Class 4: Introduction to Acting

I can't believe I already half way into my animation program!!! This has been an amazing experience and it just gets better and better!!

This class is not about how to move a character. I know the principles and how to apply them into the actions of the character. Now is time to give a real life, story, background, personality to the character. This will be done in two assignments: a pantomime and lip sync projects over 12 weeks.

This term my mentor is Erik Morgansen. He's been working in animation for 13 years. Most recently he worked at Disney on Meet the Robinsons, and from that point until now at ILM on such films as the Transformers movies, Star Trek, Avatar, and Rango.  Amazing!! Isn't he??

 So, bring it on Fall 2012!!

How can I become an animator?

You have to be born with a sinister sociopathic disease that makes spending a long period alone in a dark room, moving stuff very very slowly or drawing the same thing hundreds and hundreds of times seem to you not only like an excellent career choice, but like an absolute necessity to your very being, a valuable use of your time and of great importance to humanity. If these symptoms sound familiar then you are already an animator. If you are not already an animator you will come to realise this for yourself within hours of giving it a try. Becoming a director or film producer is something you can learn and achieve. Animators are just born that way.

(Taken from DYFP website)

Reel Class 3

This is my latest demo reel, it includes my work as a student of the Advanced Body Mechanics, Psychology of Body Mechanics & Basic Foundations classes at AM.

Climbing over a wall

Hey! I realized that I am such a bad blogger, since my last entry was well over two months ago!! On my defense I can say that last term was mental!! First my in-laws payed us a two weeks visit, then the Olympic fever spread all over the UK and the world, and last but not least, the summer arrived in the UK. It was so difficult to focus on work while it was sunny outside... I'm actually surprised that I survived the term!

Besides all the distractions I think I managed to do a good job. Mostly thanks to my mentor Mike, who gave me great advice as to how to tackle the animations. I'm going to illustrate his advice with my last animation of the term.

Climbing over a wall

• Reference & sketches
  Since I'm no the the athletic kind of person, I decided to go on-line and find a reference video for my animation. I used the following obstacle course video (14:00 to 20:00). Then, I started my sketches. Without having to go into too much details, I drew the line of action of the character, as well as the orientation of the hips and shoulders. That will be incredible helpful in the following steps.

• Blocking
  At this stage, I moved from the pen and paper to the computer. The idea is to recreate the poses that I drew with the character. The poses were supposed to be super exaggerated, cause it's so much easier to tune it down a bit that to keep pushing fwd a pose over time. Also, it's ideal to only have between 8 - 12 poses, and the way you select them is by recreating just story telling movements.

•  Blocking Plus
  At this stage the in-betweens keys are added, before doing it so it's super important to have the previous poses checked. They must be super clear, otherwise the in-between keys will be using a weak pose for reference. A good tool to use while doing the in-betweens is a plugged called tween machine  which, takes two keys and generates a new one in between the two of them. Although it's very helpful, it also doesn't know anything about arcs, so make sure you are checking them every time you use it. At this stage, timing is incorporated.

• Refining
  At this stage things, like anticipation, breakdowns, arcs and overall timing and spacing is incorporated into the animation. It's a good idea to keep the animation on linear even at this stage. As it is possible to make small or big changes without risking overlapping of the keys.
• Final
  The keys are changed from linear to tangent and if all the previous steps were done properly it shouldn't take long to fix little details on the graph editor.

You can see all this stages of animation on the following video.

AMers UK

As I have told you AM is a unique experience; not only because the program is very well structured, or the mentors are super talented, but because of the community.
During the last months I have met people from all over the world with the same love and passion for animation that I have. We write on each others workspaces and we comment on our work.
Well last week I had the opportunity of meeting a large group of AMers that live in the UK. We met at a pub in London and shared our experiences in life that lead us to sign up to AM. We joked and laugh, and made new friends. It was really weird to see some of them for the first time in person, but I really enjoyed it!

Class 3: Advanced Body Mechanics (Summer 2012)

I'm now in class 3. I can't believe time is passing by so fast! I still can remember my first assignment in Animation Mentor and how it though people on class 3 were absolute animation genius! So, it's now my turn to inspire people in class 1, but first let me tell you what class 3 is about.

With 118hrs of instruction this class will develop a fuller understanding of fundamental animation principles and more advanced elements of body mechanics. I’ll continue with the same bipedal character from the previous animation class and tackle a sequence of shots. AM website

My tutor for this class is Mike Gasaway, an Emmy award winning Director with over 6 years of directing/producing experience, specializing in computer animation and the coolest guy ever!

All I can say is that I am loving every step of this journey, and I'm thankful for the opportunity of learning from these talented people!

Taking a break and helping animals

Between class 2 and 3 I got a whole week of holiday!! Which was pretty awesome for like a day. On the second day I was super bored, but then I realized that I still had one project that I needed to work on.

I had been a volunteer for RSPCA Cambridge and District branch since last January, and I took on the responsibility of designing a new website for the branch. The current site is a bit of an eye sore (in my opinion), full of info, links and random stuff that is not very user friendly. 
Don't believe me? take a lot at it!

So, with the help of other people at RSPCA, I designed a new website.

Unfortunately, it is not live yet... but hopefully it will get approved soon and you guys can visit and test it.

In the mean time, here is the link to the site. Even if its not my design you guy can still read about all that RSPCA Cambridge and District branch are doing in the region and you might be interested in helping. Perhaps, you can fall in love with one of the cute animals that need to be re-homed. Either way, please stop by the site and support your local RSPCA.

www.rspca-cambridge.org.uk