teaching the next class you were taking, but then you take your next class and end up feeling the same way about that mentor.

My Class 1 mentor was Aaron Hartline from Pixar. Awesome guy and excellent mentor. What I loved most about his class was that class time could also be critique time so if you made changes on sunday from your e-critique by the time class came then you can get and early critique to make your hand in for that week even better.

Class 2 I had Alan Rogers. So I feel like my registration for class 2 needs a back story... I dont exactly remember how I registered for Class 1 but I dont remember there being a chance to plan. With Class 2 there was a lot of talk with eachother on who everyone was going to take. The only way we could plan was by looking at the current mentors and picking one from the ones who were teaching that term and hoping they would be teaching the next term (which you wont find out till registration opens). So when registration came I dont remember any of the names from the registration list as people that I thought of as an option for Class 2. I remember some upper classmen mentioning Alan Rogers (I didnt remember what they said about him though) but classes were quickly filling up so I grabbed him. He was not the popular choice (Jason Martinsen was) and so at first I was bummed thinking "oh no I have no idea how this is going to go". This is where I learned that all mentors at AM are amazing.

Alan was awesome and I'm so glad that registration went the way it did otherwise I would have missed out on this gem of a mentor. What I really liked about him was that he cut to the chase on critiques and didnt hold back punches. Back at SCAD I had the pleasure of being taught by Scott Wright who had a similar teaching method. I think I learn best with this type of teaching (I think it has something to do with my experience in the military) and since then I really appreciate this stance. I think its best to just point out everything thats wrong in order to improve the best you can. They're helping us to succeed not trying to profit from hurt lol. Any type of critique that is just saying "oh good job" and doesn't offer constructive critique is a waste of time and unproductive.

I'm not sure I completely understand what the main purpose of a blog is but this quickly turned into a journal entry. Anyway this is what I submitted for my final for Class 3



I am pretty disappointed in it. I think I screwed in up deciding to do subtle instead of bigger movements in an advanced body mechanics class. I was hoping to come out of this with a nice 3 shot set up for my reel but I don't think I will be putting any of this on my reel. I have a Christmas long shot idea I want to use as a display of my knowledge for body mechanics. I also just recently was lent an amazing rig with which I have an idea for an animation I'm really excited for which could be a decent multi character shot. As for when I do those however has yet to be determined since I'm doubling up on classes next term. I will be taking the Creatures: Fight or Flight class as well as Class 4 Introduction to Acting. I'm ridiculously excited for both of these classes. Next term starts Monday so I'll start posting up ideas for Class 4 on here this week. The creature class will have to wait till Monday since I wont have access to their syllabus till then and I managed to get the class 4 syllabus early from upper classmen.



I couldnt think of a pose idea late last night and took the easy way out drawing a pose from Ronin while watching Epic
(I love Epic by the way, sword fights and people riding flying creatures have a soft place in my heart... HTTYD <3 )

Its been a crazy couple of days at work. I feel like I should give more of a back story to me on this. I moved out to LA back in Dec to start to establish myself in California since 1) this is where a lot of the animation studios are and 2) its always been my goal to end up living in cali (I've yet to look back, I love it here so much :D) When I first got here I had a part time job doing janitorial things at an LA Fitness over in Santa Monica. Its schedule of 5am-9am got old real fast with me having to wake up at 4am. So I kept applying to other places till I landed a job at this movie theater 5 min down the road. I turned my 2 weeks notice in right away.

So now at work at the theater they trained me in concessions and after that my schedule got ridiculous. With the schedule I had I was only working on my AM hw on saturdays... all the work that had to be done that week I would do in one day. At first I was surprised I was pulling it off but as I started working on shots that were a challenge, my hand ins started to suffer till eventually I was completely disappointed, as I feel behind a whole 2 weeks. Its not that I had nothing to show but for the week I was supposed to start shot 3's reference footage I was still working on shot 2 and when I was supposed to have shot 3's blocking one I submitted shot 3's reference footage. To make matters worse my reference footage was bad and I had to reshoot making it that when blocking 2 was due I was submitting new reference. Mix this with poor decision making and I was 2 weeks behind. I then changed my schedule so I only work Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays now. I then decided I didnt care how long it took I was going to catch up over that coming Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. This is the result.



Without the reference footage Jesse helped me with I dont think animating this would have been as fun as it was. The second half of the clip where there is spline is just to show how its looking in spline. I'm currently having issues with doing holds. I remember my professor Scott back at SCAD giving an awesome lecture on it but that was about 2 years ago now? I think? I can barely remember it. I know I took notes on it but I cant find that notebook at the moment >.< So I asked Drew (my current mentor) if he could go over how he does holds so that I can tackle that next and move into spline this coming week.

P.S. By the way, I got a cintiq!! And I didnt forget about that pose sketch idea yet. Hes so off balanced lol

So for the focus of my first few posts I want to post about my current assignment. I'm class 3 which is Advanced Body Mechanics and with the help of my roomies we came up with a portal idea. A character can be pushed into a room with the portal in front of her and the button for it at her side. She has to press it to see if it works. This is the end result of shooting reference. My room mate Jesse saved my butt with this since reference is something I usually struggle on but for this one I was having an exceptionally hard time.

So I've always wanted to have a dedicated blog but never kept to it... usually because I was never productive enough to have substance for it. Since starting AM I've been much more productive than I have ever been so decided to take another whack at this. It'll also help for me to keep track of my process and how fast I work so here goes nothing.

P.s. Something I feel like really helped me from the start of AM was their posing exercise so I think Ill put a doodle of a pose or something to continue that after each post.